23.11.08
Sacraficio Catavina
After a great night in the tent under a sky full of stars I got up at 6:15 am and we were on the road by 7:50 am. The temperature was comfortable 16 degrees C. The terrain was a lot easier than yesterday. At an altitude of about 500 m the road was going a bit up and down, there were some nice rolling hills but no long climbs.
When we reached El Progresso we were very glad that we didn‘ t go on yesterday because there was nothing there, no place we could have stayed.
After passing San Agustin the scenery was quite boring for about 10 km but then it became incredible. There were plenty cactuses and many rocks, small and big ones. Sometimes there were even huge piles of rocks. It looked like a playground, like manbuild. I took tons of pictures today, I just couldn‘ t stop.
Mario, a guy on a motorbike, passed us and stopped a while later. He lives in Santa Barbara now but is originally from San Salvador. He gave us his address and said we should contact him if we go there and have any questions. It was very nice talking to him.
Just before we arrived in Catavina we wanted to look at the cave-paintings. We stopped and Sara and Sebastien looked for the cave while I watched the bikes. They came back after 45 minutes and I thought that it would have been very interesting but they couldn‘ t find the cave! When we were back on the road we saw a sign somewhere up in the mountain while they looked for it in the valley. But we were all too tired to go back again…
We stopped at the first motel in Catavina but there was nobody around. At the other motel, the Desert Inn, they wanted 88 US $ for a room for 3 people!!! We decided to get some groceries at the small store, which was very disappointing because their selection was very poor, first. On our way over there we saw Uli and Vera at a Café and chatted with them for a while, they stayed at the Desert Inn. After getting some groceries we cycled 2 more km to Rancho Santa Inez (1km south on the main road, 1 km off road) where they wanted to charge us 100 Pesos per person for a bed in a dormitory which wasn‘ t very inviting. Instead we decided to pitch our tents for 30 Pesos each, with a cold shower though.
Around 7pm we wanted to get some food at the ranch but everything was dark there. So we had to eat the food we could find in our panniers I had another Nutella-Banana-Burrito;-).