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Art, War and Revolution
Santa Rosa de Copan felt way off the backpacker trail. Its the main town of the area but has a sleepy cobbled street ambiance. With few tourists around it was easy to fall into conversation with locals, and we found little surprises like the descendant of a Ukrainian immigrant from WWII that had set up a apple liquor distillery called Timoshenka. 
Flor de Copan is famous for making cigars. An interesting tour of the factory revealed how the leaves are kept moist and fermenting for something like 7 months to achieve their pungent smell and dark leather like appearance. This room really stank, I would hate to work here. After cleaning and drying they are then pressed and stored to mature for up to 7 years to fully mature in flavour.
The hand rolling room was fascinating, there were well over a hundred people churning out perfectly formed beautiful looking cigars, pressed and then having a precise amount of pressured air pumped through to enable smooth smoking.
We crossed the border over into El Salvador and the arty mountain village of La Palma. An artist living here during the awful Reagan sponsored civil war and death squads had produced beautiful colourful cubist influenced, childlike religious inspired images of rural life in El Salvador. The whole town had got in on the act and many of the buildings and lampposts were painted in stunning designs of geometric animals. 
From here we took advantage of a bus that goes almost to the top of El Salvador's highest mountain. Cerro El Pital, just over 2700 metres and a 3 hour round trip walking. As soon as we started out we were accompanied by a friendly black and brown dog, who seemed to be offering to show us the way. So we gave him a little pupusa, a local tortilla fried with beans and cheese and he led the way as our guide and for a bit of security too. Dogs too have to adapt to tourism to survive.
We met an amiable Peace Corp couple on the way who were volunteering for 2 years nearby in helping to improve the lives of local farmers. There are not many tourists in El Salvador, it seems like there are as many Peace Corp here. It has a bad image of gang problems, a direct result of the violent upheavals this country recently saw.
Outside of the big cities what you mostly notice are the friendliness of the people you encounter. Many lived as refugees for up to 20 years in the USA, Europe or Australia and you find the occasional person with perfect English.
Tourist police also act as free tour guides. On one walk to a stunning waterfall formed from giant hexadecimal lava flow rocks we met a 4 man police escort for 2 other travellers, we shared a lift back with them in their state of the art 4 wheel drive. Here tourism is taken very seriously and you can get free armed tourist police to accompany you on any hikes you wish to do.
Quite unplanned we ended up staying in Suchitoto over a week. We arrived on a Sunday and went straight away to the weekly restaurant at La Casa del Esculptor, where a BBQ lunch is prepared by the Argentinian sculptor Miguel Martino and his Mexican wife. You are seated in their house and studio surrounded by incredible sculptures made from wood, rusted metal and stunning brooding paintings.
Suchitoto although a sleepy cobbled street kind of place is also the cultural capital of El Salvador and many artists have set up their lives and galleries here. It was also celebrating its 150th year of being a city and was honoured by being made capital city for the day while most of the government attended the celebrations. All expect the president who was on the other side during the war. In local bar El Necio, dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara we saw a small photo gallery of the local war. One photo showed a young guerrilla of about 20 years old, he is now a smartly dressed middle aged man and he is the city's mayor.
Suchitoto was abandoned during the war and its lovely buildings that had not been destroyed by either earthquakes, volcanoes or floods like many other parts of the country was spared from the fighting by both sides. The mountains around Suchitoto were a stronghold for revolutionary freedom fighters known as the FMLN and being the closest guerrillas, less than 60km from the capital, this area saw some of the most intense battles.
Johanna, I and a pastor called Kim from Indianapolis took a guided horse ride with Woberto, a mild and friendly mannered former guerrilla. The mountain forest was beautifull, however we passed many signs of war. The people were forced to seek safety in the hills, entire communities, schools and churches were hidden in the forest. The path was lined with dug out sniper holes, several bomb craters and a destroyed church and village. Woberto's own mother has died in the war when he was just 4 years old.
The day before in Suchitoto people were celebrating. The plaza had been full of friendliness, families and live music. We were awoken at 5am with 150 drum beats and there are no glass windows here, only shutters because of the heat. But ended the day with mariachis on stage and an impressive firework display.
We had 2 days of stomach illness and fever, so we lazed around in bed and read books. We travelled via San Salvador and headed South across the country. But on reading a weather warning in the paper for an intense downpour and code yellow for likely flooding, we decided to skip the next mountain village and head past the storm and across the border.
One night back in Honduras in the very ordinary city of Choluteca. Then we were crossing the border by bicycle taxi into Nicaragua and the most heavily volcanic area of Central America.
We were glad to put our bags down in the cultural and political city of Leon and stayed at the perfectly run Lazybones hostel. Sometimes the accommodation really makes your day. This had a funky graffitied wall in a tranquil hammock and sofa lined courtyard, swimming pool, free Internet cafe, pool table and fresh free coffee too! 
Leon was the old capital, it was important for both political and religious reasons and has a tremendous cathedral, the largest in Central America. It also very Nicaraguan, it has a lively but relaxed buzz to the city, while we were there a cycle race lapped through the centre past faded revolutionary wall paintings. 
And we visited a brilliant art gallery, the home of poet Ruben Dario and a museum of fallen heroes, run by the mothers of young idealists who had died fighting for their countries freedom from the Somoza family dictatorships. No thanks again to Ronnie Reagan.
We got our visas extended in the capital Managua and had an interesting evening talking with Carlos running our hotel. We watched his homemade coffee shop documentary and I sat up late arguing and discussing politics, history, religion and philosophy. He has his own internet based radio show and is quite an unique but fun character.
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