Postcard from San Salvador
Hello from San Salvador El Salvador (details)
¨San¨ is the city, ¨El¨ is the country. For a while, that important distinction confused me. The noon bus from Managua actually left on time. Our route to San Salvador required a transit through Honduras and the need to go through their customs and immigration processes twice. The staff with our ultra-deluxe Tica Bus handled most of the paperwork. Long lines and tedious Nicaragua exit processing, however, took twenty minutes. Entry into El Salvador required the purchase of a $10 tourist card good for a 90-day stay in the country; a 48-hour transit is free. Clearing customs involved a 30-minute delay while ultra-curious agents inspected every article in my bag and a pair of vicious looking dogs sniffed the cargo hold containing the other passenger’s bags.
They gave us hot meals at the start of the trip and substantial snacks along the way, all for a fare of $27. Someone with serious psychological problems must have chosen the two videos shown on our bus: ¨The Green Mile¨ and ¨The Texas Chain Saw Massacre¨. I tried to ignore both, but the violent images kept sneaking into my field of view.
The bus arrived about 11 PM in what appeared to be an upscale suburban residential neighborhood. About a half mile up a hill I could see a tall building with a lighted sign announcing ¨PRESIDENTE.¨ As that name usually refers to a hotel, I hoisted my bag and began hiking through the darkened streets in the general direction of the sign. Forewarned this is a dangerous country, I kept up a brisk pace and noted every shadowy movement along the way, finally reaching what indeed turned out to be a very nice hotel.
Serendipity struck again and a sympathetic night clerk immediately responded to my expression of horror at the announced $140 room rate. As I asked about alternatives, it looked like my first night in El Salvador would need to be a budget buster; near midnight my options were narrow. Then the receptionist paused looking wryly at me and noted he could give me a $99 corporate rate, if I could name any company affiliation. ¨Retired,¨ I replied.
With what must have been a hangdog expression, I pulled out my wallet prepared to bite the bullet. ¨Just a minute,¨ says he pausing. ¨I can give you the $79 Embassy rate. Would that help? ¨ I must have brightened considerably, because he seemed to be enjoying our negotiations. With a ¨Sunday Brunch¨ included breakfast every morning, I quickly got accustomed to this affordable luxury and ended up staying in the Hotel Presidente until an assistant manager kicked me out when I asked for another two-day extension. ¨Fully booked¨ he announced without smiling, and my bus trip up to Tagucigalpa had to be moved forward a couple days from what I’d planned.
The Salvadorians include a grilled spiced corn meal patty as a staple with most meals. Called a pupusa, it forms the shell for all sorts of fillings, several of which I enjoyed sampling. My room in the Presidente turned out to be within range of a Wide Area Network, a reliable and fast ¨hot spot¨. That meant my little iPAQ Pocket PC gave me instant access to the Internet whenever I felt moved to use it. The Lilliputian screen soon became large in my mind’s eye, and, experimenting with the wireless keyboard, I discovered it is possible to comfortably enter large bodies of text when necessary. I am now addicted to this essential convenience.
Before leaving, I loaded several hundred of the old classics available in the Microsoft Reader format into the iPAQ. Having finished the Da Vinci Code, I am now reading the Alexander Dumas classic Ange Pitou, a very long story set amidst the climax to the French Revolution. Though the language is archaic, it is a page-turner and full of historical facts relating the French and American love affairs with liberty.
One night I heard what for all the world sounded like the beginnings of a new revolution not far from the hotel. What I heard were not firecrackers; these were BOMBS or something that made as much noise. Hotel staff assured me no war had started but failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for all the violent noise. A night or two later nature repeated the performance with nearly constant lightning flashes and rolling thunder that passed directly over the hotel. Not a drop of rain fell. El Salvador has some very strange weather in addition to celebrating who knows what special event with explosive enthusiasm.
San Salvador is divided into the rich and the poor sections, not unlike most affluent cities of the world. Out in the wealthy suburbs in the vicinity of our five star hotel uniformed guards armed with serious looking firepower could be seen in every block. The central business district surrounds the main Central Plaza with the San Salvador Cathedral near-by. Downtown I saw very few police and almost no private security guards. Most of the buildings are in decay. Dirty streets and stained buildings give the impression most people would rather live and work somewhere else.
Everyone cautioned me to be very careful about walking deserted streets in this area at any hour of the day or night. But, you know me. I walked and I walked... with dramatically elevated awareness of potential attack threats. In reality, this town does not feel all that different from most other ¨dangerous¨cities I´ve explored. My guess is the probability of being mugged or the victim of gang violence is vanishingly small for anyone not deliberately presenting themselves as a target, just as it is even in the most dangerous cities of the world, like New York or Los Angeles!
I rode city buses into the city, getting lost twice. During one of the getting lost trips, I had the correct bus number, but it had changed into a ¨special¨run for this trip. And what a trip we had. This route zigzagged into and out of several dingy manufacturing districts, at one point entering a gridlocked intersection, and, in the middle of this, making a ¨U¨ turn with unbelievable forward-backup maneuvers that boggled the mind. So well organized was the traffic controller out among all the bumper-to-bumper stalled traffic, I assume that darned bus made the same preposterous run everyday!
On another bus ride, some guy who may have been drunk ran at the bus and threw himself under the left front tires. The driver swerved and braked hard. I heard no thump. The driver opened his window and looked down at the pedestrian. In a moment the guy got up and nonchalantly walked away. The driver and I exchanged looks, which showed we both figured the guy had to be crazy.
While walking the city, I noticed a peculiar smell, like taco shells cooking in oil. It dawned on me that travel always offers a buffet of smells and that recognizing and comparing odors is one of the subtle joys of foreign travel. Once habituated to the odors in our usual surroundings, they become invisible. Being presented with a constantly changing kaleidoscope of smells gave me an appreciation of the olfactory joys which dogs must enjoy.
The old ear infection that caused me so much trouble in Malaysia a couple years ago reappeared. This time I had the remainders of the special antibiotic that had controlled it previously and it worked again. What threatened to be a week of notable discomfort resolved itself in a couple days.
Everything is priced in dollars in El Salvador. The US dollar is the only currency I ever saw used during my six-day stay, even though the country does have a national currency, the Colon (about 9.1 colons per dollar). Prices of all goods available in the several modern shopping malls I visited are comparable to those in California. Gasoline prices range between $2.50 and $3.00 per gallon.
Photos I took while in San Salvador may be found here.
¨San¨ is the city, ¨El¨ is the country. For a while, that important distinction confused me. The noon bus from Managua actually left on time. Our route to San Salvador required a transit through Honduras and the need to go through their customs and immigration processes twice. The staff with our ultra-deluxe Tica Bus handled most of the paperwork. Long lines and tedious Nicaragua exit processing, however, took twenty minutes. Entry into El Salvador required the purchase of a $10 tourist card good for a 90-day stay in the country; a 48-hour transit is free. Clearing customs involved a 30-minute delay while ultra-curious agents inspected every article in my bag and a pair of vicious looking dogs sniffed the cargo hold containing the other passenger’s bags.They gave us hot meals at the start of the trip and substantial snacks along the way, all for a fare of $27. Someone with serious psychological problems must have chosen the two videos shown on our bus: ¨The Green Mile¨ and ¨The Texas Chain Saw Massacre¨. I tried to ignore both, but the violent images kept sneaking into my field of view.
The bus arrived about 11 PM in what appeared to be an upscale suburban residential neighborhood. About a half mile up a hill I could see a tall building with a lighted sign announcing ¨PRESIDENTE.¨ As that name usually refers to a hotel, I hoisted my bag and began hiking through the darkened streets in the general direction of the sign. Forewarned this is a dangerous country, I kept up a brisk pace and noted every shadowy movement along the way, finally reaching what indeed turned out to be a very nice hotel.
Serendipity struck again and a sympathetic night clerk immediately responded to my expression of horror at the announced $140 room rate. As I asked about alternatives, it looked like my first night in El Salvador would need to be a budget buster; near midnight my options were narrow. Then the receptionist paused looking wryly at me and noted he could give me a $99 corporate rate, if I could name any company affiliation. ¨Retired,¨ I replied.
With what must have been a hangdog expression, I pulled out my wallet prepared to bite the bullet. ¨Just a minute,¨ says he pausing. ¨I can give you the $79 Embassy rate. Would that help? ¨ I must have brightened considerably, because he seemed to be enjoying our negotiations. With a ¨Sunday Brunch¨ included breakfast every morning, I quickly got accustomed to this affordable luxury and ended up staying in the Hotel Presidente until an assistant manager kicked me out when I asked for another two-day extension. ¨Fully booked¨ he announced without smiling, and my bus trip up to Tagucigalpa had to be moved forward a couple days from what I’d planned.
The Salvadorians include a grilled spiced corn meal patty as a staple with most meals. Called a pupusa, it forms the shell for all sorts of fillings, several of which I enjoyed sampling. My room in the Presidente turned out to be within range of a Wide Area Network, a reliable and fast ¨hot spot¨. That meant my little iPAQ Pocket PC gave me instant access to the Internet whenever I felt moved to use it. The Lilliputian screen soon became large in my mind’s eye, and, experimenting with the wireless keyboard, I discovered it is possible to comfortably enter large bodies of text when necessary. I am now addicted to this essential convenience.Before leaving, I loaded several hundred of the old classics available in the Microsoft Reader format into the iPAQ. Having finished the Da Vinci Code, I am now reading the Alexander Dumas classic Ange Pitou, a very long story set amidst the climax to the French Revolution. Though the language is archaic, it is a page-turner and full of historical facts relating the French and American love affairs with liberty.
One night I heard what for all the world sounded like the beginnings of a new revolution not far from the hotel. What I heard were not firecrackers; these were BOMBS or something that made as much noise. Hotel staff assured me no war had started but failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for all the violent noise. A night or two later nature repeated the performance with nearly constant lightning flashes and rolling thunder that passed directly over the hotel. Not a drop of rain fell. El Salvador has some very strange weather in addition to celebrating who knows what special event with explosive enthusiasm.
San Salvador is divided into the rich and the poor sections, not unlike most affluent cities of the world. Out in the wealthy suburbs in the vicinity of our five star hotel uniformed guards armed with serious looking firepower could be seen in every block. The central business district surrounds the main Central Plaza with the San Salvador Cathedral near-by. Downtown I saw very few police and almost no private security guards. Most of the buildings are in decay. Dirty streets and stained buildings give the impression most people would rather live and work somewhere else.
Everyone cautioned me to be very careful about walking deserted streets in this area at any hour of the day or night. But, you know me. I walked and I walked... with dramatically elevated awareness of potential attack threats. In reality, this town does not feel all that different from most other ¨dangerous¨cities I´ve explored. My guess is the probability of being mugged or the victim of gang violence is vanishingly small for anyone not deliberately presenting themselves as a target, just as it is even in the most dangerous cities of the world, like New York or Los Angeles!
I rode city buses into the city, getting lost twice. During one of the getting lost trips, I had the correct bus number, but it had changed into a ¨special¨run for this trip. And what a trip we had. This route zigzagged into and out of several dingy manufacturing districts, at one point entering a gridlocked intersection, and, in the middle of this, making a ¨U¨ turn with unbelievable forward-backup maneuvers that boggled the mind. So well organized was the traffic controller out among all the bumper-to-bumper stalled traffic, I assume that darned bus made the same preposterous run everyday!
On another bus ride, some guy who may have been drunk ran at the bus and threw himself under the left front tires. The driver swerved and braked hard. I heard no thump. The driver opened his window and looked down at the pedestrian. In a moment the guy got up and nonchalantly walked away. The driver and I exchanged looks, which showed we both figured the guy had to be crazy.
While walking the city, I noticed a peculiar smell, like taco shells cooking in oil. It dawned on me that travel always offers a buffet of smells and that recognizing and comparing odors is one of the subtle joys of foreign travel. Once habituated to the odors in our usual surroundings, they become invisible. Being presented with a constantly changing kaleidoscope of smells gave me an appreciation of the olfactory joys which dogs must enjoy.
The old ear infection that caused me so much trouble in Malaysia a couple years ago reappeared. This time I had the remainders of the special antibiotic that had controlled it previously and it worked again. What threatened to be a week of notable discomfort resolved itself in a couple days.
Everything is priced in dollars in El Salvador. The US dollar is the only currency I ever saw used during my six-day stay, even though the country does have a national currency, the Colon (about 9.1 colons per dollar). Prices of all goods available in the several modern shopping malls I visited are comparable to those in California. Gasoline prices range between $2.50 and $3.00 per gallon.
Photos I took while in San Salvador may be found here.
posted by Santa Barbara Theatre at
15:00
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home