We did not quite make it to our destination today before dark so we spent the night in Acayucan at this really sweet hotel in downtown across from the park. It was quiet and relatively inexpensive...450 pesos which at the current rate of exchange of 14 pesos to $1 U.S. was about $35...with a great restaurant. Really there were 2 good reasons we decided not to drive at night even though we were less than 2 hours away from our destination. One was that we had just come through probably the most intense police/military roadblock we have seen. There was a huge tethered balloon in the sky with a video camera and literally hundreds of teams of police behind garrisons made of sandbags with mounted machine guns, etc, etc. I wished I had taken a picture but actually I was leary to pull out the camera...I felt like our every move was being watched. Our car was searched as was everyones and as usual we went free. At the hotel we asked the waiter what was the main commerce of the town....he told us narco-trafficantes.......the other reason we stayed put was that the road ahead was not a main road and went through the mountainous and volcanic terrain that was certain to be a treacherous windy road.
The drive was so beautiful...I called it the Land of Plenty...for everywhere you looked there was something growing....even in the ditch along the road they had planted corn.
Not all the sites were beautiful as we approached a sugar cane processing plant right in the middle of a town....the obvious air pollution was bad but a local told us they were more worried about what they were dumping in the river.
We are in the midst of mango, coffee and tobacco country......
following a sign off the highway for a greenhouse (vivero), we came across a coffee cooperative right before they were having a meeting with the members.
We purchased several packages of coffee at 60 pesos each......each one weighed a kilogram (2.2 pounds) so it was a very economical purchase! Later we saw the same exact coffee in town for twice the price. Really nice flavor too!!
We did not quite make it to our destination today before dark so we spent the night in Acayucan at this really sweet hotel in downtown across from the park. It was quiet and relatively inexpensive...450 pesos which at the current rate of exchange of 14 pesos to $1 U.S. was about $35...with a great restaurant. Really there were 2 good reasons we decided not to drive at night even though we were less than 2 hours away from our destination. One was that we had just come through probably the most intense police/military roadblock we have seen. There was a huge tethered balloon in the sky with a video camera and literally hundreds of teams of police behind garrisons made of sandbags with mounted machine guns, etc, etc. I wished I had taken a picture but actually I was leary to pull out the camera...I felt like our every move was being watched. Our car was searched as was everyones and as usual we went free. At the hotel we asked the waiter what was the main commerce of the town....he told us narco-trafficantes.......the other reason we stayed put was that the road ahead was not a main road and went through the mountainous and volcanic terrain that was certain to be a treacherous windy road.
following a sign off the highway for a greenhouse (vivero), we came across a coffee cooperative right before they were having a meeting with the members. 
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