El Salvador - Mountains and Coffee

We then headed to an area famous for their coffee production called Ruta de las Flores. After a lovely drive through some small towns, we stopped at a coffee processing plant and did a nice tour. Fortunately a nice family from Los Angeles was with us on the tour to provide some translation. The dad was from El Salvador visiting family. Mom was from Chihuahua. After the tour we decided to spend the night in Ataco at a nice hotel called Hotel Maria Izabel. The manager, Rolando, was a great guy, another Salvadorean-American who had come home to take care of his aging parents and help at their coffee plantation. It seems that many Salvadorean men and women immigrated to the United States in the 1980s to escape from the brutal civil war. The choice they often faced was to be forced to join the army or the guerillas, or leave. After the war, up until a few years ago, corruption and criminal gangs took over much of El Salvador. But a new president was elected in 2019 who has cracked down on the criminal activities, and now El Salvador is one of the countries in the Americas with the lowest crime rates.

And some beautiful flowers...