Some people are just shits and the beauty of van life is also its curse. By that I mean you meet unpleaaant people on the road and the great thing is your wheels allow you to leave easily. They also easily take you away from friends and social groups that are hard to form among nomads. It’s a compromise I’m happy to live with.
The pupusa lady on the main square is a case in point. We paused for a late breakfast in a country whose only gastronomic delicacy is grilled pupusas so we taste as many as we reasonably can as next week it will most likely be Nicaragua and I’m not looking forward to that as they have a reputation for orneriness I know I shan’t enjoy.
I checked out Suchitoto’s church, Layne the Jew is a little tired of them and sat outside with Rusty. This one was a gem with a wooden ceiling and dramatic interior art and exterior magnificence.
They had the usual statue of my fellow Umbrian St Francis of Assisi whose love of animals is noted by but generally not followed by the good Christians we meet along the Pan American (All American) Highway. They also had a startling statue of St Christopher patron saint of travelers, a statue more suitable to Halloween I thought as my birthday approaches.
I don’t think I’d be too keen to meet him on a dark lovely road. Anyway I met my family in the square and herself proposed breakfast.
As a surly young woman took our order and got her mother to flip our food on the grill I idly photographed the napkin holder showing the old currency, the Colon (The “Columbus”) before they adopted the dollar. The national motto is “God Unity Freedom” none of which El Salvador has lived up to successfully in my opinion but I still like place! But I’m a tourist, always a tourist, here today and done tomorrow lucky me.
An old woman, presumably a regular cane in and picked up the restaurant water sprayer and applied it to Rusty snoozing at our table. The owner said hey he’s there ( the customers’ ) dog. But she grinned nastily and said she didn’t care and to prove it she kept on spraying my cowering dog . She stared at me and I stared back as Rusty shook himself off and hid behind me. It’s one of those moments when you want to let loose but I am a visitor and I don’t want to play the foreign asshole so I gave her my speech reserved for animal abuse occasions of which I see too many down here.
I prefer dogs to people I said staring at her. They are better Christians than Christians: they don’t rob banks, they don’t rape women, they don’t care how much money you have and they don’t care about the color of your skin and they forgive you endlessly your unkindness. Plus, I add this bit for El Salvador, they don’t rob and kill with guns and terrorize people for the fun of it. I don’t much like people. I finished my pupusa and left Layne to pay the bill.
These encounters are bound to happen on the road and usually let them go easily enough as cultural imbroglios are part of travel. However we later both agreed we got a bad hit from the place and should have left. Perhaps they were mad at Rusty for sitting under our table, right next to the street dogs, or perhaps they are always shy around foreigners unlike most Salvadorans or whatever. I even wondered if the owner’s daughter is on the spectrum as she almost shied away from us the polite customers. In the event we stayed against our instincts and the regular customer took pleasure in trying to make us uncomfortable.
I still like Suchitoto and I’d come back to see more of it. It’s a short hop I remind myself to drive here from Mexico some future winter when we are bored.
I like Salvadoran coffee, mild and sweet but with enough body not to taste like water but some mornings a cup of tea and a piece of weird Salvadoran sponge cake are necessary to settle the nerves.
