Volcano Conchagua - Espíritu de la Montaña

One of my favorite things about traveling, well about life really, is that you never know what can happen.

You know, those moments where you think to yourself “24 hours ago I had no idea I would end up here, doing what I am doing”

I tend to have those frequently out here. But some in particular you are just like.. wait what??

Denise and I have been traveling El Salvador and found ourselves in one of those moments recently ...

As we laid our heads to rest on a dusty concrete floor, in the middle of an unfinished restaurants kitchen, on a piece of land owned by a man named Luis on top of a mountain overlooking where El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua meet...

Wait what?

Almost everyone I have met during my travels has 0 plans of visiting El Salvador.

Why?

“It’s too dangerous”

or

“There is nothing to see there”

 Well I had heard that about Guatemala and Mexico as well, after having amazing experiences there I've learned that sometimes you just need to go out and discover things for yourself.

SO

My friend Denise and I were ready to see all El Salvador had to offer. We spent two weeks traveling the country and had a wonderful experience.

But jumping forward a bit we were in the southern part of El Salvador with plans to visit the beach town of El Cuco. We were on a chicken bus headed towards San Miguel to catch a bus to El Cuco when an old friend of Denise’s messaged her saying

“Want to go to a rodeo in Honduras tomorrow?”

Our response..

“Por que no?”

.. Which has become our travel motto.

Meaning ‘Why not?’ In English.

Perfecto

Her friend Perfecto (that was his name…) picks us up in San Miguel, and takes us to get one of the best freaking burritos ever (sorry chipotle). Turns out something happened with the permits for his horses to cross the border so no rodeo for us. He felt bad and was kind enough to put us up in a nice hotel in a small town. We had our own private room with AC, aka luxury for us. Delicious burrito, private room and a breakfast in bed the next morning, I would consider this a win, thanks Perfecto!

Meanwhile, we heard talk of one of the ‘best views in El Salvador.' We looked into it a little online and found a comment or two about a man named Luis who owned the part of the mountain with the best view. It looked to be close by to where we had ended up thanks to Perfecto. After a bit of Instagram stalking, I messaged a few people who had posted pictures tagged with this location. Two minutes later BAM, I had the phone number for Luis.

We call him up..

“Hi Luis, I heard you have the best view in El Salvador, we were wondering if you were available to have us come see it?”

“Yes most definitely, does 3 pm work? You can meet me in the main square of Conchagua, it's small I will find you. You can wait by the church”

“Perfect, we will see you there thank you!”

The town, Conchagua, was TINY. We tried looking up accommodation to stay in this town, but no luck. We decided to call Luis back up, figuring he would know, and to ask for a recommendation..

“Hey Luis, Colleen again, are there any hostels to stay at in Conchagua, we are having trouble finding one”

“Hola Colleen, yes there is one hostel, it is nice and inexpensive it's called (I forget the name). But you are welcome to camp on the mountain if you’d like free of charge, do you have camping gear?”

“No, we have no camping gear”

“Okay, no problem, I have everything, you just need a mat, some warm clothes and food, it gets a bit chilly up here”

I look at Denise.. together we say

"Por que no?"

Every single eye was on us

It takes us a couple of buses but we get to this small town. Even more so than the rest of El Salvador, not a tourist in sight. We were dripping sweat and took a seat under the shaded area in the main square.

Many many people came up to us to ask us where we were from. Everyone was so nice and wanted to know how we liked their country. One girl approached me and said “Do you speak English? are you from the United States?” When I replied yes she proceeded to say “OMG its like I’m seeing family”

This made me laugh. She was born in the US but her parents are both from El Salvador, she was visiting the country for two months. She was with her tio (uncle) who spoke no English. He was fascinated that we were traveling for so long and happy to have us in his country.

It was 15 minutes past the time Luis was supposed to arrive when a man came up to ask where we were from.. this is now like the 8th person. He was kind enough to use his phone to call Luis for us, turned out Luis was right around the corner. He walked us to Luis, chatted with him for a bit and told us to call him if we needed anything, he had left his phone number with Luis. Thank you random man!

 Luis

Luis is a big guy, with a long braid sticking out the top of his baseball cap. He is with an older gentleman who has his white beard braided and is wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘The world is full of stories.'

We hop in the back of their pick up truck and we are off. We are warned to hold on, and damn it is bumpy. Twenty five minutes in we pulled up next to a huge truck with 9 El Salvadorian army men in it.

“Sorry girls I promised them I‘d give them a ride, we have to squeeze them in here”

All 9 of them, along with their huge guns and 8 days worth of supplies to guard military antennas, piled into the back of Luis’s pick up truck.

Squished between one guys backpack and another's gun, we were off again.

We then made a quick stop at the neighbor's house, where we met the cutest little boy who was eager to have us quiz him on country capitals and show us his four-wheeler. Their house is surrounded by a huge barbed wire fence, not sure why, and has a killer view. The little boy gave us a couple of bottles of water and a kiss on the cheek as we left.

We pull up to our final destination to find this view..

El ESPÍRITU DE LA MONTAÑA

Luis told us all about his plans for the land which he has called El Espíritu de la Montaña (The Spirit of the Mountain). Phase 1 will be ready in December, which includes a restaurant and view-point. Phase two will include a budget hostel, a mini museum about the land, and cave with two rooms. In one room all of the visitors will write on the walls, and the other he will write the story of the mountains. You could tell they were very proud of their plans and more than excited to share them with us. He spoke in mostly Spanish, so I could not understand everything, but you could tell he was very passionate about the mountain.

We have to sleep where?

Being that he only spoke Spanish, I thinkkkk there may have been some miscommunication about the sleeping accommodation... Basically he showed us into the restaurant and said, you can set up camp here for the night, I will be back about 9am tomorrow, two of my construction guys sleep here if you need anything.

No blankets, no sleeping bag, no nothing.

Denise and I look at each other..

"Por que no?"

Back to base camp

The army boys left their grape soda in the back of the truck. Before he left, Luis gave us directions and sent us on a mission to return it to them. Twenty five minutes later and out of breath we found them at the top of the other side of the mountain. They were making tortillas, and were happy to see us. They thanked us for the soda and unlocked the gate to show us the antennas and their room. It was tiny with frail looking bunkbeds, it literally looked like a prison. Two of them walked us back to Luis’ house and asked us all sorts of questions about our travels through El Salvador.

We arrived back as the sun started to set in cotton candy fashion

Dinner time

We cooked rice in ’the kitchen’ aka the corner of the dungeon where the construction boys slept in hammocks. The boys were really quite, definitely shy to interact with us.  They helped us start the fire, cleaned out an ancient looking caldron and gave us a spoon to stir the rice. We had no utensils, plates, or anything really. We had a microwavable bag of lentil sauce to put on the rice, and with no other way to heat it up.. we shoved it into the middle of the rice over the fire. Pitch black, with no way to eat the enormous amount of rice we just cooked we couldn’t help but just laugh. These boys had been living like this FOR A YEAR while building this place. We found some styrofoam cups and shared our dinner with the two boys. Followed by wine and Oreos as dessert.

Night time on Volcano Conchagua

None of the windows were in the restaurant yet, it was all open. The most enclosed part of the restaurant was definitely the kitchen. We put our warmest clothes on, laid down two towels and used a bag of clothes as a pillow.

There was a point where we were fishing the lentil bag out of the hot rice that we were about to eat with our hands, on a driveway, in the pitch black, with only our iPhones as light..  when I looked at Denise, laughed and said..

‘I really don’t think I know anyone back home that would ever do this kind of thing with me’

she just  smiled and said,

‘Yeah, my friends, no freaking way’

Did we sleep more than a couple hours that night? Hahah heck no. The cement ground was so cold (not as cold as Volcano Acatenango), Luis’ dog was trying to sleep on Denise's head, the wind was so loud. But we woke up to an out of this world sunrise.

 And I thought to myself, this is the kind of shit I live for. These kind of bizarre, strange, uncomfortable, yet wonderful and unforgettable experiences.

Luis was so kind and lovely. Denise and I cannot wait to come back and see his dream become a reality, and to point at one of the cooks and say..

"Hey, hey you, we slept in your kitchen"

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