Well good morning from Hurricane Watch Central…. Serriously, why do the hurricanes all come on the weekend? I’m signing in for Angie today to tell you all about my trip down to visit El Salvador. I’ve written the post in my head for the last several weeks trying to come up with a way to tell you how wonderful my trip was, and how great Angie is doing, but I’m not a fabulous writer so I’ll just dig in.
I got to El Salvador on Wednesday evening. The flight was smooth and on time… My luggage however didn’t make the flight with me. Let me just tell you, that while I brushed up on some Spanish words, and I know a lot of food words and I can usually figure out what people are saying… EVERY word I ever learned in Spanish class left my head when I was standing in line trying to figure out how to get my luggage back. 
Angie of course was stuck on the other side of customs trying to figure out where I was.
I finally made it out of the airport and Angie met me right by the door. We took a taxi to a hostel where a lot of Peace Corps volunteers hang out while in San Salvador. I think Angie knew every person there both times we stayed. (Keep track of the transportation here, so far, plane and taxi…). We had a good dinner and ate some soda flavored Jelly Belly’s for dessert. It was so nice to see Angie. It had been over a year since I had seen her back in good old Lisle. I know everyone wants to know all about Ang, she’s great. Her Spanish is remarkably perfect, right down to the accent. She looks great and is loving El Salvador and all the people. (for the record she probably isn’t loving the scorpions right about now)
We took a bus (the special directo) to San Miguel. It was about a two hour ride. Then we took another bus to another town to pick up some groceries and some deoderant for me. Then we took a covered pick up truck to the closest stop to Angie’s house. We hiked in to Angie’s house. I would have liked to measure the distance or the altitude that we traveled to get in and out of Angie’s site. Going in is a long way down a mountain and then a little ways up. When we got to Angie’s house I got the grand tour. Her house is really neat, one room, two doors a tiled floor and concrete blocks. She has a latrine a little ways away from the house and just off the porch she has a pila which is like an outdoor water spiget and concrete holding container. This is where Angie gets her drinking water, washes her face, washes her clothes, takes a shower and so on and so forth. I’ll try to post a picture. After my tour and getting settled in we went to Angie’s friend Edith’s house for Papusas. They are tortilla like bread pieces with a filling (this time it was cheese). Edith is our age, but already has three kids! Her family is lovely and they have been really good to Ang.
The next day we went to the school where Angie was directing a play with the students there for a school holiday. After lunch we walked to the nearest town to meet members of the El Salvador Rotary Club who were coming to evaluate the river near Angie’s house that needs a bridge. To cross the river at this point you have to take your shoes off and wade through. During the rainy season it can get dangerous for the students to cross it to go to school. The Rotary club members gave us a ride home in their pick up. I got to stand up on the back so I could get the best view. After dinner we met up with the futbol players and they let us play… That was very generous of them. LOL, nothing like getting beat by some very little kids.
On Saturday, we got to try our hand at making tortillas with Nina Victoria and her niece Tina. Again, I’ll try to post a picture. It was harder to do than I would have thought. And all of the women make them three times a day! Then we went climbed back up the mountain out of Angie´s site and took a covered pick up to Delicious so that I could get a matata (woven purse). We then took a different pick up to Perquin where we ate at an American restaurant called the Lenka. It was very nice. We even ate ice cream! From there we walked to the revolutionary war museum and guerilla camp. It was very nice to learn more about El Salvador and all of the reasons for the war. We took a pick up back and then caught a ride on an (empty) garbage truck back to Angie’s house! I told you the different forms of transportation were interesting. We ate dinner with Edith and her family and then stopped by Nina Santos house for some tamales. (They were so good!)
On Sunday some friends walked with us to another Peace Corps Volunteer´s site to see a waterfall. It was such a long walk!!! We got to see some beautiful views, but it was a hot long walk. The waterfall itself was gorgeous! It was well worth the hike. On the way home we were able to hitch a ride on the back of a pick up truck, which was such a blessing because Angie and I were not feeling particularly well at this point. We had some sort of sore throat, cough type thing that the whole town seemed to have. We made it home and stopped by to say goodbye to a few people.
Monday we walked out of Angie’s site and took the bus to San Miguel and another bus to San Salvador. We called our taxi cab friend to take us back to the airport to go pick up my bag. We finally got my bag!!! Then we took the taxi back to the Western bus terminal to go to Santa Ana. From Santa Ana we took another bus to Lago Coatepecue which is a big crater lake. It was so pretty! We stayed at a hostel called Amacuilco. They were so nice to us. They had bottled water for sale and lemonade and a beautiful dock that we could sit on.
The next day we took a bus back to Santa Ana and another bus to Parque de los Volcanes. We climbed the Izalco volcano. It was really neat. First you have to climb down Cerro Verde Mountain, then up the Volcano. We climbed with people from Spain and Canada. A park guide and two police officers also climb up with you. When it was all said and done we decided that it was harder to get to Angie’s house than it was to climb the volcano! We stayed another night at the same hostel. Did I mention that the hostel thinks that the aliens are coming? Well of course they are….
Wednesday we hitched a ride back to Santa Ana in the cheese truck. I was able to take some pictures of the crater lake from the moving truck. I’m sure the guy thought we were nuts. From Santa Ana we took a bus back to San Salvador and dropped our stuff back off at the hostel. We went to visit the Museum of Popular Art and had some pizza at Pizza Hut. (It tastes exactly the same!) Then we went to the Mercado to buy a few trinkets to bring home with me. The next morning we took a taxi to the airport and had to say our goodbyes.
So that was the long story of everything that we got to do. If anyone else gets the chance to go down to visit with Angie, do it! I had a fantastic time. It’s great to experience a new culture and the people are just wonderful. Everyone (of course) loves Angie and I feel like she has a great support system down there. I also felt that things were not quite as rustic as I was expecting. Angie is a great tour guide and I know she’d like to see each and every one of you! Many thanks to Angie for being a great hostess, and to all of her readers for listening to me go on and on. If you have any questions about my trip or about what to bring, etc etc, feel free to leave me a comment with your E-mail address and I’ll get back to you.
Que la vaya bien (May the way go well for you)
Jennie
Edited to add: You can make the pictures bigger and see the titles if you click on them. It takes a minute or so to pull up because my files are kind of big.
