Chorros de la Calera
Several months ago I read several articles about the town of Juayúa. It is a little touristish town in a part of El Salvador that I’m not very familiar with. The town has a weekly food festival, and there are several nice hiking trails in the surounding countryside. I decided that I wanted to go there sometime just to look around and see what all there was to do. I had seen some pictures of some waterfalls, and I wanted to try to find them if possible. Caleb Mast had last week off, and so he was interesting in going along to see what we could find. Mark Yoder and Kevin Nisly were also interested in going along, so last Tuesday Mark, Kevin, Caleb, Arlynn and I headed over there.
We drove through the town, and saw some signs for Chorros de la Calera. I had remembered seeing that sign somewhere, so we followed them. We got onto a little dirt road, and pretty soon came to a parking lot where a guy said we should leave the van, and hike the rest of the way. We walked for about 15 minutes when we started hearing the waterfalls, and soon came to them. On the right of the trail, there was a bit ravine, and around an 80 foot waterfall at the one end. We kept on going, and passed several smaller waterfalls on the left of the trail. These falls were right beside the trail, and there were quite a few other people in the water around there, so we just kept on going. We really wanted to be able to get down into the ravine, and be able to hike up to the big falls that we first saw. The trail stopped though before we were very far down into the ravine. There was this nice solid gate with a sign on it saying that it is prohibited for normal people like us to go through there. Well, it didn’t say it quite in that way, but that’s how I took it. Anyways, we decided to just see if we could make it down to the bottom of the ravine, and then hike up the creek to the big falls. We made it about halfway down the ravine, and then sort of got stopped since the hillside steepened up right there, and it looked like the most practical way to get down would be do use rappelling gear. We didn’t have any with us, so after standing there and telling stories, I finally decided that I’m going to see how much further down I can make it. I started down hanging by hanging onto tree roots and rocks, and whatever else I could. After about 10 minutes of struggling we found ourselves down at the bottom, right by this little waterfall.
We rested there for awhile and took a bunch of pictures of it.
Once we were done there we decided to head upstream to see if we could find the other big waterfall that we had seen earlier. We didn’t make it very far before we had to stop and take our shoes off, and start wading through the water. We didn’t have to wade very far though before we came to this sight.
This sight made us very happy and excited, even if it wasn’t the big falls that we had first seen. We spent 20-30 minutes around there, taking pictures and getting wet. The original intention wasn’t to get very wet, but when your wading around in the water trying to take pictures, sometimes it just happens.
I (for some reason) had taken my whole camera bag along, in which I store all the camera equipment that I own, including all my lighting equipment. So here I was, in the middle of the water with my tripod, trying to take nice, artistic, and blur free photos while my big bag was hanging around my neck, 20 inches from the water.
The water in the creek was kind of nasty, but the water coming from the big waterfall was pretty nice and clean.
Here are the rest of the guys by the big waterfall.
I did take my turn over by the falls too. I went over just to wash my hands, but somehow I got pretty wet all over.
Once we got done messing around down there, we had the fun hike of climbing up again. It went better climbing up then it did going down. Once we got back into town we found a nice little restaurant, and ate a 2:00pm lunch there.
I’ll stick in a few more pictures of the falls yet. Enjoy!
- Aaron
Hello, and welcome to this humble blog. I am Aaron Mast, and I currently make my home in El Salvador. I enjoy everything relating to photography, and so this blog is a place where I can showcase my latest work, and also ramble about my life.
Wow!!!! Que fots mas bellas!!!!No parece que fueran lugares de El Salvador…Que lindo mi pais!
That first black and white is almost epic. Eliminate the branches and it’d be better. Do some dodging and burning and it’d be better yet.
You make me jealous! I like the 1st, the 3rd and the last ones the best.
Benji, I can’t believe you’d even think of spoiling such a beautiful shot of pure nature by eliminating some of it!
Sandra, I’m assuming you’re not saying that tongue-in-cheek and will respond like this.
Art is always a modification of realty, whether it’s story-telling, painting, or photography. I have no issues whatsoever with alteration of the so-called pure or real. If there was no modification/enhancement there would be no artists.
Now, you may be making the argument that the branches make a better picture, and I can’t really argue with that.
Thanks for that reply, Benji. It was more or less what I was thinking. I personally don’t often remove objects out of a scene, (such as the branches), choosing to limit myself to crop, exposure, contrast, color, and other such adjustments when I do my “art.” Of course, there’s always the electrical lines that need removing. The particular picture that Benji mentioned is one that I didn’t think was my best work of the day, in fact, that is why its in b/w, since the coloring was just not very good in the color version. If I want something to hang on my wall, then it isn’t an image that I would choose, since I have some other pictures that I feel are better. What I should do is go back, re-look at the scene, and see what I can do to frame the picture in a way that the branches aren’t an issue, and so will not need removing.
Ok, enough of the ramblings.
[...] of Juayúa for lunch and most of the afternoon. This town is up in the mountains, and is near the falls that I photographed a few months ago. Every Saturday they have a food festival. They close off several streets, set up a bunch of stands [...]
An afternoon in Juayúa « A Wannabe Photographer said this on June 4, 2009 at 10:47 pm |