Back on the road, destination El Salvador

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The four flights and a little road time meant it took over 28 hours door to door leaving us disorientated on arrival in San Salvador. At Panama the flight turnaround was so quick our bags didn’t keep up with us - fortunately they arrived lunchtime the following day.

Home for the next few weeks was at Bessy's, a Spanish teacher at the Academia Britanica Cuscatleca school where Mark was volunteering as cricket coach and getting back into playing as part of the process.

We were keen to experience a bit of normal Salvadorian life with a local person rather than take the easy route of stopping with the local ex-pat school community. The house was situated on a busy road near the biggest football stadium in El Salvador - Stadia Custcatalan, we looked forward to seeing a match there. It was nearing midnight when we arrived and one of the first greetings came from Lucas a big fat friendly Golden Retriever.

The following day (Sunday) Bessy helped us settle in by taking us shopping at El Salvador’s version of Makro but with American style food portions - this was followed by a drive through Wendy’s keeping Mark and Bessy happy. The morning had already been quite a different experience with well over 45,000 people descending on Stadia Cuscatlán for a big political gathering of the FMLN party to decide who their next Presidential candidate would be for 2013. It was impossible to move near the house with bus after bus lined up dropping off more party members. In the evening Bessy kindly dropped us off to meet Andrew the school cricket organiser at a posh plaza. We were to find that the kindness demonstrated by Bessy on day one was her all over.

The following day we were in good spirits and tested out our rusty Spanish at the local market and mall, purchasing those few essential items we’d forgotten. Although we’d just arrived the week was to prove very busy. I'd made contact with the Urban Dog Sanctuary www.urbandogsanctuary.jimdo.com and by Tuesday we met Georgie the founder of the project. On our first day of meeting she picked us up and took us along with her to an interview she was giving at a radio station for the city promoting her fundraising event 'Chuchibus' on the way she was keen to introduce us to a traditional Salvadorian breakfast. The sanctuary had around 40 dogs offering kennelling and behavioural training to raise money for the rehoming work.

Although quite a long way from our accommodation the rescue site is situated in a stunning location on the side of a volcano which dominates the city, with amazing city views and fresh cool air it was a real contrast to the city heat and smog. That afternoon we were let loose to exercise two crazy hounds with behavioural issues, the views from the top of the volcano more than made up for the pulling and barking whenever we passed another dog. The project has a couple of full time local staff and about four boys aged ten who help out with dog walking.

It was clear after only a couple of days in the city that it has a lot of poverty and like many other countries we’ve visited it’s because it’s recovering from a civil war and has the added problem that it’s also tackling some infamous gang activity. This disrupted past and present means that El Salvador hasn’t been a big tourist destination. The local people haven't had a reason to learn English so you can't be lazy with the language. We’d realised the need for basic Spanish and eagerly started lessons the second week, four hours each day for a couple of weeks to get us started.

Shopping had some odd contrasts - the food shops have anything you could want but the shopping malls don't have all the brand names that we see in Europe or saw in South East Asia.

We weren’t quite sure how we’d get around in the city as we’d been advised to be really careful and not to go out after dark in quite a few areas and/or take public transport. Life was starting to look like it was going to be tricky without our own transport. Our concerns weren’t helped by the fact that nearly every shop had a man with a shotgun outside it, even the bakery.

We had to do something and we found taxis were generally fine. Our first attempt at taking the bus wasn’t so successful we boarded the wrong bus and then when trying to rectify it took another bus in the wrong direction. It’s the buses that churn out huge amounts of gunk into the atmosphere.

We'd heard various views on how difficult or not it might be to get vegetarian food so I was really pleased to find it wasn’t difficult staple foods are – refried beans, (some version of) cheese, bananas as well as pupusas being eaten for all and any meal of the day. Pupusas were Mark’s favourite dish you’ll be hearing more about them.

Bessy was keen for us to see the local sites and after returning from work one day took us up to Puerto de Diablo a viewing point over the city. We stopped for coffee and pupusas on the way back looking out over the city as the night drew in. Funnily enough at Puerto de Diablo a camera crew turned up and interviewed Bessy about the unseasonal wind that was occurring over the past week (nothing to do with Mark’s arrival). She was on the 9pm news later that night.

On Mark's first visit to the school he was shown the facilities that it offered for cricket – 'it was a bit of a shock to the system. The nice sized oval outfield was shared with a full sized football pitch, with the grass wicket square in the centre circle. It transpired that the school didn’t approve of too much rolling either as the area might become too hard for the footballers. Hmmm. The rest of the facilities were good – an artificial wicket net to one side and a big auditorium for indoor & soft ball coaching/games'. Mark was drafted into the Mayans team & they comfortably won their first match – Mark managing 22 and a couple of wickets. 'The standard was very mixed, a combination of a few decent players & some complete beginners, coupled with the lottery of a randomly bouncing pitch, made for an entertaining & bizarre game. The coaching started slowly, not many attendees in the first couple of sessions, but after a bit of rallying the numbers increased to near double figures and he was able to help some 15-17 year olds who still needed coaching in some of the very basics. It was good to get out onto a cricket field again'.



Following Saturday's game Mark and I were looking forward to our ‘Chuchibus’ day at the beach. Normal dog routines such as walking, taking your dog in the car or along with you on trips isn’t normal practice for Salvadorians. It’s more common for the dog to be kept either inside the house while people go to work or to be let out for the day to walk the streets and return when the owner gets home, most people don’t think about 'taking the dog for a walk'. Georgi is keen to re-educate people about appropriate animal care. This was her first ‘bus trip’ and was organised to take owners and their dogs to the beach – like every other day in El Salvador it was an early start we were dropped at the pick-up point at 6 am. We travelled around the city picking up dogs and their owners before heading off to a beach hostel where Georgie and her team had organised a range of events with the proceedings led by 3 clowns. We were to find that Salvadorians have a real affection for clowns.



Whilst Mark was busy at cricket I was to get the first experience of the notorious downtown area Bessy inviting me along on an after work shopping trip I was told to leave anything valuable in the car which was parked in a secure car park. As well as navigating a huge bustling market area our trip included a visit to see the Cathedral where the body of Father Romero lays, a national (and international) hero who was murdered in 1980 because he spoke the truth about the difficult lives of the poor in the country. We passed by the National Theatre and the National Palace and through a large square busy with local people busy getting some early-ish Christmas shopping done. Although it didn’t feel too intimidating I was prepared to take Bessy’s word for it, and after a coffee and cake we headed back to the house, with Bessy encouraging me to roll up the windows as we went through certain neighbourhoods.

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Photos

Monument near to Bessy's

Cricket field with Volcano back drop

Lucas hiding with Toy

Decent Nets

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Lively Pitch......

Tinas Pics 161
Lucas wants his toy!