All roads lead to San Salvador (not to Rome)....

It was not the plan in the first place to make San Salvador as our base for exploring El Salvador, but fate would have it so. We entered El Salvador on Tuesday (20/03) and the plan was to stay in La Palma, a small village in the northern part of El Salvador to see the art trend that Fernando Llort developed there. We were on the buss heading south towards La Palma and expected the guy working on the buss (money and client collector) to shout out “La Palma” at some point. The shout never came and we missed La Palma, as said by the buss guy, by about an hour. Well, we thought let’s go for Plan B then. Our second stop in El Salvador was supposed to be, according to earlier plans, Suchitoto, a laid back colonial town with a growing art scene. According to Lonely Planet the town is what Antigua in Guatemala was before all the tourists got there. (We don’t know about that since we saw Antigua only with all the tourists). Anyhow, we got ready for Plan B, Suchitoto, or “Suchi” as locals say. We were still on the same buss heading south. To get to the arty town of “Suchi” we had to change busses at Las Aguilares. And this time we were very smart and asked the buss guy (money/client collector) to tell us when we were in Las Aguilares so we wouldn’t miss our destination again. It worked perfectly this time. We got off the buss and were looking for the connection buss to “Suchi”. We approached the first buss we saw and asked it’s buss guy (money/client collector) if the buss would go to Suchitoto. We tried to not make a mistake so we asked twice, first myself I got the answer “yes” - well it was a “si” since we spoke Spanish of course - and then Fredrik asked again and he also got an affirmative answer. We got on the buss and hoped to be in Suchitoto two hours later. More or less two hours had passed and we started wondering if we would be there soon. We asked some of our fellow passengers and they said that it would be very far to “Suchi”. SHOCK!!!! “What do you mean very far?” We would need to go to the “Terminal” which was the final stop and change to another buss to get to Suchitoto, they explained. “Terminal of what city?” I asked. “SAN SALVADOR, of course” they said. Well, how interesting!!! San Salvador, according to the original planning, was our third stop in El Salvador but now it appeared to become our first. When we got to the Terminal it was dark and we decided to stay. All roads lead to San Salvador at least in El Salvador and we are not quite sure if you should trust these buss guys, at the end all they are interested in is to get as many people as possible on the buss so they get a bigger share.

We stayed for another three nights in San Salvador and made day trips to "Suchi", (not to La Palma, it was too far) and to Joya de Cerén.

Joya de Cerén, is a small Maya settlement which was buried under volcanic ash while the Laguna Caldera Volcano erupted some 1400 years ago. The intense heat of the 4 to 6 m layer of erupted material preserved not only the structures of the buildings, but pottery, plants, seeds and animal remains. It is quite interesting because it gives clues on how people lived back then. You shouldn´t though compare it with other big Maya settlments like Tikal or Palenque. Joya de Cerén used to be a simple farmer sattlement. The place is a declared UNESCO world heritage site.

Apart from our day trips, we enjoyed very much San Salvador’s shopping malls (very fancy) and cinemas. During 3 days we saw 4 movies. Not to bad, he?

Take care for now!

Love,

Sabrina and Fredrik