Blog 6 - El Volcan Conchagua: The Kindness of Strangers

Ultimately I decided on the title ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ because of three events you will hear about shortly, but it was a close call between that and a number of alternatives: ‘Oops I did it again…’, or even ‘Cerberus: Guardian of Amapalita’. Anyway, all will become clear soon.

If you don’t like spoilers then ignore this link to our previous travel blog from a couple of years ago, but for those of you who do remember it, todays Volcano adventure follows an eerily similar pattern…

So, I’d decided I wanted to climb this volcano which overlooks the Gulf of Fonseca, a bay dotted with
islands on the border between El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Becki in her infinite wisdom, preferred to spend her last day at La Tortuga Verde relaxing on the beach and sorting out bits and pieces for the next stage of our trip, so after an interesting Salvadorian breakfast of; Scrambled Eggs, Fish Fillets, Fried Bananas, Re-fried Beans and Cheese I set off by myself to make my way to the volcano.

El Volcan Conchagua is about 30km from La Tortuga Verde so the first stage was simply getting to the main road where I could catch a bus. Just over 2 miles according to the map, no problem. What the map neglected to mention (yes, definitely the map’s fault) was; this 2 miles was entirely up hill, and entirely without any shade. After a few baking minutes walking by some chickens, cows and a pig who were all just milling around, a group of locals returning from their morning wood chopping session took pity on me and gave me a lift in their truck the rest of the way to the main road - Kindness of Strangers Take 1.

So, now all I had to do was wait for a bus, although the group of locals who had already been waiting for over an hour didn't fill me with confidence. Apparently; the Sunday bus service, not exactly reliable. Seeing as one advantage of El Salvador buses is you can just stop them and get on anywhere, and one disadvantage of being me is I can’t stand still waiting for too long; I decided the best thing to do was just start walking along the route to Conchauga.

After about 30-40 minutes (and still no sign of a bus going in either direction), I passed by 3 men sitting out on the verge by the side of the road. We said hello to each other, and they asked where I was going. With my Spanish not good enough to explain I was going to stop the bus on route, I had to say I was walking to Conchauga, which they found hilarious, (“Silly Gringo, you cannot walk all that way”), still they wished me luck and I kept walking.

After another half an hour of looking over my shoulder at every sound of an approaching vehicle, and still no bus, I was starting to wonder how smart my decision had been. But suddenly, another local in a truck pulled over and told me to get in - Kindness of Strangers Take 2.  He drove me the rest of the way, while we argued over whose football team was having the worse season, him being a Liverpool fan vs my AC Milan, we decided to call it a tie.

So finally I was there. The climb up the Volcano was amazing; hard going, and very hot and humid throughout, but all that was offset by some incredible views: back inland a landscape of hills, valleys, mountains and volcanoes stretching off into the distance, to the east 3-4 large islands sitting in the gulf, and to the south views out into the Pacific.

There was also plenty of awesome nature to see closer by; I think the pick of the bunch was a crazy dragonfly creature with stick thin wings almost to the point of being invisible, except for these brightly coloured spheres on each wingtip. When it flies it looks like four differently coloured pin heads spiralling around each other.

Also I came across the biggest swarm of ants I have ever seen in my life, and not just regular ants, these were massive; easily 4-5 times the size of the regular black ants back home. The entire path, which was about 2m wide, was covered for a good couple of meters in front of me. I stopped with the intention of getting some close up Attenborough style video of the swarm in action, but no sooner had I turned on the camera when the ants started to swarm all over my shoes and up my legs. So what you have here is a few seconds of ants, followed by my calm manly panic at the idea being carried off and devoured by man-eating ants.  And by the way, over the next few minutes up the volcano, I did the maths, and if they had all got together they could definitely have carried me!

So all in all, so far pretty awesome, however I started to run into a bit more trouble on the way down. The main problem was, there is a very fine difference (read: no difference at all), between the areas of dense jungle which have been deliberately slightly cleared by man to make an unobtrusive path, and those areas of jungle which have been slightly cleared by the randomness of nature. The picture to the right for example, shows a legitimate path, can you spot where it is!

So on two occasions on my way back down, I followed a false path-like clearing, only to have it suddenly disappear. And I soon discovered once you’ve gone off the path, finding it again is not so easy.  First time I harmlessly wandered around in the undergrowth for 20 minutes before finding my way again. The second time however, I was not so lucky.

I hasten to add, after getting lost the first time, I vowed to pay close attention to any potential path options before me, and so had already decided to avoid a particularly thick and confusing part that I’d been through on the way up. Instead I was going to walk an extra mile along a small dirt road (which the path briefly crosses) to the next town along, Amapalita.

So thinking I was almost done, I turned the corner at the entrance to this small town, at which point a fairly large dog started to bark and then charge at me. And not in the kind of “I’m a dog and I’m defending my territory” kind of way, as they often do in these parts, but in a, “I have been bred to kill, and when I catch up with you, I’m going to eat you” way. Needless to say, I ran as fast as I possibly could back the way I came.

There was no other way around, so against my better judgement, I had to go back and search for, and subsequently fail to find the path I had previously chosen to avoid. So what followed was around 45 minutes of pushing my way into and then out of a ravine, a dry-river bed, and finally scrambling up a small cliff before I re-found the path. Well I say re-found the path; actually I startled a bemused Salvadorian farmer who had been busy collecting avocados, before a thoroughly exhausted Englishman pulled himself up over his cliff edge. Anyway he kindly gave me some much needed water, and pointed me in the right direction - Kindness of Strangers Take 3.

Finally I made it back to Conchagua, and was pleased to find a local Pupusa festival in full swing. Pupusas are El Salvador’s national dish, basically they are halfway between a tortilla and a stuffed crust pizza, and they are as good, if not better than they sound. Understandably these guys love them and they had a giant party to show it; families competing against each other with crazy flavours, a speed Pupusa making contest, a marching band, a bouncy castle, and TV crew to take it all in.

Refuelled and reenergised, I had one last venture to go; getting back home. Due to the extra time I spent being lost, and the aforementioned Sunday bus service, the only way back was to team up with some locals, who had been stranded at the Pupusa fiesta, to flag down an out of service bus and negotiate a lift to get us home (I’ll be honest, they did most of the negotiating).

Finally, and a few hours later than expected, I arrived back at La Tortuga Verde to find, not only has Becki organised everything for the next leg of our trip tomorrow, but also packed all our bags, and had a Chicken Burger ready and waiting for me! A bag-full of Awesome Wife bonus points have been duly awarded!

As it turns out the real danger was not to me trekking up a volcano, but rather to Becki staying at the beach. As we walked across the sand to our hostel bar, death in the form of a falling coconut missed her head by less than an inch!