Up The Volcano

Twenty five years ago Layne and I and our two dogs sailed past Acajutla, El Salvador’s main port. We thought about stopping in to check it out but on this stretch of the Pacific Coast there are no indentations and the port was a simple seawall jutting out into the ocean with no real anchorage for our 34 foot sailboat. So we sailed on by in 1998 on our way to Key West. 

Finally I got there to “Akka-hoot-la” and as usual reality was a let down. The harbor is now a giant container terminal and the city is nothing special. With nothing to photograph we bought SIM cards for our iPhones and pressed on, nostalgia be damned. 

El Salvador is a funny place and I like it, not least because the roads are fabulous, smooth and properly surfaced, with cleanly painted street lines and only a very few painted speed bumps in busy areas or in front of schools. Driving here is lovely. 

Gasoline is sold by the gallon and there is no national currency: they use the US dollar including American coins much to Layne’s delight as she has been hauling around a purse full of half forgotten quarters which she can now spend. It’s not hard to figure out the price of fuel either as it is exactly $4:27 a gallon! 

I don’t know if I can adequately explain why I like El Salvador so much but I find the place friendly and bright and cheerful and that is a purely subjective observation. The country is coming out of a long history of violence after a bloody civil war and then a period of gang warfare which has ended with a get tough policy by the government that has put 70,000 people in jail in a brand new high security prison. There are fears of a dictatorial crack down but the people I talked to are happy to be secure and seem buoyed by hope for a simpler future. I’m not a journalist or an economist but El Salvador seems to be on the upswing and it feels good to be here. 

Ever since we arrived in the country Thursday afternoon Layne had been obsessed by finding pupusas, the national food of El Salvador. She has a sentimental attachment to them since they fueled her student years studying law at Hastings College in San Francisco. She haunted a Salvadoran restaurant in the mission district and the first thing she wanted on arrival was a plate of pupusas. 

Weirdly enough we had a hard time finding them at first. Finally in the market town of Metalío astride the highway from the border to Acajutla we found the fat corn tortillas filled with meat cheese or beans and crisped on a griddle.

Two plates full and one big pupusa to go with a Coke for Layne  and a coffee for me came to four dollars and they were delicious. 

It was a sidewalk brunch of champions at ten in the morning. Rusty was totally stressed. 

Layne then went nuts in the fruit market while I took Rusty for a short walk on the crowded street in the heat. He soon wanted to go back to the van and his air conditioned bed where Layne met up with us beaming over her bag of fresh fruit. 

I have to say we are going through a good patch at the moment coming to grips with an interesting new country and a new culture, the problems of Guatemala behind us and as we shall soon see a pleasant spot to camp for the weekend. 

After a satisfying meal and a short tour of Acajutla we found ourselves loaded with fuel and purified water, we had fruit and a full refrigerator mostly with Mexican food as customs never showed any interest in it, and we were ready to escape the coastal heat.  

El Salvador is known for some interesting surf breaks but its coast is not of the tourist brochure kind. The sand is either gray or black and swimming is difficult as Pacific breakers crash ashore for the country’s entire 150 mile coastline. We plan to explore more of that later but for now we sought relief from heat and humidity at altitude. 

Cerro Verde is a national park swathed in clouds 6,000 feet above the town of Sonsonate and up we went driving through the usual lush greenery watching the temperature drop from 100 degrees to 69 at our chosen campsite at Villa Cristal. 

It was busy on a Friday afternoon with some kind of private school field trip. We met a bunch of middle class university students and chatted with them about life and their computer technology studies. They certainly view their futures with optimism. 

Rusty was happy as a clam rolling in the grass and fending off the advances of the campground dogs. He had a huge dinner and passed out snoring. 

Future members of the El Salvador national soccer team (they wish!). 

There is a rather decent looking restaurant on site that we plan to visit on Saturday.  

There are no hook ups but we designed the van for this life so for $7:50 a day we are sitting pretty in a field with no bugs and no sweating. 

And the absence of a phone signal bothers us not one jot. Our Mexican Starlink promptly welcomed us to El Salvador. 

We lack for nothing: we are amazingly privileged in this troubled world.