El Salvador

May 30, 2018

El Salvador

Hi friends! Like I said last time, I was going to spend the weekend in El Salvador visiting my friend from UofT Antonieta. I took a bus from Guatemala City on Friday. The bus was pretty luxurious: huge seats that basically went all the way down, a place to put your feet up and wifi. However, I still slept very little because an annoyingly loud movie was playing and the roads on the Guate side took us zig-zagging through the mountains making me pretty nauseous. Oh and if that wasn't enough to annoy me, the guy in front of me was FULL SINGING most of the journey. He was a fan of 80s rock music, which just made things worse. I gave his wife and daughter, who were sitting near me, a dirty look so at some point his wife convinced him to just hum (still loudly) but I had already lost all ability to fall asleep. I was also worried during the journey because Central America is known for robberies on the bus. It can happen that robbers will stop the bus in the middle of nowhere and take all valuables from the passengers. BUT! None of that happened to us and we arrived safely in San Salvador, which is the capital of El Salvador.

Antonieta and her boyfriend Baudilio picked me up and although they had told me that we were going out to dinner, I thought it would be a laidback lowkey event. Lies. They were both dressed up and I showed up directly from the office after being on the bus for about 5 hours but I put on a pair of wedges (they're shoes, my dear male readers) to dress it up a little. We ended up going to a rooftop lounge called, wait for it... Rooftop. Creative, I know. But the place was really nice, it had a nice view to a lit San Salvador and the vibe was very nice. Even with my dressup effort I was definitely out of place. The people who showed up to that place looked like they could all have their own reality shows and some of them actually already do! Antonieta explained to me that most people there come from very wealthy families and it was evident. Once we moved closer to the edge to get a better view of the city, we noticed something else. Right directly next to this tall fancy building were small improvised homes with tin roofs. It was about 9 or 10 in the evening so there was no one outside but it was still a vivid illustration of the huge gap between the rich and the poor not only in El Salvador but in Central America in general (of what I have researched and seen so far).

The next day the three of us headed off to a town in the mountains called Suchitoto early in the morning. We went to a breakfast place with the most amazingly beautiful view to a a river and mountains (pics below). The food also did not disappoint. We had a traditional Salvadorian breakfast and pupusas! I mentioned pupusas in my last post as well, they are one of my favourite foods. They are traditional Salvadorian either thick corn or rice tortillas stuffed with a savory filling. Before I became vegetarian I would always have the ones with pork, beans and cheese but now I have either beans or cheese filling (equally as delicious). To accompany these amazing culinary inventions we had some horchata, which is a drink made from seeds ground with rice and spices. We drank it out of traditional jicaro shells (see that and the tree they grow from below). This meal altogether was marvellous.

This was followed by a short walk around the town before heading back to San Salvador. Near the country's capital is a 1,893 m high inactive volcano. We drove up to one of the viewing platforms where are a couple of cafes and restaurants are located. Unfortunately it was a foggy day so we couldn't see much of the view that usually includes most of San Salvador but it was still a really nice atmosphere. In the next post I will write about a Salvadorian wedding we attended and my last day in El Salvador.

Food of the day: still pupusas. I am very sorry for my Estonians who are unable to try them but my Canadians, you have no excuse! There are multiple places in Toronto that make yummy pupusas.

Spanish lesson of the day: ''maje''. This is essentially the same as dude in English but is mostly used exclusively in El Salvador.