Esquipulas, Guatemala to El Salvador

Right now we are staying in Santa Tecla (just outside of San Salvador) with Mauricio’s brother Guillermo and his wife Luz, and their three kids who are more or less the same age as Ari and Mateo, and Figo the dog, so the kids are in heaven! They are being so generous and hospitable to us and our experience so far in El Salvador has been incredible. The day we left Rio Dulce we decided to head for Esquipulas, Guatemala, a small town close to the border with Honduras and El Salvador which is renowned as the religious capital of Central America; Catholics from all over the world make the pilgrimage here to pay homage to the statue of the “Black Christ,” which was carved from dark balsam wood in the late 16th century. As you descend to the town from the mountains, the bright white basilica dominates the landscape. People stream in all days of the week but especially on Sundays, which is of course when we happened to be there. I never thought I would say this, but it was sort of refreshing to see that at least it was not an evangelical church, as they seem to be taking over in Latin America! After a breakfast of cheese pupusas we strolled up the steps of the church and went inside to have a look. Because there were so many people lined up to see the Black Christ and light a candle to ask for help (often in the shape of relevant body parts!) we weren’t able to get a photo, but you can look up the fascinating history of it online. The most interesting thing for us was that there was a whole battalion of black-clad priests running all over the place with plastic buckets filled with holy water, blessing everything from lines of people to crosses to photos…at one point we saw a couple open up the hood of their car and a priest came over with a bucket to bless the engine (at first we thought the bucket was full of water for the radiator!) We were tempted to grab one to bless the westy ourselves….When we first got there we noticed that everyone who comes buys these multicolored fuzzy bands to attach to their vehicle to show that they made the holy trip, so we bought one to accompany our Virgen de la Guadelupe from Real de Catorce on the rearview mirror. Around noon, we decided to head for the border with El Salvador and made it there in about an hour. There were quite a few tractor trailers coming from the pacific port, but other than that there was not much border traffic so it was lucky that we did it on a Sunday. After filling out the necessary paperwork for the vehicle and running from office to office with photocopies we were in El Salvador (and we didn’t pay one cent!). We drove through the quaint mountain town of Metapan and got to Santa Ana, a nice little colonial town. Everything was pretty low-key because it was Sunday, so we decided to head to Lago Coatepeque for the night, an amazingly blue lake in the crater of a volcano. We camped out in the parking lot of a restauarant/bar that is right on the water’s edge and had a stunning view of the sunset over the lake. It was pretty noisy when we first got there because it is where a lot of well-to-do people from San Salvador come for the weekend, but then it quieted down as they all headed back to the city. The next morning we decided to head for Santa Tecla to contact Mauricio’s family. We spent the day getting to know Santa Tecla itself, doing some errands and checking out the market (which reminded us of Mexico). We ate lunch at his place called Cafeteria de la Fuente which was crazy cheap and amazingly good! Our favorite dish so far is relleno de guisquil, which is this squash/zucchini type vegetable that is stuffed with cheese and dipped in batter and then deep fried, and served with tomato sauce – yum! In general, Salvadorans eat really well (at least those that can afford to) lots of veggies (both cooked and raw), a bit of chicken or meat, rice, salad, and these fat, tasty handmade tortillas that are delicious (and of course, there are pupusas…..) In the evening, Luz picked us up in Santa Tecla and showed us to their place where we met the whole family. That evening the kids stayed behind while the parents went out to have a couple of drinks. It was pretty low key (it was a Monday night!) but we got a good idea of how industrialized – and, I hate to say it, North-Americanized - El Salvador is. It is very different from Guatemala, and apparently has the highest population density of any Central American country. We are excited about being in El Salvador, partly because we have always wanted to visit (I guess because we have so many Salvadoran friends) and especially at this moment in history as everyone is gearing up for elections in a week or so, when the FMLN party finally has a real chance of winning so it is pretty exciting. Mauricio has already convinced us to stay at least until next week when he and Edgardo are arriving from Toronto to vote. Yesterday we drove around San Salvador in the westy. We visited the Museum of Anthropology which had an exhibition of Mayan culture and arts. We enjoyed it in the (noisy, polluted, busy) capital, but were happy to arrive back to the cool, breezy outskirts of Santa Tecla. Today we are heading for the Pacific coast to hang out for a few days, where Mauricio and his family have a beach house in San Blas, close to La Libertad.
El domingo, despues de dormir en un estacionamiento en la ciudad de Esquipulas, en Guatemala, cruzamos a El Salvador. Por suerte el cruce de frontera no fue ni muy dificil, ni burocratico. El mismo dia pasamos por Santa Ana, y nos quedamos a dormir a orillas del lago Coaepeque. Ahora estamos en Santa Tecla, en las afueras de San Salvador, quedandonos en la casa de Gullermo y Luz, el hermano de Mauricio. La verdad es que esta gente nos ha recibido mas que bien, y Ari y Teo se la han pasado jugando con Guillermo, Fernando y Fabi, y por supuesto con su perro, Figo. Con Gullermo y Luz salimos el lunes por la noche y entre ceviche y cervezas conversamos y pasamos fenomeno. Raquel tambien nos malcrio bastante y siempre nos prepara ricos cafes, y desayunos, y hasta nos regalo su salcita picante para llevarnos a San Blas (en el Pacifico), que sera nuestro proximo destino. Ahí vamos a esperar a Mauricio y Edgardo que estan llegando desde Toronto para votar en las elecciones. De mas esta decir, que este pais en este momento es una fiesta, y sin cantar victoria, espero sea mas emotivo cuando gane el FMLN. Todo pareceria ser que asi sera. Ayer salimos a manejar por el centro de San Salvador, y a pesar de perdernos mas de una vez, conocimos un monton. Tambien fuimos al Museo de Antropologia, al mercado central, y por supuesto a comer por ahí.