Day 41 – Santa Teresa Hot Springs
After our final “desayuno tipico” or “typical breakfast”, we packed our bags, got in the car, turned the key, and…. nothing. The battery was dead. Apparently four nights in the car, putting the windows up and down a few times and charging a phone for about 30 minutes was too much for our ageing battery. Luckily the owner of the hotel, whose parking lot we used, brought his car around and we had jumper cables in order to get our van rolling again.
Ataco was our first stop, a small artsy town, where we each had three papusas for a dollar. We then set off for our destination of the Santa Teresa hot springs. It was a huge area, very well developed, with many different pools of varying temperature. First we spent some time exploring the whole area and tried out the Japanese hot stones and then we found our favourite pool and settled in for the afternoon. It was a lovely afternoon of soaking in the sulphur-scented pools, reading our books, and swinging in the hammocks. Around sunset we got our camp stove and cooked herring pasta with peas and carrots (a rather strange combination – we wouldn’t try it again). Finally we got into the van, wrote a blog post, and watched our customary episode of Game of Thrones.
Day 42 – Driving to Honduras
Last night was a stealth night. We were supposed to pay for camping, but we managed to not get noticed sleeping the van. For the first time in a while we had muesli for breakfast, and then took a morning dip in the hot springs before departing.
We set off from Santa Teresa and took a morning stop at Santa Ana. We found a single cafe open where we had coffee and flan for $1.50 and then shared a lunch that ended up being way better than expectations – churasco with rice and salad. We departed and had a very easy border crossing exiting El Salvador and returning to Guatemala. We’re getting much better at the whole border crossing and vehicle importation process.
Driving a few hours longer we arrived at our destination for the evening, “Estacion Chorti”, a gas station near the Honduras border that we read about as being safe on ioverlander. There was a nice restaurant a few minute walk away and we had a nice dinner – steak with a nice appetizer of pureed bean/cheese dip, served over a flaming warmer with tortilla chips.
