The bus ride from Atacó to Juayua is probably the easiest transport I’ve had. Between all the tourists here on the Ruta de las Flores and all the locals making their way around, there are chicken buses going back and forth all day long, and the ride was only about an hour. I found my awesome little hotel and checked right in. There’s only three rooms around this beautiful courtyard with an outdoor kitchen. My room was the furthest down on the right.

Anyway, like the other towns on the Ruta de las Flores, Juayua is a charming, comfortable little town, but there’s not really much to it. The Parque Central is where all the action is and of course, there’s a nice church on the edge of it, Iglesia Santa Lucia.

The church, and the town for that matter is mildly famous for being the home of the Cristo Negro carved by Quirio Cataño in the late 16th century.

No doubt you’ve all been wondering how exactly to pronounce Juayua, just like I did. And no doubt you all look as ridiculous trying to pronounce it as I did. Don’t worry, I’ll help you out… why ooh ahh. It’s still hard to say even after you know, isn’t it?. Anyway, I intentionally planned on coming to Juayua on a weekend to experience their weekly gastronomy festival, the other thing this town is famous for.

They block off a few streets, set up tents with all kinds of food, drinks, music playing, it’s pretty awesome, and they do this every single weekend. I’ve eaten so much good food the last couple of days, it’s insane!

The one and only restaurant I visited in Juayua was the pupuseria and the only reason I did that is because it was Friday and the gastronomy festival hadn’t started yet.

The Iglesia Santa Lucia and Parque Central look even better at night. But now it’s time for bed. I have another big day tomorrow.

Just like my Hidden Waterfalls Hike in Parque Nacional el Imposible a few days ago, Juayua has its own waterfall extravaganza, the Seven Waterfalls Hike. The difference this time is it’s not in a national park and I’m not the only tourist this time, there are twenty-two of us all trying to stand up in the back of a truck.

The hike starts with our truck ride and then we hit the trail, down down down, until we get to the awesomeness at the bottom. They call it the Seven Waterfalls, but I’m not sure how they count them exactly. The whole ravine is pouring water from all sides.

We walked in the water, through the river, through a bunch of little pools, up a dozen small waterfalls, until we reached the falls in the pic above right, that’s the big one we had to climb up. Then we walked along the cliffside a really long way while water flowed down almost on top of us the whole time. It was super fun!

There was also a lot of these guys. Believe it or not they were about four to five inches across. I would’ve held a penny or something next to him for reference, but I was legitimately terrified of him.

And the occasional views weren’t bad either.

We’re still not finished yet. There was still more to go.

We were slowly making our way back towards town to the final waterfall, and the only one with a name as far as I know, Chorros de la Calera. This is really the only one that’s accessible from town and a LOT of locals come here to swim. In addition to our group of twenty-two, there was at least a couple of dozen more people here, locals and tourists alike. It was pretty crowded!

After all that hiking, climbing, and swimming came the hard part, the hike back up. We hopped back into the truck soaking wet and went back to town. I cleaned myself up and then hit that gastronomy festival to stuff myself with some more amazing food. Sunday was even more poppin’ than Saturday was.

I’ve really enjoyed my time in Juayua, but it’s now time to move on. Tomorrow I’ll be on another couple of buses to my next destination and that’ll end my time on the Ruta de las Flores. Don’t worry, though, I’m not done with El Salvador just yet…