Canadian Thanksgiving was approaching and my magnanimous boss gave me an extra day off, resulting in a four day weekend. My new thing is: if I have the money and four days off, I’m going somewhere. I scoured the flights and the best deals were to be found in Central America. I decided El Salvador was my choice. It is small and has enough sites to see in four days, but is not a place that I have a strong desire to spend weeks in. And here I am in El Salvador on a Friday night, smoking a cigar on a patio at my hotel.
El Salvador suffers from a distinct lack of tourism. Travellers through Central America tend to skip it, due, likely, to its recent history of violence, gang activity, and instability. It was, for some time, the murder capital of the world (which is a terrible tourism slogan), but that honour has been lost to Mexico (though people still head thee is droves). El Salvador has a history of sad tourism marketing slogans that practically implore people to come here and those that do have inly good things to say. There are tropical forests, beaches, surfing, and an alarming number of volcanos to hike, but I’ll be sticking to cities and towns.
The only downside to my plan was that I vastly over estimated how much sleep i would get on my red-eye flight. Very little as it turned out and I have been exhausted today, though I still got out to look around.
Immigration was easy. You have to pay $10 for a visa, but there is no formality to it. Allegedly there are shuttles one can take from the airport to town for a small price, but there was no signage or information booth to assist. So I took a taxi. $30 (probably could have gotten it cheaper but fatigue diminishes my enthusiasm for haggling) and about 40 minutes through some beautiful, velvety green hills and then though urban areas with tangled traffic, coconut vendors, and scruffy buildings.
I am staying at the Villa Florencia Historico hotel which is just a 10 minute walk from the historic centre in a quiet university neighbourhood. The room is basic, but comfortable, the hotel is basically an old house and is quite cute. No hot water and no English, but I knew that going in and the price was right.
I walked to the Centre, down busy streets lined with market stalls selling rambutan and other fruits, juice, snacks, and an extraordinary amount of underpants and stretchy jeans. The stalls became an encompassing labyrinth but then gave way to three squares in close proximity. A couple of pretty churches, an attractive theatre, an empty palace for wandering.
The squares were filled with musicians, police, and locals. I saw only one other tourist. I was not able to be incognito. I’m not sure if it was the goth white skin or green eyes, but everyone knew I was a tourist. Thankfully, everyone was very friendly – as best I could tell. No one speaks more than a word or two of English.
I had a strawberry juice and some kind of fried disk piled with beans, radish, lettuce, tomato, cabbage, cheese, and hot sauce (2 for $1.10).
One of the most interesting things was the Iglesia El Roasario, a church built in 1971. From the outside it was unremarkable. While i was there, the name of the church was being scraped off from the concrete. The entrance was off a sketchy-looking side street.
But inside it was a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors. The exterior is covered in small slits filled with colored glass and the light that comes in fills the inside with glowing rainbows. The photos don’t really do it justice, but it was stunning.
I walked through a market with endless stalls of handicrafts and handmade sandals and hammocks. Everyone was very eager to sell, but I was only looking.
I walked and wandered and eventually made my way back to my hotel just in time for the darkness and the rain. I’m too tired to do anything this evening, but I have an early morning planned to take the bus to Suchitoto, so I’m ok with a restful evening.
There is certainly more one could see in San Salvador, but a day is plenty and the surrounding towns look charming.
Ok, I’m going to practice some Spanish. Buenos noches.
Hello to my beautiful wandering daughter. ❤️
No hot water? Brrr.
The priest in the photo. Real or painted on the wall?
Painted.
The head and body looked painted, but the shoes looked real.
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