August 14, 2008
It’s been an atypical week. Let me give you an idea: I’ve: eaten a French-Salvadoran fusion dinner in the company of a spunky 15-year-old French girl, drunk water straight from a stream, talked about carpentry in Spanish with a young Belgian couple, had a bellyflop contest across a lake from the highest volcano in the country, connected with a real live Scot from clan Campbell (my ancestors’ clan), discussed anthropology A-levels with a Brit who grew up in Denmark, slept with a cat owned by a Salvadoran hippie and his Dutch girlfriend, met several high-ranking members of the Ministry of the Environment, been told by a Bavarian that I could pass for a Swabian*, and seen a baby jaguar feeding from a milk bottle in a rural family’s house.
Eclectic, no? Traveling around the west of El Salvador proved it to be a far cry from the east.
The trip was a way to link up two events in the west—a soccer game in El Balsamar, Sonsonate and an environmental festival in El Congo, Santa Ana—without having to go all the way home to Morazán. Plus, I hadn’t been to Sonsonate or Ahuachapán and had lots of ganas to see the Ruta de las Flores and Parque Nacional El Imposible. These are, respectively, the most developed tourist area and the most well-preserved forest in the country.
Spending the night in San Salvador with several other easterners on their way to the soccer game, I met a Watson Fellow who’d just arrived in the country. I’ll call him Watson. He’s a Harvey Mudd structural engineering nerd, planning to study the structural damage of recent earthquakes in El Sal, Perú, Japan, and India. Being a Watson Fellow and all, Watson had nothing in particular to do, so he decided to tag along to the soccer game, and then with me on my travels. It was nice to have someone along. I especially enjoyed seeing his reactions to his first Latin American and first developing country, and to the Salvadoran ways of doing things. He also amused me in nerdy ways—teaching me about digital cameras and putting words to the problem the damn straws here have: local buckling.
San Sal was crazy because of the Agostinos festival, El Salvador’s huge annual deal. Carnival rides, music, greasy food, and unrelenting commerce had taken over the city. I encountered a couple of friends in a bar, to which they’d resorted when a bike race screwed up the bus routes and kept them from a meeting in the Peace Corps office. It was about 12:30 pm and they were quite drunk. That evening I went with them to see “The Dark Knight.” By that time they were regretting their midday Pilseners. I snuck a can of mixed fruit into the movie in the seat of my pants. Heath Ledger as the Joker totally blew my mind, and it was even better while slurping down pineapple chunks in heavy syrup.
The soccer game at El Balsamar took place on a gorgeous field against a good-natured team called Arco Iris (“rainbow”). As usual, it was scorching and we were not in excellent shape and they beat us handily. Gluttons for punishment, we are, always looking forward to these matches that are always the same. The good news: a hike to a 70-meter waterfall and some nice rock pools. I stacked stones just as I always have in my West Virginia rivers. That night, exhausted, those of us who stayed enjoyed a delightful bilingual candlelit dinner with our host and a friend of hers from the community. No matter where I am, who the good people are, or what the good food is, I always feel holistically good during this type of meal.
The thunder that night was the most intense thunder I’ve ever heard in my life.
Finally, the Ruta de las Flores, the only attraction in El Salvador with its own signs pointing the way from the airport. The Ruta is a series of five towns in the coffee-growing highlands of Sonsonate and Ahuachapán. Their setting is incredible, bookended on the east by the volcanic triumvirate of Izalco, Cerro Verde, and Santa Ana, and on the west by Parque Nacional El Imposible. All of them sit on the high-rising folds of the Cordillera Apaneca Ilamatepec; Apaneca itself is the second-highest town in the country.
Visiting the Ruta de las Flores was very Goldilocks and the Three Bears for me. First I arrived in Juayúa, where Watson, the RPCV PCRV** from Gotera, and I met the PCV who lives in Juayúa for a tour. Results: too big, too accustomed to tourists. Next Watson and I passed through Apaneca: too small, not enough to do. And finally we arrived in Ataco: just right!
Concepción de Ataco sits in a gentle swale on the way down from the crest of the Cordillera to the departmental capital of Ahuachapán. We stayed in a beautiful hostel run by Alejandro, a young, dreadlocked Salvadoran guy, and his Dutch girlfriend Jikke (the Alepac). She met him while backpacking through Central America and stayed. They instantly made me feel like I was at home. They had a spastic cat, Rufina, which they called a “gatonejo” (gato+conejo=cat+rabbit) because its short little tail made it look like a rabbit from behind.
We ate the oddest, most delicious meal at El Botón, a restaurant run by a bald, bustling French guy. The food was the tastiest I’ve eaten in a long time—no offense to tortillas and beans, which I love with all my heart. We ended up spending most of our time there chatting with the French guy’s 15-year-old redhead daughter, whom we’d just seen in the Alepac getting her flaming tresses dreaded. She was just as spunky as Rufina. She sat crosslegged on a stool, chain smoking and complaining of the uptight airline employees in Miami who sat vigil in her hotel room when her flight was cancelled. They were horrified when she asked them for cigarettes.
Between the French guy and his daughter; Jikke; and the people from Germany and Belgium I was to meet in the next few days, all of whom spoke better Spanish than English, I heard a lot of funny European accents in Spanish. The redheaded girl got riled up when I poked fun at her pronunciation of caro. An expert, the Salvadoran waitress, had to be called in to put the matter to rest.
Just up from the hostel, workers were restoring a small, strange-looking church. It seems like the 2001 earthquake did special damage to the churches in this region, because they’re all being restored, while everything else looks fine. Or perhaps it just takes longer to fix them up; a worker in Apaneca’s church told me the restoration was going slowly because of lack of funds. The large church on Ataco’s central square looks recently restored, with a shiny wooden ceiling and modern light fixtures.
I saw most of the town on an early morning walk, before Watson got up. There are craft shops, cafés with good decor, a contemporary art gallery, and pretty flower gardens, but it’s not so cutesy that it doesn’t feel like El Salvador. Most places were closed as I walked past. In the park in the center of town a man was mowing the grass with a weedwhacker. The only other person out and about was a lanky fellow reading the paper on a bench, his bicycle leaned up next to him. I asked him where he’d gotten it; he pointed down the street and said, “right down there…but here, I’ll sell you mine and go get another one for myself.” Bemused, I dug around in my pocket for 50 cents, but found only a dollar bill. “Do you have change?” “No, but I can bring it to you…where will you be?” I was suspicious of this scheme, but my morningtime cheeriness and his seeming good will got the better of me. I gave him the dollar and told him I’d be at the café round the corner.
He turned out to be a man of his word, bringing me the change as I watched Olympic judo over eggs, beans, and coffee. The honesty of this gangly early bird cemented my affection for Ataco.
In Tacuba, on the other side of Ahuachapán (which turned out to be a much nicer departmental capital than Sonsonate), we met another hip Salvadoran guy and his European girlfriend. Watson and I had called Manolo the day before to schedule a hike in El Imposible. Manolo is described in the Lonely Planet as “single-handedly” turning Tacuba into a worthwhile eco-tourism destination. He bustled around gathering waterbottles and ham sandwiches while we chatted with the girlfriend—this one a German schoolteacher who’d met Manolo last summer. He later told us fondly of visiting Scandinavia with her during the intervening school year, and also recounted the detailed story of why Rottweiler—her hometown—is named Rottweiler. She seemed not to have heard the story, but made little comment.
Manolo hadn’t done this particular hike for a couple of years, and it seemed like he was being guided by the other guide, whom we met at the trailhead. When I asked him why he selected this particular trail for the day, he only said, “craziness.” The first twenty minutes were through a coffee finca, then we plunged steeply down on a specious trail for what seemed like hours. The flora was like nothing I’ve seen in El Salvador—this place truly is a preserve. When we reached the stream at the bottom Manolo wordlessly disappeared upstream for a while. When he came back we discovered he’d been collecting river snails for that night’s dinner. He claimed this was one of the few places they could still be found in the country, that they’re indicators of the purest water, and furthermore that he may be the only person left in the country who still eats them. Alejandro later scoffed at this.
We bathed in the stream, ate a mountain of ham sandwiches, and climbed almost as steeply back up by a different route. Sightings of a wild turkey and a lizard, both endangered species, on the way back up. And at the end of the hike we sighted a baby jaguar…being fed milk from a bottle in the house where we were waiting for Manolo’s dad to arrive in the car. It was vaguely reminiscent of Wolverine, with tufts off the sides of its face and a wild demeanor. The men had found it while working in the coffee finca. I remain unclear on why they took it in. I’d be afraid of its mother coming knocking. Or what it’ll do to the chickens after a few more bottles of milk.
We made it back to Ataco by dark, weary and satisfied from our long hike. A pair of guests had arrived, she from Brisbane, he from Glasgow. They were taking their time about doing Central America, but even so hadn’t yet learned much Spanish. He managed to be almost bilingually incomprehensible to me, due to his thick-as-wool Scottish accent. With effort I managed to hold up my end of a conversation about our common clan, clan Campbell. We watched a pirated copy of “The Dark Knight”—my second time, and well worth it. She, a big Batman fan, could hardly contain her delight throughout.
The next day Watson and I passed back through Juayúa. It was the correct day, Saturday, and the gastronomic fair was in force. It could just have been the incredible torta of carne al pastor or the best orange juice ever I had, but for some reason I liked Juayúa a lot better this time. We visited the Alepac’s counterpart hostel (the Anáhuac), run by, you guessed it, a Salvadoran guy and his European girlfriend. There we met a band of merry travelers, including the Bavarian who thought I looked Swabian, the English girl who’d grown up in Denmark, and two American RPCVs. They were easily amused as well as amusing, which made me like them. We hooked up with them again two days later at Lago Coatepeque.
The El Congo environment parade put my municipio to shame. For Earth Day the water cooperative in my town put together a little event with performances from schoolkids, but most of it was 13-year-olds dancing provocatively to ranchera music. In El Congo there were students dressed in entire outfits made of junk food bags, pop tops, and bottle caps. There were hundreds of colorful signs telling onlookers to protect the environment. There was a really well done skit involving an intelligent dialogue between a woodcutter and a tree. There were bands. There was, dare I say, enthusiasm! I’m so jealous.
We about ruined our voices by yelling “La Bamba” with our own altered lyrics to everyone along the parade route. Then we performed “The Lorax” and the trash play (which we’d rehearsed exhaustively with many Pilseners the night before) before a million school kids, the mayor, the president of the Environmental Fund of El Salvador (FONAES), and various other luminaries. Watson enthusiastically played the role of a tree that gets cut down in “The Lorax.” Chadd, Zach, Janet, and Bis performed their lyric-adapted Daddy Yankee and Ricky Martin songs to much acclaim. The super-charismatic president of FONAES gave a rousing speech and later shook us all by the hand and endured our rabid questions for him on the part of our schools. Not one but two refrigerios were provided. This was the grandest-scale event I’ve participated in here. It made me feel so hopeful, but also a little despondent about the comparative disorganization and apathy of my area of the country.
A relaxing evening and bellyflop contest in the warm waters of Coatepeque rounded out my tour of the west. I wished Watson well in his journeys in San Salvador and high-tailed it back home to endure the typical comment: “I thought you’d gone back to the States.” It always semi-offends me—do they really expect me to abandon them at the drop of a hat like that? But I think it’s the way they leave and come back from the States, too. Just a few weeks ago my neighbor, who I talk with several times a day, told me her son just got back from many years in the States that day (not deported). I thought, How did I not know he was coming? This would be such a highly-anticipated event in the States. But there wasn’t even a celebration. He got up the next morning, walked past my house, and milked the cows, as if he’d never been gone. I guess that’s just the way they do.
*Swabia is in southern Germany, where apparently the people look like me. It also happens to be a region frequently made fun of by Bavarians, Austrians, and the Swiss. I wonder whether Swabia jokes or West Virginia jokes are funnier?
**Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Peace Corps Response Volunteer
