So let's travel back in time a bit, dear readers. Put yourselves two months or so in the past and journey with me to the city of San Salvador, country of El Salvador. I jumped on a bus (which, by the way, was an adventure in itself) to San Salvador from Guatemala City sometime in early March so I could get cracking at the newspaper archives at the National Library and start making contacts with journalists, public opinion people, etc. Getting from Antigua to San Salvador was not as easy as you would think, since most of the direct buses from Antigua (well, all really, or at least all that I asked) don't actually go to the capital but instead take you directly to the beach. So I had to catch the bus from Guatemala City early in the morning, a feat which was preceded by at 3 am walk through Jocotenango and Antigua with my enormous backpacker backpack (hehe) to get to where the shuttle to Guate would actually pick me up. Stupid shuttle drivers who won't make the extra five minute drive to Jocotenango! The bus ride to San Salvador from Guatemala City can last between four and six hours, depending on traffic and how long it takes to cross the border. The border crossing was rather anticlimactic and felt a little like crossing the border into Canada from the US. Ok, much more low-tech, but still, very low-key. They didn't even stamp my passport! All I have is the exit stamp from Guate to prove that I even left the country. A heads up for anyone who wants to stay more than 90 days in Guatemala...leaving to spend time in El Salvador or Honduras or Nicaragua still counts towards your 90 days, so head toward Mexico or book a trip to Costa Rica or Panama.
I thought San Salvador would be a lot more like Guatemala City than it was. There are, of course, many similarities...they are more alike than say, Boston and Guatemala City. But you can definitely tell you're not in Guatemala anymore. The most obvious clue, of course, is you don't see people walking around in the traditional indigenous dress that is ubiquitous in Guatemala. El Salvador does not have the same indigenous population that Guatemala does. Also, the Salvadoran accent is different than in Guatemala, as is (of course) the slang used. I had to learn or at least become familiar with a whole new range of slang...it got a little confusing! I spent most of my time staying in a hostel in the colonia Centroamerica, a neighborhood that is relatively safe (but not as safe or ritzy as the Colonia Escalon neighborhood where many of the slightly more expensive hostels and guest houses are located) and that is close to the MetroCentro mall. Which, apparently, is the biggest mall complex in Central America. The thing is enormous. I later learned that to get around, especially on buses, people tend to navigate around landmarks and malls. So you can tell people that you live near the naked lady (a statue of a naked woman) or the naked man (a mural of a naked man on the side of an art museum next to the Sheraton Hotel) or near MetroCentro or one of the other big malls. The shopping centers are the new big thing in San Salvador apparently (well, relatively new). Don't picture them as a mall in the US...things change in warm climates (are malls different in California? I have no idea). This is more of an open-air thing, with shops facing plazas or patios with fountains and seating and cafe's etc. And this is where much of the partying happens at night...bars and restaurants in these shopping centers are the hip place be if you are part of the young Salvadoran middle and upper class, somewhat replacing the bars in the Zona Rosa as the cool nightspots. Or so my friends tell me. So if you want to go out in San Salvador you head for a mall....or the beach, which is a thirty to forty minute drive. Friday nights are nuts for driving down to the coast, especially in tourist towns like El Tunco (where we ended up one Friday night). It seems like half the city of San Salvador heads to the beach to party on the weekends. Kind of like what happens in Antingua on the weekends (and Tuesday nights, haha), but a little less family friendly in some places. And with more of a beachy atmosphere, of course.
I'll skip over most of the boring bits of my trip to San Salvador. A lot of it was spent sitting in the basement of the National Library, where the newspaper archives are kept. The National Library takes up one of the sides of the main plaza in the downtown, alongside the Presidential Palace and across from the National Cathedral. The main librarian at the archives is this skeezy guy that couldn't stop himself from hitting on me...I have to admit it was a little creepy. He had no problem sitting down for a chat every once in a while while I was working and at one point told me this long story about the first woman with blue eyes he had ever met, who was a nurse from the States who had come to his village to give vaccinations. He told me he fell in love with her and went back everyday to try to get a second vaccination so he could see her again. I got this story one day after he noticed I have blue eyes. There wasn't much in the way of noise control in the archives...the librarians would talk loudly on the phone or chat with each other or with other patrons. I finally ended up going to the library with my ipod and headphones in an attempt to deter the librarian from talking to me and to drown out the noise of conversation.
Guate can ( The downtown of San Salvador is not really all that much like the downtown in Guatemala. Ok, for a gal from the States I guess it is pretty similar, but it felt completely different to me. Inyou don't see that many stalls selling blackmarket goods once you get off the Sexta Avenida (6th Ave.), the main plaza is enormous and the central market is mostly underground. In San Salvador stalls selling food, clothes, pirated cds and dvds, and really anything else youthink of fill the streets. There are streets that I figure must have been built to hold twolanes of traffic that are crowded and narrow and barely let buses through due to the amount ofstreet vendors. A Salvadoran acquaintance told me this is partly due to the world economicrecession, since there is little hope for the average Salvador to get a job with a living wage once they've lost theirs and many more have resorted to the informal sector to support theirfamilies than in the past. Walking around in downtown San Salvador is quite an experience forsomeone not used to this kind of thing. Being a blond, tall, blue-eyed foreigner in this part oftown definitely made me stand out. The only time I spotted any other obvious foreignersobviously I'm not counting foreigners who are from other Central American countries) was during the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of murder of Monseñor Romero. I'll try to talk about Romero in a separate post, but for those of you who haven' t heard of him, he was the archbishop of El Salvador (I'm pretty sure that was his position) during the height of the Civil War how broke with the Church's positions on some things and defended the lives of those targeted by the Salvadoran military during the Civil War. He was assassinated while holding mass by the Salvadoran military in 1980, one day after he preached a sermon calling on Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their weapons and stop violating the human rights of their fellow citizens. During his funeral the military opened fire on the crowd of 250,000 mourners, killing between 30 and 50 people. He is currently undergoing the process of consideration for cannonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.
What else can I say about El Salvador? Let's see.... Well, the buses are much cleaner and easier to get around on than in Guatemala. They even have turnstiles to get to the seats and bus stops where people actually get in line to get on the bus. This was a shock to me the first time I saw it. In El Salvador I am not canche (blond) like in Guatemala but am chelita (light skinned). Both of these words, of course, are slang, so don't go around using them thinking it's universal spanish. I was recently told that canche in Peru isn't a very polite word. There are not many hostels in San Salvador, partly due to the lack of tourist attraction in the capital....if tourists come the usually are the a day or two before heading to the beach. But there are guest houses, which apparently got their start when FMLN (who was the group on the left of the Civil War) militants began to open their homes to travelers in order to demonstrate their way of life to those interested. Or so said a guide book and a few websites I checked out to confirm this one. It's a lot hotter in San Salvador than in Guatemala City, which made sitting in the basement of the library with no fan or windows a lot less comfortable than you would think. Sure, basements tend to be cooler, but not when it's wicked dang hot outside. Then it's just slightly less dang hot and much less well ventilated than being at street level.
Ok, so that's as much as my brain can handle for today.... Jenn, I'm sorry I took so long writing this. I have no real good excuse other than pereza. But I'll see what I can do to get back on track.
I thought San Salvador would be a lot more like Guatemala City than it was. There are, of course, many similarities...they are more alike than say, Boston and Guatemala City. But you can definitely tell you're not in Guatemala anymore. The most obvious clue, of course, is you don't see people walking around in the traditional indigenous dress that is ubiquitous in Guatemala. El Salvador does not have the same indigenous population that Guatemala does. Also, the Salvadoran accent is different than in Guatemala, as is (of course) the slang used. I had to learn or at least become familiar with a whole new range of slang...it got a little confusing! I spent most of my time staying in a hostel in the colonia Centroamerica, a neighborhood that is relatively safe (but not as safe or ritzy as the Colonia Escalon neighborhood where many of the slightly more expensive hostels and guest houses are located) and that is close to the MetroCentro mall. Which, apparently, is the biggest mall complex in Central America. The thing is enormous. I later learned that to get around, especially on buses, people tend to navigate around landmarks and malls. So you can tell people that you live near the naked lady (a statue of a naked woman) or the naked man (a mural of a naked man on the side of an art museum next to the Sheraton Hotel) or near MetroCentro or one of the other big malls. The shopping centers are the new big thing in San Salvador apparently (well, relatively new). Don't picture them as a mall in the US...things change in warm climates (are malls different in California? I have no idea). This is more of an open-air thing, with shops facing plazas or patios with fountains and seating and cafe's etc. And this is where much of the partying happens at night...bars and restaurants in these shopping centers are the hip place be if you are part of the young Salvadoran middle and upper class, somewhat replacing the bars in the Zona Rosa as the cool nightspots. Or so my friends tell me. So if you want to go out in San Salvador you head for a mall....or the beach, which is a thirty to forty minute drive. Friday nights are nuts for driving down to the coast, especially in tourist towns like El Tunco (where we ended up one Friday night). It seems like half the city of San Salvador heads to the beach to party on the weekends. Kind of like what happens in Antingua on the weekends (and Tuesday nights, haha), but a little less family friendly in some places. And with more of a beachy atmosphere, of course.
I'll skip over most of the boring bits of my trip to San Salvador. A lot of it was spent sitting in the basement of the National Library, where the newspaper archives are kept. The National Library takes up one of the sides of the main plaza in the downtown, alongside the Presidential Palace and across from the National Cathedral. The main librarian at the archives is this skeezy guy that couldn't stop himself from hitting on me...I have to admit it was a little creepy. He had no problem sitting down for a chat every once in a while while I was working and at one point told me this long story about the first woman with blue eyes he had ever met, who was a nurse from the States who had come to his village to give vaccinations. He told me he fell in love with her and went back everyday to try to get a second vaccination so he could see her again. I got this story one day after he noticed I have blue eyes. There wasn't much in the way of noise control in the archives...the librarians would talk loudly on the phone or chat with each other or with other patrons. I finally ended up going to the library with my ipod and headphones in an attempt to deter the librarian from talking to me and to drown out the noise of conversation.
Guate can ( The downtown of San Salvador is not really all that much like the downtown in Guatemala. Ok, for a gal from the States I guess it is pretty similar, but it felt completely different to me. Inyou don't see that many stalls selling blackmarket goods once you get off the Sexta Avenida (6th Ave.), the main plaza is enormous and the central market is mostly underground. In San Salvador stalls selling food, clothes, pirated cds and dvds, and really anything else youthink of fill the streets. There are streets that I figure must have been built to hold twolanes of traffic that are crowded and narrow and barely let buses through due to the amount ofstreet vendors. A Salvadoran acquaintance told me this is partly due to the world economicrecession, since there is little hope for the average Salvador to get a job with a living wage once they've lost theirs and many more have resorted to the informal sector to support theirfamilies than in the past. Walking around in downtown San Salvador is quite an experience forsomeone not used to this kind of thing. Being a blond, tall, blue-eyed foreigner in this part oftown definitely made me stand out. The only time I spotted any other obvious foreignersobviously I'm not counting foreigners who are from other Central American countries) was during the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of murder of Monseñor Romero. I'll try to talk about Romero in a separate post, but for those of you who haven' t heard of him, he was the archbishop of El Salvador (I'm pretty sure that was his position) during the height of the Civil War how broke with the Church's positions on some things and defended the lives of those targeted by the Salvadoran military during the Civil War. He was assassinated while holding mass by the Salvadoran military in 1980, one day after he preached a sermon calling on Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their weapons and stop violating the human rights of their fellow citizens. During his funeral the military opened fire on the crowd of 250,000 mourners, killing between 30 and 50 people. He is currently undergoing the process of consideration for cannonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.
What else can I say about El Salvador? Let's see.... Well, the buses are much cleaner and easier to get around on than in Guatemala. They even have turnstiles to get to the seats and bus stops where people actually get in line to get on the bus. This was a shock to me the first time I saw it. In El Salvador I am not canche (blond) like in Guatemala but am chelita (light skinned). Both of these words, of course, are slang, so don't go around using them thinking it's universal spanish. I was recently told that canche in Peru isn't a very polite word. There are not many hostels in San Salvador, partly due to the lack of tourist attraction in the capital....if tourists come the usually are the a day or two before heading to the beach. But there are guest houses, which apparently got their start when FMLN (who was the group on the left of the Civil War) militants began to open their homes to travelers in order to demonstrate their way of life to those interested. Or so said a guide book and a few websites I checked out to confirm this one. It's a lot hotter in San Salvador than in Guatemala City, which made sitting in the basement of the library with no fan or windows a lot less comfortable than you would think. Sure, basements tend to be cooler, but not when it's wicked dang hot outside. Then it's just slightly less dang hot and much less well ventilated than being at street level.
Ok, so that's as much as my brain can handle for today.... Jenn, I'm sorry I took so long writing this. I have no real good excuse other than pereza. But I'll see what I can do to get back on track.
