Impressions of Central America

Jan. 24, 2007 - Wednesday - We are back at Barillas Marina in El Salvador after a bus loop through Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. If we had a decent internet connection, we'd like to put up a bunch of pictures, but we don't have even a reasonable connection so I am sending this by radio again because it works.
We were fascinated by the Central American landscape but even more by the TREEscape. Everywhere I have lived, there were about 5 species of trees around at any given time and usually one species was dominant. Here, I would say that there are about 40 species of trees and they are intermixed so that every time the bus came around a corner, there was a new landscape with rough volcanic overtones, but the variations in the trees projecting from the folded ground was amazing. There were evergreens mixed with bananas and coconut palms and then a variety of other trees with all different kinds of canopies, leaves, and flowers. I'll try to put up a picture later.
We passed through Antigua, Lake Atitlan, back to Antigua and then to the Mayan ruins at Copan. From there we went to San Juan Sula, which is a big and fast growing commercial city in Honduras that is a transportation hub. From here we were able to get a bus back to San Salvador and then back to the marina.
Last night, we went for a short walk to visit the local monkeys. The owner of the marina provides a small stipend for a family that lives in the middle of a teak forest. They have virtually domesticated an entire tribe of spider monkeys and enjoy showing off their tribe to the visitors. The monkeys were curious about us as we arrived and gathered in the trees above us. But when we arrived at the house of their guardian and he came out, they came down on the ground. He called them by name and they came running. I had a pregnant female climb me to get a banana that I was holding. The monkeys were very well behaved (for monkeys). Monkeys are native here, but the caretaker somehow manages to keep this troop together and living in the same neighborhood. Fun!
In a few days, we'll be off to Costa Rica, skipping Nicaragua entirely because our insurance for some reason doesn't cover Nicaragua. That will be a 2 day passage and hopefully, we'll avoid the Papagayo winds. But if we do get some, they blow off the land and so, if we stay close to land, there will be no waves. Lots of wind with no waves gets us places very quickly although it demands careful attention.