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San Jose, Costa Rica, 30 June 2003

Semuc Champey, El Salvador, Granada and Ometepe

Odv
2004-09-15 11:54:15

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itself (a 10 min. walk, 1 km).

We visited Semuc Champey the same afternoon, a beautiful and unique place, as a river goes rushing through a cave underneath you, while you are swimming in water pools above the cave.

A truck load (literally) of schoolgirls had also found their way to Semuc Champey, and we were kindly offered a ride on the back of this converted cattle truck for the one kilometer ride to Las Marias. The girls had to continue for another 2.5 hours back to Coban.

We returned to Guatemala City the next day, from where we went to El Salvador, on the most comfortable bus we have taken in Central America so far, the TICA bus.

In El Salvador the US dollar has replaced the Colon as the official currency, but prices are still listed in Colons in many places. Accommodation seems expensive, the Hotel we stayed at in Santa Ana (Livingston) is not really worth the 18 dollars we had to fork out. But transportation is cheap, the hour and a half ride from Santa Ana to San Salvador in the "special" bus costs 1 USD per person. Even though the country uses US Dollars, the Dollar bills are nearly as dirty as the Quetzal bills in Guatemala, since money is often carried in a bra and in armpits.

It seems that in central America all currencies are linked to the US dollar anyway, steadily losing value against it, which in turn creates inflation. Replacing the national currency with the US dollar, prevents the government from printing money or from using the central bank's reserves to cover budget deficits (the latter is apparently what happened in Argentina).

The Dollar itself however has been losing value against the Euro. When we arrived in Central America in January 1 Euro bought us about 1 dollar, but now, we are getting 1 dollar and 17 cents, for us therefore, things have become about 15% cheaper since January.

On the 10th of June, our first day in El Salvador, ...