Lago de Coatepeque

On the morning we left Juayua, Rigel ran over to change some travellers cheques at the Scotia Bank. The building was extemely secure, as if those entering or leaving the building were going out into the vacuum of outer space and the inner building had to be protected from air loss. First you punch a button to be allowed to enter the outer chanber, then wait for the door to shut behind you and press a button for the inner door. At that point, an armed guard in a bullet proof glass room approves your entry and the door unlocks. From the inside of the bank, you can see that the little guard room door doesn't even have a handle facing into the building. How do they get in there? At every bank we've visited in Eo Salvador, we've had trouble changing our remaining quetzals, I guess we should have used the money changers at the border...

View from the northern side of vulcan Santa Ana during our descent

Before starting on the big hill out of Juayua, we bought some papusas and water. On our elevation mapper it said that the grades of the hill were sometimes around 20%, so many snacks were required. Erin thought of the hill as being a good challenge so she didn't even complain very much. We rode the hills in a zigzag pattern so we were able to keep up our energy as well as eating those delicious papusas. The humidity was very high making it hard to keep cool but at least the temperature wasn't too high and it was cloudy. I am not too sure if the elevation mapper is correct with the 20% grades because I would think they would be fairly unridable and we rode them...hmm. Finally making it to the top we found ourselves in a very cute mountain town, Los Naranjos. It is nestled between two very picturesque volcanoes and alive with their traditional culture.

One of the many fruit stands on the side of the Pan-Am highway - where we bought bananas

From there it was a super long gorgeous downhill, but we didn't do much stopping in the towns. The heat started to rise as we descended and once we turned onto the major highway we were greeted by a hill. Luckily the grades on major highways are low. All along the wide shoulder there were people selling fruit and vegetable, so we stopped for some bananas. We asked for four bananas BUT the lady would only sell them in groups of 15 for $1. So we left there with our bellies super full of banana...
We arrived at Lake Coatepeque in the middle of the afternoon after decending the crater rim (as the lake is in the crater of a volcano!) on a really crappy steep dirt road, found a restaurant, ate some chicken, then went on looking for a place to stay. The lake was filled by rainwater and since there is no river feeding it or draining it, it is salt water.

View over the Lago de Coatepeque at sunset from our hotel

 The first hotel we came to was very beautiful, they had swimming pools nestled between gardens and mango trees. The rooms were probably expensive so we asked to set up our tent. We cleared the tent spot of fallen mangos and set up right underneath one of the trees. The whole night we could hear mangos falling and banging onto tables and roofs and the cement pathways but it the morning it didn't look like any hit our tent, although I did find one in my shoe.

The mango tree we parked our tent under.  Probably about 1,000 mangos on that tree, fallint about one every 10 minutes. Watch your head!