April 12, 2008
Ever wondered what hunting is like in El Salvador? Like me, probably not. It never occurred to me that the most densely populated and second most deforested nation in the western hemisphere would have any space or animals left for hunting. ¡Cómo no! Three nights ago I learned that not only does El Salvador have a few huntable animals left, its men are going to pursue them with unskilled gusto as long as they’re there.
I was visiting my friend Matt (see his blog “Becoming a Man of Value” on the sidebar) in his isolated site…*Map Nerd Moment! Matt lives on the mountain above Guatajiagua, Morazán that makes up one of two primary massifs in the Cordillera Cacaguatique Corobán (a name that never gets easier to remember), the other one being where I live. From his site you can see 3 volcanoes: Chinchontepec (San Vicente), San Miguel, and Conchagua; and the Gulf of Fonseca. End Map Nerd Moment.*…which is a few levels of poverty beyond mine. People come from their rudimentary houses to charge their cell phones on the school’s solar panels, the nearest electric lines being an hour’s hike down the mountain. Matt is living with his counterpart Armando’s family while they build him a little adobe house. Staying with him reminded me what a different feeling it is to not have electricity. As a man in my community said the other night when the power went out, “electricity at night is a great happiness.” True, but I also enjoy quiet nighttime conversations with indistinct faces in the light of a kerosene lantern.
After dark fell at Matt’s site, a group of men and boys showed up and crowded into the small house for some pre-hunt joking around and introductions to the new gringos (our friend Angie—see her blog “What is Agroforestry Anyway?” on the sidebar—was visiting too, although she opted out of the hunt). They were obviously cheerful with anticipation, hopes high despite the last outing—they had found no deer, only one already dead armadillo.
We set out, armed with two .22 rifles, a bunch of machetes, headlamps, and puro. Puro is a cigar-shaped roll of leaves that some men chew while working. The guys claimed they’re coca leaves, but knowing Salvadoran men’s penchant for pulling gringo legs, I’m not convinced. Could just be tobacco. Matt and I both chawed on some for a while; it made my balance worse for about ten minutes, with no other notable effects besides a foul bitter taste.
Salvadoran hunting turned out to be incredibly boring, but in a different way than American hunting. We walked down a trail talking in hushed voices and hushing each other in louder voices. Every now and then we stopped to shine our lights over a field for a while, or just to sit and brush huge ants off our socks while other guys shined their lights. Sometimes we waited and watched a couple of headlamps go off to investigate what could have been an animal. Bitter whispered arguments ensued over whether something was a deer or a cow. The two little boys were not quiet, but were rarely shushed. We often stopped walking for no discernible reason and sat down for 20 minutes or so. We found an avocado tree and spent a while gathering fruit. One guy cut a few pineapples out of his neighbor’s pineapple field, and Matt badgered him into promising to pay her the quarter each the next day. We saw a deer in among some horses, but didn’t get close enough for a clear shot. Or maybe it was a horse.
Finally, at about 11:30 we arrived back at the house. Thank goodness. I was tired out by the stop-and-start hiking and haphazard inefficiency of the hunt. And I had a nasty aftertaste of puro still lingering. I suppose I’m glad we didn’t shoot any deer; I don’t think the same overpopulation phenomenon is occurring here that has in New Jersey.
The next day we hiked to a cerro farther up the mountain from Matt’s village. Our way of hiking was very Salvadoran. We walked for a while, then stopped and greeted people at the school, where Armando disappeared for a while. Shades of inexplicable waiting and boredom from the night before! After another half hour of hiking we sat in a house for a while and chatted and drank coffee. Eventually that house’s denizens decided to come along. Among them were two nursing mothers in dresses and flip-flops.
We continued on and up through endless coffee fincas (farms). The coffee was in bloom, its little elongate white flowers dotting the green understory. Up up up. We stopped and chatted at a coffee patio on a ridge, a wide flat brick area for spreading coffee to dry, and chatted with the lady who lives there. This was the most remote area I’d seen in the country: 3+ hours on foot down steep, rocky roads in two directions to the nearest towns. Probably 2+ hours in a good pickup. That’s about as remote as you can get in El Salvador. Despite its remoteness, many of the people in this area above Matt’s site own lucrative coffee fincas and are not hurting for money. The poor people of his village pick coffee for them and glean what falls to the ground for themselves.
Leaving the patio, we skirted around below a curving ridge, staying on contour, and confronted our cerro, Cerro el Pelón, a steep, grassy, bald mound serving as exclamation point for the ridge before it dropped down into San Miguel department. The climb up was steep and treacherous, with loose rocks among the grasses. One of the nursing mothers handed her baby off to its teenage older brother, but the other one didn’t even blink. She soldiered up the mountain with the baby still at her breast, cheerfully managing in flip-flops terrain that I sometimes needed to navigate using my hands. And she was fat!
From the top we could see more coffee patios, a few houses, much remote mountain country covered in coffee, and the hazy distance. Not a good day for the long view, but the view straight down from the steep cerro was impressive enough. We found out we’d hiked 11 km from Armando’s house. With the return trip and the 4 km farther down the mountain to the other volunteer’s village where Angie and I were spending that night, that made for a roughly 16 mile day. A veritable hiking binge. I get to walk a fair bit, but hiking like that is rare. It felt great to gorge.
