El Salvador: Into the Unknown

Before I ever made it to Guatemala, I had from fellow travelers a little bit about all of the major destinations that I would end up visiting. I knew that Livingston was laid back, Semuc Champey a rising star in the Guatemala tourism industry, and Tikal was either something or nothing special, depending on who I talked to. I had heard Antigua was beautiful but full of tourists, that the lake was stunning, and Xela was good for studying, and I had heard stories about volcano climbs, caves, hikes, and other adventures in the country.

Not so with El Salvador.

In my first three months of traveling, I had talken to maybe one person who had been to El Salvador, and I don´t remember a thing about who that person was or what he or she said. If I were to have played a word association game before I left for Central American with ¨El Salvador¨ as the prompt, I would have replied with ¨civil war¨and ¨gangs¨ and ¨guns and violence¨ and then fallen quite silent. After three months of traveling, I could add the word ¨surfing¨ to that list, and maybe ¨coffee.¨ That was the extent of my knowledge.

As I got anxious for a change from Guatemala, and as the inevitabilty of El Salvador being my next destination became a reality, I began to get very excited. Although I have considered a challenge all of my traveling thus far - alone in Central America, where not too many people ever go or possibly even want to go - I began to consider El Salvador as my first real test, my first foray into the unknown. I had only a shadow of an idea what lied ahead of me, and that excited me more than anything. I would be, more than anytime before, treading my own path, instead of walking in the footprints of those who have tred it for me. This would be traveling.

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As it turns out, all of this has been true, yet El Salvador has actually been the most friendly, clean, and efficient place I have yet traveled in Central America. The overall infrastructure and organization is noticeably improved from Guatemala: streets are cleaner, police are common (and I´m told very helpful to tourists), busses are less crowded, better marked, and more timely. I have felt safe at all times, locals have been more patient and eager to help, and, well, the women are markedly better looking here as well. Lets just say I have been pleasantly surprised thus far with everything El Salvador has to offer, and I havn´t even made it to the main tourist attraction yet, the black sand beaches world famous for surfing.

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I was lucky to meet a couple of Aussie travelers on the bus from Guatemala City to El Salvador, and I quickly attained third-wheel status. I did not have concrete plans on where I was heading, so I decided to tag along with them to a town called Tacuba, only 16 km from the Guatemala border. Several locals went out of their way, unprovoked, to help us find our way there. I have been primed to react to such overt kindness with instinctual prudence and suspicion: what does this person want from me? and do I still have my wallet? But after several similar occurences in which I could detect no signs of alterior motives or malintentions, I decided the El Salvadoreans were simply very friendly and helpful.

Tacuba is a pleasant, quiet, eerily-clean and well-kept little village with only one place for a tourist to sleep, the Hostal Mama y Papa. The hostel was completely empty of travelers when we arrived, but there´s no reason it should have been: it was an utter hidden gem. Four small rooms and a kitchen formed an open square courtyard full of gardens, hammocks, clotheslines, cats, a dog named Rex, and a small disfunctional family of pugnacious ducks that looked innocent enough, but secretly harbored evil intentions, and when not outright attacking me as I walked by, would sit outside my door and haunt me through the night with their baleful little squeeks, plotting and scheming and waiting. I casually mentioned to Brad and Anna that I was once bitten by a duck as a small child and that I have not been fond of petting ducks ever since, and suddenly I have a full blown, paralyzing duck phobia. Though they joked with me about this, after five days of beign forced to take alternate routes to my bedroom to avoid being brutally attacked by the little cremlins, it might not be a joke any more.

The old couple who owned the place were conveniently known to us simply as Mama and Papa, and immediately made us feel at home. Mama cooked delicious meals, all we had to do was ask; there was free coffee and water (thats a big deal down here) and a fridge full of cold beer and soda; their son, Manolo, lives in a bedroom upstairs and can take you on tours of the surrounding mountains and the nearby national park with the incredible name, ¨Parque Nacional El Impossible.¨ A set of wooden, winding stairs in the back led up to El Mirador, a little deck with a table and a few chairs and a view over the entire town, extending into the empty expanse of land that stretched its way to the line of mountains that sat across the border in Guatemala. Another chain of broad, flat-sided mountains, these ones on the El Salvadorean side of the border, sat to our left like a massive city wall, closing us in from outsiders and enemy invaders.

The next day, we went on Manolo´s Seven Waterfalls tour, essentially a canyoning tour. I´ve done canyoning now in four different countries, and this was the most enjoyable, as well as most dangerous and unorganized. We rode in the back of a pickup until we got up into the mountains, then hiked down into the valley. The land opened up in front of us and tumbled through the valley towards the dark body that was the Pacific ocean, a dull streak of tar spread across the distant land. We passed patches of curiously out-of-place-seeming bamboo, thick and bright yellow, streaked with green lines like strokes from the brush of a painter, their stalks groaning and creaking as they swayed in the wind like the floors of mansion alone on a gloomy hill. When we reached the river, we followed it downstream, climbing and rappeling and jumping off a dozen different waterfalls along the way. I don´t want to say that I have conquered my fear of heights, but I can confidently say that I have learned how to control and overcome it, even revel in it: the biggest, craziest jump I made was a running, foot-planting leap from 13 meters over a set of rocks and into a deep, cold, waterfall-fed pool. It was exhilarating, and now intead of feeling fear from simply thinking about making such a jump, I crave it.

The next day, Manolo took us and a couple of his friends in his jeep to the food fair (fiesta gastronomica) in a nearby town, essentially a huge BBQ cookoff. We ate steak and shrimp and ribs and chicken, beer and ice cream and chocolate dipped strawberries, and listened to mariachi bands play in the crowded streets.

When we got back, another guest had arrived at the hostel, which meant we were one person closer to having enough people for the tour we were desparately hoping to go on: an all-downhill bike ride, starting at the top of the highest mountain in the region and ending on the empty beaches of western El Salvador, where we would camp out and return by truck the next day.

While sitting around that night discussing options for what we could do the next day now that there were four of us, Manolo, who´s eyes are always bright and animated, lit up, his posture straightening, almost pulling him out of the couch. ¨I have a good proposition for you. We could go to the beach, with just the four of you. Or I could take you to a spot closer to here, a couple hours by bike, mostly downhill, where I used to go when I was younger, 15 years ago. Its on a river, by Guatemala, where there are some warm waterfalls we could swim in and we could build a fire and camp out on the sand.¨ We went on, ad libbing, just pulling ideas out of the recesses of his past, things he had undoubtedly grown up doing and the idea of sharing them with us clearly excited him. ¨We could catch fish in the river, and get some Chicha from the locals to drink, and we could, we could, like, shoot some guns, maybe hunt for a bird, or an iguana to roast, and I´d have some friends meet us there who have probably never seen a gringo in their lives and they could help us out with all of it. I´ve never taken anyone here, but it could be a new tour if it goes well.¨

Just one question: what is Chicha?

¨It´s an ancient Mayan wine, like 4,000 years old, that is made from ants and that´s illegal in El Salvador. I think this is a good proposition.¨

Indeed it was, and all of those things came to pass just as madly and brilliantly as he described, save for the iguana (we replaced the iguana idea with a live chicken that we picked up along the way and that would become out dinner).

We rode bikes three hours downhill on a path so rocky and bumpy a horse wold have a hard time finding its feeting. Shockwaves pulsated through up by arms and rattled my elbows and shoulders and jaw. Some sections required walking to get around the rocks, others required walking because the hill was just too damn big. As soon as you get out of the town of Tacuba, the roads abruptly turn to dirt, the brick homes to bamboo shacks. The little kids lose their shirts and shoes, the adults stare more and more. Horses and dogs and cats and pigs rambled about in the streets, groups of men and women carried buckets of water on their head coming back from the river. Even in the middle of nowhere, the kids still walk home from school with their nicely trimmed uniforms. Eventually, homes disappeared altogether, replaced by thing woods and dry, red, expansive earth. Land spilled out on all sides, dry and burnt like bread crust, its rigid contours torn and raw, a drastic difference from the green lanscapes further north.

We made several stops along the way. The first was at a random home. As we passed, the family invited us (or Manolo invited us) up to have a Pepsi (Manolo paid them for it). We sat in plastic chairs in the dirt and concrete in front of their house and played with the wide-eyed children, who, no matter how much instruction and guidance, could not grasp how to use my digital camera. I helped them point and shoot it, slowly helping them realize that the image on the back screen is what the camera is seeing from in front of it. It was just too foreign to them, however.

We also stopped to buy and try some of the any wine, Chicha, in where the mother of the house was grinding something with wide, full-bodied heaves, her kids playing in the dirt at her side. The home was without floors, doors, electricity or running water. The wine tasted like,  I don´t know, sour wine mixed with light beer, possibly. It wasn´t too bad. On our last stop, where we would leave our bikes for the night and take foot, Manolo picked out the chicken that would be our dinner, a big white one who was none too pleased to have been given the honor. The rest of the one hour of hiking -- down into the valley and along the river -- the chicken dangled upside from the back of Manolo´s backpack, quiet and contemplative, either having reached some form of acceptance of its inevitable future, or having no idea what he hell was going on.

We followed the river until silhouetted forms appeared, the sun low in the sky directly behind them and glittering blindingly off the water around them. They were casting nets into the water, catching fish that would accompany the chicken that night. We then stripped down and held our bags above our heads, and waded across the river to the sandy bank on the opposite side. Having crossed the river, we were now in Guatemala. A series of waterfalls nearby bathed us in the sound of tumbling water.

Five locals met us at where our campgrounds would be and acted like our hosts for the night. They took the chicken and hung it from a tree besides the coals of a dying fire. Then one of them took a knife and, in a strangely clean and quiet process, cut the chicken across the long of its neck and opened it up like a can of tuna. The chicken made not a sound, not stir for several minutes, as thick globules of blood dripped from its body and mixed with the sand and dirt below it. Then, in one final, desperate, fruitless protest of its current position, the chicken burst into a wild fit of flapping and floundering that violently expelled the last of its life from its upside-down body, and left it hanging limp and lifeless. I had never witnessed anything like this, never seen my dinner killed by hand before my eyes before being served to me. I had a strange feeling that I really needed to see this happen, this one time, and was unable look away during the act. What I remember most, however, is the casual, methodical normalcy of the whole thing for the local guys who performed the act, the unfeeling feeling one has for simple routine, like brushing your teeth of taking out the trash.

We went swimming nearby, where the river tumbles over an expanse of rocks and boulders and collides head on with a cliff face, sending the full force of the rushing water into the rock in torrents and eddies and whirlpools. Traversing the turbulence of this section of the river was like participating in an aquatic obstacle course, requiring timing, strength, endurance, and teamwork. From the cracked cliff sprang warm water, and from the other side, where we could stand, the showers pounded into our back and shoulders and rattled our innards like an angry masseuse.

Back at camp, guns suddenly appeared and I found myself engaging in marksmanship competitions, aiming at mangoes in trees and sand-filled soda cans on rocks. We exhausted our water supply, and began to drink directly from the waterfalls. We ate the chicken, along with fish, prawns and crabs caught earlier that evening, around an open fire, ripping the meat from the bones and shells with bare, dirty fingers. We laid out on the sloped sand bank and watched the fading sky fill with the black forms of hundreds of bats, along with one hungry falcon waiting for its moment. The bats were replaced with blackness, punctured by a million tiny holes of gilmmering starlight. I awoke early the next morning to see the first rays of the sun, still invisible behind the wall of mountains to the east, beaming shapes of light and shadow across the river valley.

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After Tacuba, I split ways with Brad and Anna and spent a night and a day in Juayua, another small, quiet town in western El Salvador. I tried to walk to a series of waterfalls that were supposed to be just outside town, but after 45 minutes of walking down secluded dirt roads, past true, rural shantytowns and eyes that told me I was an unusual sight around there, I realized I must be lost.

I happened upon a group of people wearing colorful t-shirts and going door to door for one of the political parties vying for the presidency in the upcoming national election. I told them where I was trying to go, found out I was nowhere near it, and was told that I should not be walking around alone where I was. If I waited until the rest of their group reconvened, they would walk with me back to town. As we waited, I told them how I had done pretty much the same thing for Obama several months earlier, and they called me ¨una activista.¨ One of the men told me that Obama was his cousin, and asked if I wanted an autograph. They then walked me not back to town, but the extra 30 minutes to the waterfalls, and waited as I jumped in to have a swim. Then we picked and ate fresh mangoes from a tree, and walked back to town where we parted ways.

After Juayua, I spent one night in the city of Santa Ana, my first experience with a proper El Salvadorean big city: It was dirty, uninteresting and disappointing. I slept in a motel room decorated with a mirrowed headboard and a solitary wall-adornment, a poster taped crookedly in the middle of a vast, white wall, which read, in Spanish, `How to use a condom,` complete with visual diagrams and written instructions. It was only after noticing the hourly rate posted on the office window and being whistled at upon exiting my hotel at night that I put the pieces together and realized I was not in the best part of town. The room was as damp and stagnant as a jail cell. The trapped air was thick and oppressive, bathing me in clam, oozing and dripping in heat and humidity. The walls melted like candlewax, the cieling tiles drooped like soggy bread, the bed sagged like an old trampoline . There was no fan, no windows, no air, only a solitary, dangling 40 watt tungsten, and a poster displaying in graphic form the proper installation of a condom.

I sat there in that stifling hotel room and looked out upon my life, spread before my eyes. It had only been an hour since I arrived in Santa Ana, and yet the room already looked as if a bomb had gone off somewhere inside my backpack, sending debris to all corners, creating a momentarily-depressing display of the current state of my life in one tidy snapshot. My camera sat naked on my bed, its empty case somewhere lost in the mess; Spanish books and dictionaries and notebooks, as well as other books and journals, pens and pencils, piled up in corners and on nightstands; clothes and equipment laid in hills and mountains across my bed and floor, a rugged, material landscape across the peaks and valleys of my hotel room; a pair of jeans, belt still in thread, laid cumpled in the middle of the floor like the man wearing them had just been turned to a toad; money poked out from amongst scattered debris, unorganized bundles of bills and coins of varying currencies. Sitting alone in this stifling, nightmare of a room surrounded by this mess, I began to feel slightly burdened, run down, stale.

That night I showered vigorously, rinsing and repeating, scrubbing between my toes, reaching for those nether regions of my back that soap rarely reaches. I shaved, cut my nails, brushed and flossed my teeth, plucked some unnecessary hairs from my body. I folded all my clothes, disposed of dead weight from my pack, organized my things, studied some spanish, and got caught up in my journal. Feeling much better, much cleaner of body and mind, suddenly much lighter, I laid down on the feeble, flabby mattress and fell asleep in a puddle of my own sweat.

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The beach became my goal. I was working all along towards the coast, towards the famous beaches of El Salvador. Now it haunted me like a vision: the droning of a foamy sea in motion and the air of tranquility blowing in from it, the sun and the sport and the hammock and time, just time, that would alleviate what I felt was some growing burden, some unsettled, anxious feeling that I had recently begun to acknowledge.

Lago de Croatepeque (Croatepeque Lake) would be a short preview. I arrived at the small lake in central El Salvador very unsure where I was going or what I was going to do there. I was dropped off at what I shortly determined was the wrong location, and walked with all my packs for 45 minutes down a dusty road along the lakeside until a pickup truck finally passed and picked me up.

I made it to the one and only cheap accomodation on the lake, Hostal Amaquilco, a sprawling, run down collection of beach shacks and wood-planked bridges that runs down the side of a hill towards the lake and, as if momentum continued to carry it, spills out over the lake in a multilayerd, hammock-filled deck. I spent nearly the entirety of my three days at the lake sitting on this dock, tearing through my book, listening to my iPod, playing cards with the only two other guests at the hostel.

In the evening, the sun would set directly across the lake from us, and when it was dark, the crickets and dogs and bullfrogs and the gentle movements of the water filled the darkness around us, and in my mind I could have been at any lake in the world. Only the faint din of merengue music, floating across the open lake from some invisible source beyond the trees, reminded me that I was still in Central America.

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It came to my attention recently (maybe 4 years ago) that nearly every shirt I owned fell within a narrow tonal range of earthy colors. This has become unmistakeably obvious to me now, as my entire wardrobe could now fit into a single large ziplock bag, and what a drab, uninspired ziplock bag that would be.

I used my time in San Salvador -- like all Central American capitals, a big, dirty industrial city with first world luxuries juxtapositioned next to third world poverties -- to buy a few more corageous t-shirts, as well as to dine on Subway and Panda Express and frequent the movie theater and the mall. With those things out of my way for another couple months, I finally made it to the water for the first time since Costa Rica.