Hey everybody,
Nine times out of ten when I told someone that I was going to be taking a trip to El Salvador they would say "That's the murder capital of the world!" They made it sound like I'd be airlifted into a green zone where I would have to duck and cover to make our way from the airport to the nearest safe house. No one said anything to the effect of "It's going to be super chill borderline boring and you might be the only foreign tourists there. And you will eat a shitload of pupusas." Which is more or less what happened.
I met Rich at the airport in San Salvador. He flew in from Toronto and we managed to coordinate well enough that our flights landed within 20 minutes of each other. As we exited the airport and were slammed by a wave of tropical heat, we noticed there were no bullets flying overhead or bodies lying in the street. Just a big crowd of people waiting for their loved ones and cab drivers jostling for fares. We got a ride from a guy named Milton who lived in the U.S. for 12 years but then was deported back to El Salvador. "Lawyer was no good."
Our first couple of days in El Salvador we stayed at Playa El Tunco which loosely translates to Pig Beach. We arrived at 9PM on a Saturday night to complete party madness. We saw a handful of backpackers along the two or three walking streets in the small village, but the partygoers were mostly Salvadoreans who came down to spend the weekend from San Salvador. Multiple open-air bars were blasting music out into the streets, beers were a dollar, drunk people were roaming the streets, and Rich and I wondered if we'd be able to deal with this chaos for three more days.
Our fears were unfounded. I wouldn't say El Tunco was completely deserted the following day but it did inspire us to begin our "Where is everybody?" montage that you'll see in the photo album. Our daily routine largely involved finding the best pupusas in town and then... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . On our third day we found a guide to take us to the nearby Tamanique waterfalls which happen to grace the cover of Moon's guide to El Salvador. Our guide was Johnny, a local kid who works freelance as a guide and as a carpenter. I should note here that any conversation I'll describe in this post involves me speaking Spanish with somebody else so they should all have approximately 674 asterisks.
-----
I've had the above paragraphs written in draft form for about 4 months. For some reason I haven't been able to bring myself to finish so I'm going to just write a couple more paragraphs and send it out. Maybe it's work, or the house money pit, or other life stuff, or I'm not the writer I used to be, or maybe part of it is that El Salvador didn't really hold many exciting adventures for me and Rich. After the second day, we started taking selfies at every locale or restaurant where we were the only tourists... and there were many.
I guess the things that really stick out to me about El Salvador are how relaxed it was. The food was good, the landscape was beautiful, and the people were really kind. When we were at the Tamanique waterfall we saw an entire family of 10 climb down to the base of the falls, from grandmother to baby. They laid out a lunch spread for themselves, then proceeded to make lunch plates for both Rich and me. That memory of kindness and generosity will stick with me for a long time.
We visited a coffee farm that's running on equipment that's more than 100 years old, where we discovered that it's acceptable to export up to 12% "bad" beans to the United States but Italy will only accept up to 2%. We stayed in a hill town where we were kept awake by howling dogs, fireworks and chickens. We visited Mayan ruins. In Santa Ana we were propositioned by prostitutes a block from our hostel on the way back from another delicious pupusa dinner. We hiked a volcano. We went to a speakeasy bar that could only be identified by the color of the door. And that was pretty much it.
-----
Pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KHEp9dNmNHq2aVCb9
Anyhow, I'm off Facebook for the usual reasons so if you'd like to be notified of these posts please remember to subscribe.
Take 'er easy,
Dave
Nine times out of ten when I told someone that I was going to be taking a trip to El Salvador they would say "That's the murder capital of the world!" They made it sound like I'd be airlifted into a green zone where I would have to duck and cover to make our way from the airport to the nearest safe house. No one said anything to the effect of "It's going to be super chill borderline boring and you might be the only foreign tourists there. And you will eat a shitload of pupusas." Which is more or less what happened.
I met Rich at the airport in San Salvador. He flew in from Toronto and we managed to coordinate well enough that our flights landed within 20 minutes of each other. As we exited the airport and were slammed by a wave of tropical heat, we noticed there were no bullets flying overhead or bodies lying in the street. Just a big crowd of people waiting for their loved ones and cab drivers jostling for fares. We got a ride from a guy named Milton who lived in the U.S. for 12 years but then was deported back to El Salvador. "Lawyer was no good."
Our first couple of days in El Salvador we stayed at Playa El Tunco which loosely translates to Pig Beach. We arrived at 9PM on a Saturday night to complete party madness. We saw a handful of backpackers along the two or three walking streets in the small village, but the partygoers were mostly Salvadoreans who came down to spend the weekend from San Salvador. Multiple open-air bars were blasting music out into the streets, beers were a dollar, drunk people were roaming the streets, and Rich and I wondered if we'd be able to deal with this chaos for three more days.
 |
| El Tunco |
-----
I've had the above paragraphs written in draft form for about 4 months. For some reason I haven't been able to bring myself to finish so I'm going to just write a couple more paragraphs and send it out. Maybe it's work, or the house money pit, or other life stuff, or I'm not the writer I used to be, or maybe part of it is that El Salvador didn't really hold many exciting adventures for me and Rich. After the second day, we started taking selfies at every locale or restaurant where we were the only tourists... and there were many.
I guess the things that really stick out to me about El Salvador are how relaxed it was. The food was good, the landscape was beautiful, and the people were really kind. When we were at the Tamanique waterfall we saw an entire family of 10 climb down to the base of the falls, from grandmother to baby. They laid out a lunch spread for themselves, then proceeded to make lunch plates for both Rich and me. That memory of kindness and generosity will stick with me for a long time.
 |
| Family lunch on the right |
We visited a coffee farm that's running on equipment that's more than 100 years old, where we discovered that it's acceptable to export up to 12% "bad" beans to the United States but Italy will only accept up to 2%. We stayed in a hill town where we were kept awake by howling dogs, fireworks and chickens. We visited Mayan ruins. In Santa Ana we were propositioned by prostitutes a block from our hostel on the way back from another delicious pupusa dinner. We hiked a volcano. We went to a speakeasy bar that could only be identified by the color of the door. And that was pretty much it.
-----
Pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KHEp9dNmNHq2aVCb9
Anyhow, I'm off Facebook for the usual reasons so if you'd like to be notified of these posts please remember to subscribe.
Take 'er easy,
Dave
