El Salvador

The trip to Perquín in the northeast corner of El Salvador was another highlight. I am especially talking about the transportation itself. The part from San Salvador to San Miguel was quite painless, even comfortable with air con and padded seats. San Miguel to Gotera was fine too, the normal chicken type of buss which you see everywhere in Central America (at least so far). Well, of course as usual, we missed the stop in Gotera by about half a kilometre or so, so we had to walk back. Not a big deal, though. At Gotera we asked for the buss to our final destination, Perquín, and finally we found our transportation which turned out to be a pick up truck with a 3 by 2,50 m truck bed covered with some metal structure and plastic cover. On this truck bed, there were already 25 people (I counted them), standing and sitting next to and over each other. Five of the 25 people hang outside the truck bed since there was no other place. Well, friendly as the El Salvadorans are, they made some space for us and we squeezed in onto the overloaded pick up truck. Well on the truck some guy was playing the guitar, so we got some entertainment. Two hours later, somewhat exhausted and hot, we arrived at Perquín.

Perquín is a tiny little village in a cool mountain setting. There you can experience the real Salvadoran village life. We had some really basic lodging and ate “pupusas” (a cornmeal mass stuffed with cheese and/or refried beans) at night and a typical breakfast in the morning (beans, rice, eggs, fried bananas, cheese and coffee). The main attraction though of this place is the “Museo de la Revolución Salvadoreña” which on Sundays also attracts lots of El Salvadorans, as we experienced. Also Perquín has a strong historical significance since it was the headquarters of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), the guerrilla organization. The museum displays the causes and progress of the 12 year lasting civil war (1980-1992) with photos, posters, weapons and histories of those who died in action. You get touched when you see the displays and see that it was normal people, quite many women, who fought in armed struggles for a better life in El Salvador and the fact that it ended no more than 15 years ago.

The visit to Perquín and the museum was worth it!

Bye for now!

Love,

Sabrina and Fredrik

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