i hate horses.

We got a Friday off from school so we decided to take a trip to El Salvador for the long weekend. Its amazing how big of a difference El Salvador is from Honduras being just one country over. I mean its definitely still a developing country, but its a whole step up from Honduras. Less trash on the streets, nicer people, more english speaking people, less cat calls from creepy dudes and so forth. I loved it! We first traveled across the border to a town called La Palma…. only the cutest little artsy town ever. Murals were on every building. It was amazing. There were artisan shops every where and it just had a super fun vibe throughout the town. After La Palma, we went further into El Salvador to a quiet town called Suchitoto. This was also a really cute town with a beautiful lake. We got really excited about the lake only to find out that we couldn't get in it because it was contaminated with who knows what. Sad day. So at the tourist center we were told that there were horseback riding tours up a volcano… sounded like a blast at the time so we said sign us up. The next morning we woke up bright and early for our horseback tours. We had to ride a bus out of the town for about 10 minutes that drops us off in the middle of no where. There is a cute lil dude with 5 random horses waiting for us. Are these trained trail riding horses you might ask? Oh no, no they are not. Come to find out, these are literally 5 random horses that Luis, our guide, rounded up for the day. Some belonged to his neighbor… another belonged to some man down the road. So as soon as we arrive, Luis begins to ask us to range ourselves from most experienced with horses to the least. I decided to take the least experienced spot due to the fact I've only been on horses twice in my life and couldn't tell you a dang thing about riding them. So he pairs us up with our best matched horse. I got a white horse named Julia (pronounced Hoo-lia in spanish)… I decided to call her Princess Hoolia because we started off as best friends.. this name was later retracted when she kicked Colleen in the leg. So we started on the most interesting/terrifying journey of our lives up this "volcano". Was this an actual trail? Nope. It started off great on this dirt road, we were feeling real good about the horse ride at this point. About 10 minutes in, the ride took a turn for the worst… we ventured into the woods, then on the ledge of a cliff, and then up HUGE boulders where our horses were tripping all over the place. I literally thought I might lose my life. I was pretty much doing my nervous laughing the whole time because otherwise I would have been crying. Princess Hoolia also loved to eat. She always had something in her mouth at all times. When we passed a mango tree, she made a b-line off the trail to get her a couple mangos. At one point Carole's horse got hit in the head by a mango falling off a tree and her horse proceeded to buck. I witnessed the whole thing and thought Carole was a goner. Luckily she stayed on the horse. The tour took us up to these battle grounds from the war between the rich and the poor in El Salvador. It was pretty neat to see the battle grounds. This whole adventure was about 4 hours long. On the way back down the volcano our horses were trotting pretty fast because they knew they were going back home (so said Luis). The last 20 minutes I got off my horse and walked because my legs were numb from holding on for my life. When the ride from hell ended, we all just kind of looked at each other and laughed about how lucky we were that no one got seriously injured.

Needless to say, El Salvador was a good time and I'd definitely go back.. minus the horseback riding.

Our group at the top of the volcano.

A man made hole that was dug during the war where they kept the injured soldiers.

Colorful buildings in Suchitoto.

A small town in El Salvador we stopped in to switch buses.

The start of the horse ride while we were on a nice trail.

Princess Hoolia eating as usual. And my cool hat I bought since I broke my sunglasses.

Murals in La Palma.

Artwork in Suchitoto.