For The Smiling People of El Salvador

In El Salvador, we discovered another paradise, Alegria. We stayed a couple of nights inside the crater of a volcano along the sulfuric-green water lake and the fumaroles. The place deserves to be the stage for a movie. The campground has a soccer field. Camping is $2.35/night. We were the only campers. We swam and relaxed. But the wonders do not stop there; the village of Alegria and its people deserve a mention. One can get carried away by the residents’ hospitality and the tranquility of this pueblo. It’s clean and safe, a rarity in Central America.



Marie is making friends wherever she goes!


We visited a few beaches popular for surfers; to us, the Pacific is too hot here. We are now driving the “Routa de Flores”, happy to have decided to drive through El Salvador.



In front of the town prison of Berlin, El Salvador that is.

The Forgotten Banana Republics

Back in Nicaragua and Honduras, we faced the poverty again, flagrant inequality between classes. We went to a few beaches, met local kids and tried to teach them a few English words. We visited Leon, Nicaragua because it’s supposed to be comparable to Granada, another colonial city in Nicaragua. To us, there is no comparison, Granada is s a jewel, Leon is not shining so much.

We did not spend much time in Honduras. We abandoned our plan to visit El Tigre island, which is described in the Lonely Planet guide book as being ferociously hot. BTW, when searching for campgrounds, we no longer ask for “agua caliente” hot water, room temperature is hot enough these days, thank you.

Costa Rica …. Costing Riva

Back in Costa Rica, we retrieved the VW Camper in Liberia and drove to Nuevo Arenal. We found a great free campground on the Northwestern shore of lake Arenal. I could have spent days there. To me, the Arenal volcano area is paradise because of its rain forests and its gorgeous fresh water lake at the foot at this pyramidal shaped volcano.

The following day we drove to the Volcano and stayed at a campground across the road from the entrance of the National Park. I wake up in the middle of the night with the enjoyable smell of guavas which grow wild in the area. At night, the volcano offers a light show; the lava comes down, dragging stones along and creating a roaming sound.

The following night, we spent at Sissy’s a noisy-cabin-campground in Fortuna.

We then drove to San Jose and slept in the airport parking lot because we had to fly early the following day to Oaxaca Mexico for a photo shoot. We took hundreds of pictures for a magazine called More for their November 2008 issue.

Back again in Costa Rica, we stayed 2 nights at the San Lorenzo de Belen trailer park and used our last days in Costa Rica to visit a bird zoo near Alajuela and to walk another trail in a rain forest near Tenorio, an active volcano. This 4 hour-trail is a real treat, apart from being a gorgeous rain forest, it offers swimming holes, waterfall, bubbling mineral springs and a unique blue-color river.

In general, our impression of Costa Rica remains the same as before; amazing nature at a steep price.