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Published: February 24th 2014
Beautiful countryside in north El SalvadorWe crossed at Goascoran and it was uneventful. The bus dropped us off at the bus station in San Miguel, it was very busy and seems like an important jump off point for the rest of the country. Just ask anyone and they'll be happy to show you which bus you need to get, just make sure you pronounce the place correctly!
We arrived in a little town called Perquin, we wanted to visited this town and surrounding area because of it's involvement in recent history and events during the Salvadorian civil war. This was lasted approximately 12 years (1980 - 1992) and claimed 75,000 lives, according to the UN. This area was a stronghold of the left leaning guerrilla forces. The town itself is small and remote. We turned up without booking any accommodation and what we did find was very basic, it served our needs though. After we'd dropped all our things off at the hostel we went exploring, it didn't take us long. Before we arrived we'd read about a recreation of a guerrilla camp which was just on the edge of the village, we found it with no issues. On the way we bumped into one
On route to El Mozoteof Jen's friends from Ibiza, Laura!! Random, well I thought it was until I found out they'd both told each other of their travel plans. We found that there were 2 facilities next to each other, one was the said guerrilla camp and one was a historical museum, Laura was very good at speaking Spanish and told us that the guys showing you round the museum were ex-guerillas and they weren't happy with the guerrilla camp due to it's historical inaccuracies, I'll get onto those in a bit. We headed to the museum which was great, it included photos, propaganda posters, all manner of weapons used by both sides, information on major figures on both sides, vehicles both destroyed and still in working order, medical supplies used, the list goes on. The guy showing us around didn't speak any English but because he was talking about specific things you could pick up on key words and work out what he was saying, like which cars were used by who, who supplied what weapons, which pictures he was in etc. The museum was spread over various simple structures and one of the them was the pro-guerilla radio station 'Radio Venceremos', a
The church of El Mozotestation used for anti-government propaganda. This was also used in a plot to kill one of the governments most feared army commanders, according to the museum Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrisa Barrios was hell bent on finding and destroying this radio station and thought he had succeeded, only to be blown up in his helicopter by a bomb planted in a radio transmitter he thought was from the radio station. The destroyed remains of that helicopter are at the museum. There are also huge bomb craters dotted around from one of the many bombing raids. A very interesting and eye opening experience. The guerilla camp was interesting, recreations of bunkers, hideouts, medical stations, artillery casings etc. It was a bit run down, you could tell it had been set up then nothing has been done to maintain it. They even had a zip wire, which we all decided to give a miss, mainly because we liked our bones unbroken. There was bridges from tree to tree too and this was the inaccuracy I mentioned earlier. It was literally pennies to get in so worth it. One of the most interesting things they showed us was how a lot of people in
The original front of the Churchthe area received the radio transmissions, the transmissions were sent down metal wires used as fences. All you had to do was touch your receiver to the fence and you would start receiving the broadcast. There were miles of these fences around the area.
We met with Laura later on and enjoyed the local delicacy , Pupusas. Which are essentially Tacos stuffed with meat, cheese, chillis or any combination of your choice. Very tasty and very cheap.
The next morning we made our way to a village called El Mozote to pay our respects. This village is the site of a massacre carried out by government forces. It's quite a difficult place to get to, it involves a local bus (which are few and far between) and what seems like the main form of transport in this area, a covered pick up truck. Which they cram as many people in as possible for a few pennies. Well we managed to miss our bus by mere seconds so had to walk down to the junction where we were to get our pick up from, fortunately this was only a couple of miles. After waiting for a while at a
The memorial in El Mozotejunction we thumbed down what we thought was the public pick up but turns out just to be a local who was heading towards El Mozote, he kindly gave us a lift and dropped us a mile from where we needed to be and didn't want any money. What a nice man. The village itself is tiny, comprising of the memorial, the church and a small number of scattered houses. The memorial is a wall with all the names of the 733 women, children and men who were killed, a silhouette of a family and the grave of the only survivor of the incident. Looking at the names you could see that multiple generations of the same families were killed. The church was new (apart from one wall) as it was burnt down and it had murals all round the walls depicting children playing. If you speak good Spanish, a lady will talk you to about the event. Fortunately Laura acted as an interpretor for us. All in all a very sombre affair but well worth the time and effort. On the way back we grabbed lunch at a lady's shop / restaurant / house who was very pleased to
Politics in the Northsee us (we were, for sure, the only gringos in the village) and very chatty (in Spanish). We barely scratched the surface with our basic Spanish, it's a shame because I bet most of the people around here have very interesting stories to tell.
We needed to make our way back to San Miguel so we jammed ourselves into the back of a pick up truck, and I mean 'jammed'. Three of us with back packs and ruck sacks and a whole lot of locals! There were people literally hanging off the back of it! After dodging a drunken man walking up the centre of the road it broke down so we had to wait for another and re-jam everyone into the back of another half full pick up, I don't know how but we managed it! We made it back to San Miguel!! Our next destination was a little seaside town called El Tunco, time for some surfing and some seafood! First we had to get a bus to San Salvador. We arrived early evening so all we did was catch a bite to eat and get an early night. The next morning it was on to El
Rocky beachTunco. After a couple of buses, changing at La Libertad we arrived.
El Tunco could of been a different world to what we'd just experienced but we were looking forward to some relaxing. It mainly consists of restaurants, bars and surf shops. The food was great, Shrimp Cerviche has definitely become a favourite. The surfing was a massive step up from what I was used to, it was time to take the stabilizers off. It was still great fun, the waves were bigger and faster but that also meant the wipe outs were more extreme. The beach is quite rocky and the sand very coarse so it not your usual beach type destination. Surfing is definitely the main draw here. We spent a few days here including a night round the local bars, which included live music which was great fun. We left El Tunco on a shuttle bus which took us to Guatemala! It's the longest wait we've had at a border yet, but it was just because of the shear volume of traffic. The amount of trucks were unbelievable.
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