Walking With El Salvador

 Part 2: Off the Beaten Path at Ecoparque El Espino View looking down from Mirador Aleman  Before dawn on a recent morning, my husband and I headed up the San Salvador Volcano to do some hiking and bird-watching. Our destination was Ecoparque El Espino - a place we have heard about for years but a place we had not yet explored. We will definitely make this a recurrent destination to enjoy on our own and with delegations of visitors. Situated on the southeast side of the San Salvador volcano, Ecoparque El Espino consists of 102 acres of protected land, at an elevation of just under 4000 ft above sea level. Unlike Parque El Boquerón (featured in Part 1 of this story),  El Espino is not managed by the national park system, nor has it been developed as a tourist site with "fancy" amenities. It is owned and managed by the El Espino Cooperative, which garners income from coffee production and, since 2003, eco-tourism.  Can't pass up a swinging bridge! We wandered, carryin...

A lovely walk at the top of Cerro Verde Today's wandering walk takes place a bit of a drive west of San Salvador in Parque Nacional Cerro Verde. To be clear, this park is the jumping off point for some serious trekking (with guides) up the Santa Ana (Ilamatepec) Volcano or the Izalco Volcano. Cerro Verde (of the three volcanoes, it is the extinct one) also offers a relatively easy guided trek which takes hikers through old and new growth forest, down into the crater and back up again. But this story is offers a different perspective on the Cerro Verde experience: no hiking poles needed! Our goal: walk, relax, enjoy nature. We drove up to the park on a dry March afternoon, on the date of the new moon, in order to spend the night and do some star gazing in a place far away from city lights. By allowing for plenty of time to wander without the rush of heading out on a formal hike, we learned more about the park as a wonderful location for a leisurely stroll or a picnic, and that it is...

For Christmas this year, my husband gave me an experience: a bird tour with guide Julio Acosta .  I've been following Julio's social media posts (found on various platforms as El Salvador Birds - Julio Acosta) for a while, in an effort to learn more about the birds we hear and see as we go about daily life in El Salvador. We decided to do a boat tour of Lago Suchitlán. Over the past 23 years, our Mission of Healing itineraries periodically included a boat ride on the lake as a way to relax after expending lots of energy teaching and providing care for families. Although a few local pastors and boat drivers shared stories along the way, we never learned much about the multitude of bird species we encountered and enthusiastically tried to photograph. A tour with a professional guide, in a boat, on a lovely lake, at sunrise seemed like a most excellent opportunity to learn. Lago Suchitlán at sunset from Suchitoto (©2023 Linda Muth) The Embalse Cerrón Grande (Cerrón Grande Reservoi...