Caminatas!

The past few weekends we have been going on caminatas (hikes) to various parts around my town. The first week we went to this place called la corquinta, which is this cave where the indigeous use to come to make sombreros and brooms from palm leaves. To get to the cave we hiked around this river bed, and water pools and tiny caves. When we stopped for a minute at this watering hole, we started this beautiful white owl from the cave. It looked like Hedwig from Harry Potter....why a white, furry owl is in El Salvador no idea but I understand why it was hiding. Anyways, when we reached the cave we had to climb down slowly and quitely because above us were these holes in the bedrock where tons of bees were swarming around their nests. The cave was so quiet and cool. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see the alleged cave paintings of a serpent, sun and moon. However, one wall of the cave had shattered and falled down into large turned over boulders. Apparently, on that wall was where the paintings were.

The second week, we went to Cerro Capulin. It is the cerro above my town. Our "tour guide" Guillermo took my friend Ana Ruth, Nicole, Mya, Narciso and I to the very top. Literally the vary top..top of the antenea! The pictures are of Ana Ruth climbing up to the top and the zoomed in shot from the top of us waiting at the bottom. I only went up like a 1/3 of the way. Just enough to see the Gulf, Nicaragua and all the way to the volcano of San Vicente! It was an amazing view! On the way up and down Guillermo told us about the history of Yayantique and some other stories.

Yayantique is named after an indigenous named Yahyai who fled from Civil War in Guatemala to this area. He led a serious of protests that led to the authorities to finally name the land after him. Yayantique use to me one of the largest and most important lands in the East of El Salvador!

Other less believable stories included a plant that looks like any other normal plant and when you look at it you immediately get lost. The trick is because it is an ordinary plant you don't know if you saw it or not only if you get lost than you did. Apparently, some guy got lost till like 8 o'clock on the hill because he saw it.

Another believable or no so believable story was about how a guy got stung by these african wasps and had a temperature of over 200 degrees.

But Guillermo is awesome and always is willing to talk to me, help me and wants to better his community. And has some factual and other interesting stories to tell!

Oh yeah, this past weekend we hiked to El Raton, which is like a cave/ little water spring. It was a very muddy, slippery and a bit difficult climb down to it. But we all made it and where we were was so green and lush with these giant vines coming down. The birds were all singing and the water was slightly trickling down the rocks. It was like a george in the jungle scene minus george, and monkeys. (we did have the screaming scared Jane role covered by the three gringas: Nicole, Mya and I) haha jk. After El Raton, we hiked up to this other hill where you could see the other cantones of my town, and then we hiked down to this natural watering hole called El Hobo. El hobo apparently is a type of tree that use to be there...I saw it was a homeless man haha.

This weekend we are going to go to a "lake" in El Socorro which is a canton (smaller town/part) of my town.