Our final country, El Salvador. (Part 1)

There was a lot of anticipation for our time in El Salvador. Our only stop in central America, the country of Nate's birth, we allocated just shy of three weeks in this tiny country so that we could get to know it well without feeling rushed.  Nate was adopted from El Salvador to Canada as a wee baby and this was his first visit since he left.

I have a lot to say about El Salvador, it will take a few entries to get it out.   El Salvador has many different faces, and it has completely charmed me, but it took a few days to reveal it's many faces and seduce me. There are many problems here, and this tiny country has had far more than it's fair share of hardship, but people are the kindest and warmest that we have encountered in this four months of great people.We fly home to Canada the day after tomorrow, and I feel vaguely panicky, needing to get it out before any of the memories fade. We land in Toronto and I will spend a week in Sarnia, Ontario getting to know Nate's family and friends. I return to Vancouver on March 11th.

We had to change planes in San Jose, Costa Rica, and when we walked into the gate to catch the El Salvador flight we had a giggle, because, well...it was full of short, stocky guys that looked a lot like Nate.

We arrived around 9pm to a very confusing crowd of paparazzi. It was extremely weird to walk out of the airport into a huge crowd with cameras and be ushered out of the way, they were awaiting the imminent arrival of the Mexican soccer team. 

I have to admit my first impression of San Salvador wasn't great.  On our cab ride to the residential area where our guest house, Ximena's, was located, we drove a long boulevard for quite some time and I was taken aback by the endless row of American fast food restaurants. It wasn't just that they were ALL present, it was the sheer size of the restaurants, multi-story extravaganzas with gigantic kids play areas with  winding slides and elaborate play structures.  The north American fuel companies and all the big banks. (we were surprised that Scotiabanks are everywhere).  After seeing very little of this throughout the trip, it was disheartening to see. It felt like a successful corporate invasion had taken place. Thankfully, we came to realize that it's not like that everywhere, and the downtown historical district of San Salvador is completely different. It's isolated to certain areas.

Ximena's Guesthouse

El Salvador is the most populated country in central America, and the capital, San Salvador, is massive. In the different areas of the city the vast gulf between the rich and the rest is extremely apparent. While that contrast exists all through latin America I find it most visible here over the other places we've seen in these past months. The posh district of La Zona Rosa looks and feels like Beverly Hills. Giant sophisticated malls, luxury hotels and luxury car dealerships.  Highly groomed women languidly stroll the air conditioned malls sipping their iced Starbucks looking like they've never worked a day in their life. The poorest barrios have vast slums of shacks made of corrugated tin, plywood and foraged building materials, and kids with rotten teeth and runny noses run around drinking coca-cola.  The sprawling mercado centrale downtown goes on for blocks, and rival the markets in India for their liveliness, chaos, filth, and challenging odors.  Nate and I love the downtown market, but there is certainly a cap on the amount of time I can spend there...what starts off as exciting and endlessly fascinating becomes draining and overwhelming after a couple of hours of exploring.

Onion seller

vendor's stall of medicinals in mercado, San Salvador

Repairing clothing in the mercado in San Salvador

Pretty vegetables!

It's very hot here, 30 degrees+ every day, but the evenings cool off pleasantly.

Our guesthouse in San Salvador is a shabby but comfortable and spotlessly clean place called Ximena's. Kind, helpful people and a nice garden sitting area with a lot of trailing jasmine vines that smelled absolutely divine at night. Few tourists come to El Salvador as compared to other neighbouring countries so there isn't much tourist infrastructure to help you figure out transportation, etc, and the people are so helpful getting things figured out.

The neighborhood is a pleasant residential area with a few parks, museums and elementary schools. We quite like it, and quickly found the amazing pupuseria Rincon Familiar ("family corner") on our first day where we eat a lot. I'll write fondly about pupusas later.

downtown San Salvador

El Salvador is really small, the longest bus ride you can take here is five hours. San Salvador is so central that it's perfect to use as a base from which to see most of the country. A two hour bus ride to the coastline is under two dollars, and so it made sense for us to base here. We ended up spending a week there, leaving often to see things, and then five days at the beach in Barro de Santiago, and then five days in Santa Ana, and now we're finishing up in San Salvador tomorrow.  Ximena's offered to store our stuff so we downgraded to one backpack and left the rest there.

Atop El Puerto del Diablo,  near San Salvador.  You hike  to a viewpoint with a 360 degreee view,  you can see most of the country.

standard city bus

The buses are really fun to ride, a total riot. They are true chicken buses in the tradition of India, I once saw a man with a baby goat on his lap. They're all secondhand school buses from the states and independently owned and operated. A driver is designated (or chooses?) a route and sticks with it, it's painted all over the bus. Somehow the system works. As the drivers own their buses, they decorate them however they please and they're painted in garish fun colors with dramatic racing stripes and lots of accessorizing. The insides are plastered with a combination of Catholic slogans, images and plastic icons, lots of soccer banners and photos of their kids. There's a tendency for the drivers to passionately advertise the women they love, so it's very common to see a bus with "DAISY MARIA" or "CAROLINA" or "MARGUERITA" plastered across the side of the bus or the windshield in giant holographic letters. It's very cute. They drive like maniacs and a ride across the city costs twenty cents. People are crammed into the bus until they're hanging out the doors and there's a lot of camaraderie - everyone is hot and uncomfortable together. You just have to accept it and get into the spirit. A little girl barfed watery pink watermelon barf onto the floor and it splashed on my foot. Her mom was mortified and she looked miserable and they got off at the next stop - what am I going to do, freak out? I just washed it off when we got off. There are two air conditioned bus lines that take passengers to Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, but within the country everyone uses these crazy public buses.

Something else I love about those crazy buses are the vendors constantly walk on and off selling all kinds of stuff. It's useful AND entertaining. You can get bags of cut fruit, juice, water, pop, candy, newspapers, ibuprofen, antifungal foot cream, back scratchers, toothbrushes, crayons. The list continues - maybe you want some shaved coconut, a piece of cake, marshmallows on a skewer (weird), bags of homemade awesome yucca or plantain chips with a squirt of lime juice and hotsauce for twenty five cents. Sometimes someone will stand at the front of the bus and advertise the news that one can read more of if they'll buy a paper, or the various merits of the black market antibiotics they're selling. On a bus. Hilarious.

Bus station 

We spent a lot of our time in El Salvador learning about the history and politics. It's particularly relevant there because it has directly impacted Nate's life, he was born in the middle of a civil war, in 1986, and a few months after a terrible earthquake. The war officially ended in 1992. The wikipedia entry is a pretty good summary of it if you want a refresher.

I was particularly fascinated by an underground radio station that started during the war. The war was terrible, and it was very difficult for Salvadorans around the country to get accurate news about what was happening in different areas. The government news was all lies, and so the FMLN (the alliance of guerilla groups attempting to overthrow the military dictatorship) started Radio Venceremos. Broadcast from a secret broadcast station in a cave in the mountains, the radio provided the only source of non-military news.  There was a constant effort to shut down the radio station, and the US even attempted to scramble the signal from aboard warships, but they failed in their attempts. International media eventually turned to the Radio Venceremos as a reliable source of information about El Salvador. In addition to political broadcasts, the radio station broadcasted information about homemaking, english classes, healthcare. It still broadcasts today.

The peace accord was signed in January 1992.  It was very interesting to be there just two weeks before a national election. The FMLN successfully transitioned from a guerilla group to a political party, and they are currently in power. Their main rival, ARENA, is a right wing group formed of the cronies and sons of some of the death squad leaders from the civil war.  Founded by Roberto d'Aubuission, who was responsible for terrible crimes against humanity that were never punished as he died before he could be tried.  While now ARENA is just a right wing party with conservative values and the needs of the rich few as the priority, I can't understand how anyone could  trust anyone from ARENA. Talking to people there about the current state of their politics it seems that the FMLN is well intentioned but idealistic and fiscally unrealistic, and ARENA is too conservative and doesn't take care of the many sick and poor campesinos (peasants). I'll be curious to see the outcome of the election next week.