I was sitting on the beach watching yet another beautiful sunset, this time in EL Zonte in El Salvador, watching all the surfers out on the water, some of them quite skilled it seemed. Some people seemed to sit on their boards waiting and never catching a wave, if that’s what you call it - I’ve never surfed before. Some people keep trying, but don't ever make it to standing up. Some people get pummeled by the waves and their boards go flying. Some people, me, never even touch a surfboard. But for the last couple weeks, since I left Mexico, I've been feeling like the people who are about to get the wave but then it’s gone, over and over again.
One moment, 1 am getting on the ferry across Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, about to arrive at my next hostel after a 14-hour journey from San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, and across the border into Guatemala, excited to have found a lesser-known village so I could just enjoy the nature of the beautiful lake. The next moment, I'm realizing that I've accidentally booked myself at a party hostel. The English guy I sat next to at dinner said it wasn't a party hostel, but 15 minutes later, they were bribing the 40 or 50 guests sitting in their restaurant to participate in their open mic by offering free tequila shots to anyone who took a turn - "you can even tell a bad joke in a language no one understands, and we'll give you a free shot!” But it wasn’t a party hostel. Right… One moment I think I'm getting my whole dorm room to myself after a long day… The next moment, the tequila kicks in for a bunch of people and they start singing bad American pop songs at the top of their lungs… until 2am.
It goes the other way too. One moment I'm realizing I made a big mistake in hostel choice. The next moment, I’m walking into my own airbnb room at a little hotel with my own bathroom, in a different village on the lake. No party people, just the usual roosters and barking dogs reminding me I’m in Central America. I didn't meet any other travelers at this airbnb, but I got to meet one of the men who worked there who is from Guatemala City. We talked for a while, all in Spanish somehow, about animals, since they have pet rabbits, parakeets, and cats there, politics, and the different kinds of hippies, since I had moved to the village that's been taken over by ex-pat hippies offering yoga, tantric workshops, ecstatic dance, family constellation sessions, etc. These are all things I'm into, but it feels off to me because you're in a place with a lot of indigenous Mayan people struggling financially and then all these ex-pats moving here, half of them not learning Spanish at all, which is actually the second language here, Tzutujil being the first, and charging hundreds of dollars for these workshops they're offering. It would be nice to think that they are somehow giving back to the community in a balanced way, but l am very skeptical.
I had a few days in El Salvador that felt like almost catching a wave but failing. H started when I suddenly realized that I hadn't done my research about covid requirements well enough. Four days before l planned to go to Nicaragua, l found out that unvaxxed travelers have to do a PCR test to enter the country. Uggh... So one moment, I'm getting ready to go to the coast, and the next moment, l have to make a detour to San Salvador, the capital, which I had been trying to avoid. Luckily, El Salvador is a very small country, so it wasn't going to take too much extra time. I still made it to the coast before sunset, PCR test completed. That night, I sat on the deck of my hostel, which is right on the beach, watching the full moon rise over the water, listening to the waves crashing, and watching a fisherman wading in the ocean with his fishing pole and head lamp. He caught one! I was reflecting on my day, which could have been very stressful, navigating the big city and a confusing public transit system with all my stuff, in the heat, and only knowing the language halfway. I found myself crying, thinking about how many kind, helpful people on the local buses I had met along the way, from the woman sitting next to me who offered to hold a young child when he and his older siblings and father had no place to sit on the bus... to the bus driver who was trying to explain to me how to get a different bus so I could get to the clinic... To the woman who overheard him and said she was going to that bus and she would show me the way... To the other woman who overhead the first woman telling me she was getting off before my stop and said she was getting off at my stop so she could show me the way.
I don't know what your first thoughts are when you think of El Salvador - maybe gangs, violence, civil war, government corruption… To be honest, I probably would not have come here if I hadn't met an English woman 3 years ago in Guatemala who had just been here and said it was safe and she enjoyed it. She was the first person I ever met who had travelled to this country. I only needed one story like this to get me thinking about traveling here, to realize it was just like every other country I’ve visited that people told me was unsafe but then I went and I found just the opposite. Of course there is a lot more nuance to whether a country is safe or unsafe and for whom (travelers or locals), and when (now or 5 or 10 years ago), and where (on the city streets after midnight or in places that locals recommend to go). And for El Salvador, apparently things changed a lot for everyone here when they got a new president, Bukele, in 2019. Now, when I think of El Salvador, I will remember all of the kind and friendly people I met here. And the delicious pupusas!
P.S. I’m posting this from Nicaragua the next day, so I got my test results in time and it’s good I wasn’t able to get the second test, which would have cost an extra $80 - $100!
