El Salvador

Photos

Twelve days is too short a time to try and take in a country, but even that required an inner struggle against the half of me that desperately wants to get to South America sometime in this lifetime.  I know it isn't fair, but I just have to say it.  I liked Guatemala better.  Granted it had 7 weeks to grow on me, and Xela had really started to feel a little like home, but I just liked it better.

El Salvador doesn't have the smoking volcanoes or gorgeous lakes, or the Mayan ruins like Guatemala.  Mostly though, I just miss the friends I had made there.  Because, while they may not be smoking, El Salvador does have to truly massive, volcanoes outside San Salvador and San Miguel (and others that I didn't see).  It does have at least one nice lake at Suchitoto where I spent three days relaxing and enjoying the view.  It has some excellent beaches, though the half of me that wants to go south south south, got the better of me and I only visited one.  But that one treated me very well.  Treated me to one of the most amazing lightning storms I can remember seeing.  And finally, El Salvador has several striking museums about the recent civil war.

El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen in San Salvador and the Museo de la Revolucion Salvadoreno in Perquin were each filled with old black and white photos of guerillas, activist, and others from the war, along with descriptions of each.  The Museo de la Revolucion, in particular, was quite moving.  Mostly because Marcos, the man watching on duty while I was there, took the time to talk to me, in spanish, about many of the photos on display.  He had been a fighter for the FMLM thoughout the war and knew many of the faces in the photos personally.  Men and women that had died in the war.  Speaking to someone who knew them, knew there names, and was friends some of them, gave the faces in the photos life in a much more emotional way.

Oh and papusas.  El Salvador has papusas and I really, really like papusas.