More El Salvador, and a bit of Mexico

Hola amigos y familia! 

It has been a while, but we wanted to start to catch you up on our travels. It's almost hard to believe how much we have traveled and experienced since we last wrote.   After leaving the coffee farm near Alegria, El Salvador, we headed to a very sweet little mountain town called Juayua (pronounced why-oooo-ah). Great name, huh? Juayua was sweet. Fresh mountain air, very walk-able , and lots of art. Almost every building had beautiful paintings, such as this mural.

Even the garbage cans were pretty!

We also went on an amazing waterfall hike just outside of town. Our fearless guide carved the way through the bush for us with his machete, and then had us rappel down the sides of mountains. Not necessarily things that would be legal without signing a waiver in the U.S... But super fun and beautiful. 

Oh, and since we were in El Salvador, we continued to eat copious amounts of pupusas. 

 Just when we thought we were ready to leave Juayua, we ran into some friends of friends who convinced us to stay an extra night, and do a hike to a crater lake the next day. We drove through the beautiful countryside,

and hiked through some sweet scenery,

and then arrived here:

The views were really spectacular. 

After Juayua, we headed... back to the beach once again! It was a special treat to see our buddy Lisa as well.

The next leg of our travels took us back to San Pedro, Guatemala. We did one more week of Spanish school, and met up with Jess's friend Anushe, who she hadn't seen since traveling in India 7 years ago.

Plus, it was a great excuse go get back to the beautiful Lake Atitlan.

However, we almost overstayed our welcome (meaning our visas for Guatemala and El Salvador were about to expire), so we high-tailed it to San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. San Cristobal is another beautiful, colonial-style town, located in the mountains of Chiapas.  We spent our days wandering the town and enjoying the food (Mexico wins for the best hot-sauce award!).

 San Cristobal has lots of interesting graffiti.  And of course the quintessential colorful market.

After 2 nights in San Cristobal we found ourselves on another bus, this time to Tulum, in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Jeremy's good friend Nick literally lives on the beach:

And his backyard is a Cenote (brackish waters, connecting thousands of underground caves and creating pools of water in some spots), surrounded by mangroves. Both the beach and the cenote had awesome snorkeling. Basically, it was paradise (besides the mosquitoes).

View from Nick's house, along with a yummy brunch.

Tulum has incredible beaches, with the softest white sand we have ever felt. It was the "temprano bajo" or low season, so the beaches were pretty empty. We filled our days by reading on the beach or in hammocks, cooking, and going with Nick on his snorkel tours. Nick showed us huge sea turtles, amazing fish, and a HUGE eagle ray. We were quite spoiled and had a really special time.

After 10 days in Tulum, we found ourselves en route to the forbidden fruit of Cuba! Stay tuned for the next chapter of the blog...Cuba deserves it's own. But know that it was amazing, and most importantly we made it back to the states without a hitch at the border with customs. Ahhhhhh (sigh of relief).