Graham Williams & Louise Jones Travel Blog This is our journal logging our trip through Central and Latin America from July 2005 to the present date. We update it and add new pictures every two to three weeks. At the moment Will is travelling in South Africa, while Lou is living in Buenos Aires.For more background reading on our travels go to - http://journals.worldnomads.com/will/

Last week we saw some of tiny El Salvador. It is beautifully green and mountainous but, like some other countries in Central America, it has a violent past and not many tourists come here.
We visited the old colonial city of Santa Ana and then got a bus up into the mountains to walk in the Cerro Verde National Park and climb the slopes of Volcano Ilamatepeque.  This volcano erupted unexpectedly on 1 October this year so we knew that we would not be able to climb right up to the crater.  Walking up we had marvellous views of the surrounding countryside. We were unaware that there was a 5 kilometre prohibited area around the crater, until we met two policemen who gave us a long lecture in Spanish about the dangers of a further eruption and the fact that we had broken the law by climbing up so high.  Having pointed out to the policemen that there were no signs to indicate a restricted area, we were then escorted down to the next village and put on a bus back to the city.
We then travelled east to the small town of Suchitoto on the banks of Lake Suchitlan. This pretty town is seen as a future tourist attraction for the country. At present it attracts middle class El Salvadoreans who come here for the weekend.
El Salvador has a good network of big old buses (that in a former life ferried Americans kids to school)that take the potholed roads at speed. Always packed with people, luggage, women selling home made snacks and sometimes animals going to market, these are the so called chicken buses.
We are now in Nicaragua, in the city of Leon which was a Sandanista stronghold during the revolution and civil war years. There is colourful revolutionary art on the walls and cutting grafitti denouncing American imperialism.