I left Santa Ana to begin my trip through El Salvadors Ruta de las Flores, also known as the tourist track. This is supposedly the most beautiful part of El Salvador due to the unbelievable display of flowers that bloom all over the region during the summer. I’m missing the grand blooming, unfortunately, but it’s still a super beautiful area. My base for the first part is in Concepción de Atacó.

The Ruta de las Flores is dotted with, primarily, four little colonial towns with options for hotels and food. Atacó seems to be the second most popular. The town is really peaceful and quiet, and touristy. There are a LOT of little souvenir shops all selling pretty much the same stuff. But, I didn’t come here for the souvenirs.

The Parque Central was all fenced off for renovations, but I still got to explore the rest of the town, it’s two bright churches and it’s many murals.

As I said in my last post, I also got to finally ride the chicken bus which are sort of ubiquitous around here. A chicken bus is really just the local bus system, but made up of old school buses that have been tricked out with crazy paint jobs and some of the best sound systems I’ve ever heard. My bus from Santa Ana to Atacó didn’t have any music, but the bus I took to the next town, Apaneca, for a day trip was rockin’!

Apparently, they’re called chicken buses because chickens were often seen riding the buses along with their owners through the valley, though not anymore. Anyway, Apaneca is very similar to Atacó. I took some time to stroll the streets, check out their Parque Central and the cathedral. Apaneca seems even sleepier than Atacó.

The real reason I came here, though, was to see a bit of the countryside. I booked an ATV tour out to Laguna Verde.

After the ride out I went on the hike around the lake and relaxed a bit before heading back. The weather on the Ruta de las Flores is thankfully much cooler.

Back in Atacó I enjoyed the amazing coffee and surprisingly good food in the area. Most of the surrounding area is coffee farms. Then I went to bed fairly early because tomorrow is a big day.

I was up before the sun and off to the local pupuseria for some breakfast and to meet my guide for the day, William. I’m about to do an all day hike in Parque Nacional el Imposible. Our ride is the beat to hell pickup truck seen below and we rode all the way standing up in the back, or at least trying to stay standing up.

One of the fun parts of foreign travel is getting to do things that would never be allowed at home.

The trailhead was really just a hole in the jungle, on a trail that’s maintained by some obvious machete work. And unlike most hikes, we start by going down, steeply down, until we reach the first stop, Cascada el Perol. We were also joined by Williams co-guide, and his cousin and his girlfriend. The whole gang turned out to be a lot of fun.

I was surprisingly sweaty after hiking down that steep hill even though it was shaded and the weather was fairly cool. Swimming in that cold water felt really good. After the swim we climbed up along the right side of the falls all the way to the top.

Up at the top we followed the river upstream passed some really beautiful smaller waterfalls. Along the way, William stopped frequently to teach us about some of the local plants and their uses, and to try some fruits growing in the wild that I’ve never heard of.

Eventually we came to this super fun natural rock slide and went nuts.

Once we had our fill of the rockslide we hiked some more to this other amazing waterfall and also climbed to the top and had some lunch.

Followed by more hiking upstream and more beautiful smaller falls.

Finally we came to the best part. This waterfall coming down into a beautiful little cove. Though I didn’t realize the plan was to climb up through the water, the only way up. It looked like a lot staring at it from the bottom, but I swam out and then got to work. It was a lot easier and a lot more fun than I thought.

We hiked further up river, wading up to our chests in several parts until we reached the trail up, which was as equally steep as the one down this morning, and where our trusty beat to hell pickup was waiting for us. Thankfully, I was already wet, so I didn’t need to worry about the sweat. We rode back to Atacó standing in the back again, blow drying, and by the time we got there I was mostly dry, and very satisfied.

Even though this post is short, the hike through Parque Nacional el Imposible is definitely going to end up being one of the highlights of this trip. But now it’s time for another chicken bus to my next stop on the Ruta de las Flores for some more hiking, more waterfalls, and more good food…