A Self-Administered Stress Test

Tuesday, Apr. 26, 2011--Alegria, El Salvador

I slept well last night.  That made me decide that I could manage another day here even though I hadn't gotten the accommodations I had wanted.

During the morning, I hiked to the lake inside the cone of an extinct volcano.  From my hotel, it was about a 3 km (1.8 mi) hike going uphill almost all the way.  I set a faster-than-most-people pace and kept it up without pauses.  It was like giving myself a stress test.  And I passed!  My heart had a fast, but steady, beat.  I never felt the need to stop.  The lake itself is okay.  The edges are just mud, so it isn't very attractive except from a distance.  After spending half an hour there, I returned to town.

Then I waited for a bus to take me to Berlin, a nearby town that is also supposed to be nice.  The buses only run about once an hour, so I read in my novel while waiting.  Berlin was bigger than I expected.  It is a small market town for this region, and it even had a franchise chicken restaurant I have seen in all the bigger cities of El Salvador.  Unfortunately, there are no good links to give you an indication of what this town is like.  I wandered the streets until I found a good Comida a la Vista restaurant where I got lunch--chile relleno stuffed with both beef and chicken and a mixed vegetable-pasta dish.  I drank a glass of tamarind drink.

It rained again this afternoon--the third afternoon in 4 days for it to do so.  It was brief, but heavy.  Fortunately, I was back in my room at the time resting from the long hike this morning and my exploration of Berlin.

At the hotel, I did some research for the Honduras part of my travels.  It's going to be more basic than where I have been so far.  Every place seems to be only a village with very limited accommodation.  So I may be staying in places like I have here in Alegria more than I intended.  But tomorrow, I will make one more stop in El Salvador before leaving this country.

I'm stuffed from my lunch.  Two Australian women staying here asked me to join them for home-cooked dinner tonight after I gave them a book I had finished.  I told them I will have to eat lightly.  Othewise, I would have just gone across the street to the plaza and gotten me a choco-banano to eat--a frozen banana on a stick and dripped in chocolate.