El Salvador: August 2006

Page 6 - Leaving the Mountains and Heading to San Salvador

Ok, the FAM part of this trip is wrapped up.

I’m sitting in my room in the Radisson in downtown San Salvador (the capital city of El Salvador) and it’s nine pm. Tomorrow morning the FAM group all flies out of here, except for me. I’m going to get picked up and taken to K-59, and who knows, maybe I’ll even catch a wave when I’m out there.

Today we left the Entre Pinos hotel up in the mountains, drove back through the town of Palma, with its artwork still splashed all over the place, and made the long winding drive down through the mountains and arrived in the middle of San Salvador to check in to the Radisson.

After a short period of time to get our bags into our hotel rooms, we went to a meeting room and got to know multiple tour operators down here and see what the deal was with those guys. After that we then were bussed out to the airport (it’s a pretty good ways from town) and given the cook’s tour of the kitchen at the Taca facility at the airport.

Got to walk through of the hangar where they were doing maintenance on a couple of airplanes, and also got to go inside to their mission control, where they keep track of everything.

Once that was done, we got taken to a conference room where the Taca folks asked us how we liked the tour, thanked us for our kind forbearance, and then sent us on our way, back to the hotel. The group then intended to go out and eat, but I declined and am sitting here instead of dining out, ‘cause I’m supposed to get picked up a 0630 hours, and I’d like to at least get a LITTLE sleep prior to getting up tomorrow. Otherwise I won’t be worth a shit, and who needs that?

So I guess it’s time to wrap this little adventure up and try to find some closing words or something.

In the first place, this was one of the funnest trips I’ve been on that didn’t involve me actually catching any waves. I’m a caustic bastard and I’ve gone out of my way to poke fun at anything and everything on this trip in my little stories, but let me tell you something: This place rocks, and the people down here COULD NOT BE NICER. Every last one of them was just stupendously kind and helpful AT ALL TIMES WITHOUT FAIL.

My FAMbuddies were a diverse bunch of people, and I’m gonna miss them all. Yes they gabbled like a flock of deranged starlings on the interminable bus rides, and yes I just tuned that stuff out and stared out the windows every time, but whenever there was any actual interaction between myself and them, they could not have been any nicer. All of ‘em.

And speaking of bus rides, despite my gripes and carping, it was a totally bitchin way to see the place. I grabbed a window seat near the front of the bus every time (and when I didn’t, my FAMbuddies very graciously left one open up there for me), and I got to just suck in the scenery of El Salvador like a dry sponge.

I’ve seen a lot.

Sugarcane by the mile. Super excellent roads. El Salvadorians going about their mundane business. Swamps. Volcanoes. Mountain ranges. Cars on their sides in the ditches along the side of the road (shades of Costa Rica, there). Hotels, hostels, and inns. Businesses by the gillion. Little kids running through the grass. Cows, horses, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, chickens, buzzards, owls, ducks, hawks, dragon flies, bats, deer, lizards, fish, and a few other things I can’t think of right this second. Old men and ladies just hanging around by the side of the road. Business guys rushing here and there. Ice cream vendors. Armed guards. Barbed wire. Adobe houses. Sprawling cities. Forests. Cattle land. Railroad tracks. Rivers. Ravines. Cliffs. Rockfalls. Exposed ash deposits in deep road cuts. Clouds. Sun. Rain. Mist. Trees. Flowers. Cars. Trucks. Busses. Billboards. Political graffiti. Churches. Lakes. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The owners of the places we’ve stayed have been the best, too. Every one of them bent over backwards to try to make our stay as pleasant as possible.

This country is just coming out of a time of some serious strife, and everybody down here seems to have had enough of that shit for one lifetime (or several, even) and now they just want to get on with getting on with it.

The place is wide open, and there’s plenty down here that nobody outside really knows very much of anything about at all.

There are outfits down here that would just LOVE to show you around the place, and let you share a little of what they’ve got going on here in El Salvador.

And judging from my own personal experience, there’s probably more than just a few completely unexploited waves, going unridden day after day after day.

Surfing down here seems to be something that has yet to fully enter the consciousnesses of a LOT of people. But that’s changing. Take my FAMbuddies for example. Bless their hearts, they were just as clueless as anybody could possibly be when it came to surfing, but they wanted to learn.

And, as anyone who surfs seriously will attest, surfing is a devilishly difficult subject to convey to the uninitiated.

But they hung in there with me, and before it was all said and done, it was obvious to me that they were beginning to get the picture.

They just aren’t familiar with it yet. It’s all very strange to them. What this means is that they’re still not completely there when it comes to fully maximizing the surfing potential of this place. Yes, there’s some places with waves that people seem to be aware of, but there’s a lot of other places where surfing is just a completely alien concept. Needless to say, there’s niches to fill and waves to ride down here that are as of yet completely untapped.

This is a good thing.

And as far as the non-surfing end of things goes, the part I made so much fun of in the earlier installments of these essays, well, like I said earlier, it’s just wide open.

If you’re thinking of coming down here with the family, and maybe aren’t too sure if there’s anything for the non-surfers to do, then don’t worry. There’s plenty.

And, just to sweeten the deal, I heard repeatedly that “El Salvador is the country of one hour.”

And what this means is that you can get to just about anywhere in this place in just an hour.

It’s a day tripper’s paradise.

And, after having driven more than just a couple of miles along the roads here, I can assure you that for the most part, this is exactly the case.

If you come down here and the waves are flat, then head up to Cerro Verde and check out the volcano complex and all the cool shit that’s up there.

Or head for the mountains, go to the town of Palma, and get some really good local craft work, done in a beautifully unique style.

Or have a look at pre-Columbian culture, artifacts, ruins and archeological sites. It’s all over the place.

Or do a coffee tour. It’s actually fun and you can’t beat the weather up at the altitudes where they’re growing the coffee.

And speaking of weather, it has been relentlessly nice the whole time I’ve been here so far. It just doesn’t want to rain in the mornings, and even the afternoons have been pleasant and mostly rain free. Brilliant sunshine and hot down by the ocean, or brilliant sunshine and cool up in the hills.

Take your pick. Hell, do ‘em both in the same day. No problem.

And when it comes to driving around, you just can’t believe how good the road system is down here. These guys have got a really good thing going with their roads. All the better to make El Salvador the country of one hour.

Oh hell, I could go on and on and on with this, and I’ve probably gone on with this too far already.

Oh well.

Look, here’s the deal: El Salvador kicks ass and if you can get down here, then you really oughtta do it.

There, how’s that?

Now I’m gonna go to bed, get some sleep, and head on down to my intended surf destination in this place, bright and early in the morning.

See ya later.