Well, yesterday was a blast but of course it wasn't without some drama. All was going smooth in the morning...we got up, had breakfast, and were picked up on time. Now the day before I talked to the tour guy and he asked if there was a problem if seven other people joined us. The price of the tour would go down yet at the same time the places we would go would go up by two. Sure, no problem. Little did we know that Judy would be joining us. We pull up to the other hotel and are waiting for the others when all of a sudden this annoying women comes up and just starts bitching about everything. "What? You didn't say there would be other people with us!, I can't sit in the back I'll get car sick but I can't sit in the front it makes me sick too! But I also have to sit next to a window!". She would not shut up and it was only the first five minutes. Even better was she decided for walking around ruins and coffee farm is she decided to wear a white linen dress and slide sandals.
Anyway the first stop on our tour was to Joya De Ceren. Apparently it's ONLY Mayan housing settlement found through out all of Central America. Not a whole lot to see, mostly just some holes in the ground with housing in it. Supposedly the village was abandoned since they haven't found any skeletons and figure it was because of a volcanic eruption years ago. Apparently no one knew they were there until some guy who owned the land was building silos found them when they we digging for new silos.
After the ruins our tour guide, Miguel, took us to Lago De Coatepeque. Lago De Coatepeque is volcanic crater lake surrounded by the Cerro Verde, Izalco and Santa Ana volcanoes. The last time one of the volcanoes erupted was last year.
As we pushed forward we rode toward Santa Ana to check out the cathedral. Of course our tour wouldn't be complete with out seeing a dead guy on the back of a semi-trailer tied down to a cement post. That was definitely interesting. Santa Ana is best known for a neo-gothic cathedral and the teatro de Santa Ana. Pretty much a Chevy Chase moment for all of us.
Leaving Santa Ana we went to the Ruinas de Tazumal. Supposedly it's the most important and impressive in El Salvador located in the town of Chalchuapa. Looking in my tour book I got apparently Tazumal means 'pyramid where the victims were burned'. I did learn that back in that time they had some ball game you played where who ever won was actually the loser. Wanna guess what you won? Well you got an all expense paid trip to the ruins for sacrifice. Why someone would want to play that game is beyond me. And of course you can't forget about Judy. Up until now she hasn't been bad just merely really annoying but she managed to annoy us even more so here. There were a couple of shops where you could by pottery and stuff. We sat and waited for her for while she picked out some jaguar pot and earrings.
Now Pick-Up Artist and I really thought she was checking back with the CIA and making her report on us. Why you ask? Well, when Pick-Up Artist informed her employer that she was coming down here they told her that there could be a possibility of the CIA following us around down here because of our clearance and everything. So in our boredom and our extreme annoyance for Judy we wondered if she was really a secret undercover CIA operative and her cover was an annoying, bitchy travel tourist. I guess the world may never know.
Back on track now we left for the coffee farm. We must have wound through the mountain side for at least an hour before finally reaching Santa Leticia. Judy again made her presence known when she promptly started bitching about the food and started asking the server if she could change this and that around. Pick-Up Artist and I were just happy that we were finally eating since it was 3 in the afternoon and we hadn't had anything since breakfast. The coffee farm was for both of us our Mecca. We got to walk through some of the coffee fields, shown the berries that contain the bean and found out that some of the beans here are sold to Starbucks. The best part of all of this is we were able to buy the beans for a fraction of the cost that it would sell for in the US.
Anyway that's about all of our trip. After the coffee farm we made our way back to San Salvador and of course had to listen to Judy bitch about everything and anything but I won't bore you with all of that. All in all is was a great day and we got to see a completely different side to the country of El Salvador.
