El Salvador Christmas 2014

We flew from Belize to El Salvador on Avianca airlines. It was about a 1 hour flight. Avianca is great! Even if you only have a short flight they feed you a little sandwich, a cookie and your choice of beverage (even an "adult" beverage!) Arriving after dark, we ended up taking a taxi to La Libertad, a beach town were we rented rooms at Hotel Pacific Sunrise. The hotel was Ok....the outside looked better than the inside, but it was clean and there was A/C , TV, and a decent pool. The staff was also very nice.

We didnt do much the first night, except eat and chillax. The next day was Christmas Eve so town was bustling. The Latin American countries I have been in during Christmas seem to really celebrate Christmas with the family on Christmas Eve night: the big dinner and if gifts are to be exchanged, that is when it occurs. First we explored the pier, where all the fish sellers are located.

The amount of fish in both quantity and selection was amazing. I am going to post just a few pictures here even though I took a ton. I was amazed!! And it was cheap! There were whole tunas for only 5.00 US dollars!!

We ate at a little place on the malecon (that is Spanish for boardwalk). There are LOTS of little restaurants and shops there, but most serve pretty much the same thing. Phil found the clams he had been looking for:

They weren't as good as the ones in Mazatlan, probably because of their environment (black volcanic sand in the ocean and beach there). Here are Mayra, Phil and I having lunch

There was also something interesting: the drying of eels for export to Guatemala! Here is a pic of the fish drying in the sun

Another interesting sight was how they lifted the boats up to the pier. After the morning fishing, the fishermen all stored their boats on the pier. It was very odd to me as I had never seen that before. Here is a pic of them lifting the boat to the pier. It went amazingly fast!

Things are very very cheap in El Salvador. Here is an example of a couple of signs:

For those of you who don't read Spanish, the top sign says: Cocktails and Ceviche from $3.00 and Meat and Seafood from $6.00. The other sign is self-explanatory. As you can see, things are very very cheap there. It just goes to show that companies price their products according to what the market will bear. For example, I bought 2 liter bottles of water and a large bottle of Gatorade for only $2.25 US dollars. El Salvador is a dollarized economy much in the same way as Panama. They use the US dollar as their currency instead of having their own. Oddly enough, they hardly use paper one- dollar bills though, they use all the dollar coins that Americans pretty much refuse to use. I guess they end up in El Salvador and in Panama. Here are some of the coins. Remember these?

We then decided to go check out El Tunco, which is a beach town nearby that is known for surfing. It is definitely a town that caters more to foreign tourists, with many signs in English and prices a bit higher (but still very reasonable!). Bucket of beer for $6.00?? Hell yeah!

We also found a car to rent and were to pick it up the next day. We started to hitchike back to La Libertad, but the bus came along and we took it. The buses are all decked out in the front and outside. Inside it is CROWDED!! That is probably because it is so cheap to ride! Only .25 cents got us back to La Libertad

After getting off the bus we decided to walk over to El Centro which is the main part of town where all the local shopping is. It was SO busy because of Christmas! Some of the shops had space in building, but some vendors just had stalls with clothes on tables, shelves, and hanging out front. Then there were vegetable and fruit vendors too. Some people just stood around with clothing hanging all over them on hangers and on their shoulders, shouting out what they had available from pants to bras to electrical wares like cords, flashlights and coax cable! It was a total trip. Here are some pics of the chaos:

There was also a section for the fireworks sellers. The whole section of vendors you see in this pic is fireworks.

There really wasn't much nightlife in La Libertad. Seems like it is mostly a beach town that attracts families from the city on the weekends.

The next day we picked up our rental van and decided to drive to an animal refuge we saw online. Of course, trying to figure out where it was with no map was an adventure. Based on what we saw online, and directions from local people (thank goodness Mayra is fluent in Spanish!) we found ourselves driving up into the hills behind San Salvador. The roads in El Salvador seem to be very good. The winding side road we took off the highway was also paved but that could be because there were enclaves of wealthy peoples' houses here and there. I can see that a lot of the people that can afford to do so don't live in the city, as is common around the world; the live in the "burbs". Here is a pic of one. As you can see, there is a high wall surrounding it, which made it difficult to take a picture

As you can see, there is razor wire on top of the wall. Razer wire was common almost everywhere we went, particularly in San Salvador. As most people are aware, El Salvador has a reputation of being extremely violent. MS-13 and MS-18 are the biggest, most violent gangs in the country and inflict warfare on each other, often at the expense of the general public. There are armed guards EVERYWHERE, from the bank, to the mall, to the grocery store. There is a huge police presence, both local police and federal police. I sneakily took a picture of these guys

On the positive side, El Salvador has taken it's gang violence problem seriously and since 2011 the government has taken steps to reduced the murder rate by 40%, making it lower than neighboring Honduras or Guatemala. Oddly enough, San Salvador has a lower robbery rate than San Jose, Costa Rica.

We continued on up the twisting turning mountain road in search of the animal sanctuary, until we realized we were going to run out of gas. There were NO gas stations up on the mountain, and no villages that we could see. Finally we came upon road that lead to a village and a man waiting on the bus said there would be gas available. We went to a pretty village with cobblestone streets.

There was NO gas to be had, but someone called the man that owned the hardware store, and he came an opened up the store to sell us some gas! Funnily enough, as soon as he opened he got other customers as well for various and sundry things, so he made some money when he wasn't expecting to. I am so happy he opened up, otherwise we would have had to rely on the police to take us to get gas and I am sure they would not have been too happy about that! Here is a pic of Mayra and Phil putting gas in the van

We left the village and finally came across an archway that said "Finca Ernesto" (Ernesto's Farm), we thought that might be the animal sanctuary so we went down a nice little private road to the "farm" It turned out to be a lovely hilltop restaurant, complete with armed guards, of course. They said the sanctuary was out of business (i think they were wrong and just didn't know). We asked if we could eat at the restaurant, because by then we were famished! They said of course we could, and we sat down to one of the best meals ever in a beautiful hacienda-style setting!

After returning to La Libertad we decided to go to El Tunco to see if any nightlife could be found. There were a few people out, but not a lot. We hung out and danced for a while, enjoyed a very good jazz band, and watched a fire twirler on the beach.

The day after Christmas we decided to trek to San Salvador and take advantage of sales if there were any to be had. The shopping was awesome! We managed to find a Wal-Mart. Oddly enough, it was an anchor store at a mall, along with an Office Depot. We bought some necessities including printer ink and personal items we couldn't find in Belize at decent prices (if at all). Right across from it was the Multiplex mall, which we had gone to before. It is a large American-style mall, with many familiar chains including the biggest and busiest Forever 21 store I have ever been in. Mayra and I went NUTS in there! This pic is of just 1/3 of the store.

There were also other chains such as Starbucks, Mister Donut (which would be Phil's undoing as I will later elaborate) Longhorn Steakhouse and Ruby Tuesdays. I snapped this pic there on their patio.

Here is a pic of our mall haul! And did i mention that El Salvador is INEXPENSIVE??

When we finally left the malls it was dark. The road back to La Libertad is very twisty but is well-paved and there are lights in the towns that you pass through. Lots of traffic headed back towards the city with families returning from a day at the beach.

Earlier that day Phil had complained that his stomach was feeling funny. By the next day he was very ill with with dysentery-like symptoms. We concluded that the culprit of his illness was a meat pie he had eaten at Mister Donut (a US chain) the day before. Here is a pic of our meal, I circled the offending food item

Leaving Phil supplied with plenty of water, Mayra and I went off to finish shopping in El Centro. Did I mention that El Salvador is very inexpensive? VERY INEXPENSIVE!!!

The next morning Phil was much worse. He couldn't keep any liquids in his body and his lips were white and he was shaking. Mayra and I very alarmed so she called the hotel manager for help. They called the police who took Phil to the public clinic (there is no hospital in La Libertad). It was very very rough by US standards, but the implements they used on Phil were in single-use sterile packages and the staff were very nice. It was fairly chaotic in there, with many women in line with their babies and children to get vaccines, a women in labor on a table right next to Phil, a drunk on a stretcher who kept demanding tortillas, and some old guy that had a serious bladder problem that was being treated by the nurses flushing out his urethra. All this in the one treatment room where Phil was, with just a curtain in between patients. Here is a pic of the front of the clinic and poor Phil getting IV fluids and antibiotics

I felt quite guilty as they would not accept any money for payment. It was a government clinic and no payments could be accepted. Kudos to the Salvadoran government for providing services to their citizens who can't afford regular medical care. They also gave Phil some antibiotics and anti-vomiting medicine.

That was our last day in El Salvador. We flew back without incident and Phil was feeling better but not 100%.

Despite Phil's illness, we plan to go back! Here are a few more random pictures for you to enjoy

Phil and an inappropriate statue