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Playa Cuco, El Salvador

God brought me there.

I am sitting in the huge echoing restaurant of Hotel Sahara in Santa Ana, San Salvador. Directly in front of me there is a long table full of God lovin' people. At the center sits a typical overweight thick wristed man with a neck wider than my thighs and a petite phillipina wife. According to him, God spoke to him last night and told him that he needs to learn spanish. He then went on to say that he had had no interest in visiting his wife's birth country until God told him to go there.

God never speaks to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really all that dissapointed by that but I can't figure out why (S)He spends his time talking to this Yanqui.

suchi

After a day of following unfit people up hillsides and listening to Don Pablito's recounting of the atrocities of the civil war, the sun went down-- but not before doling out an insane sunset.  I'm not totally sure how this photo happened, my skills aren't very precise, but finally after taking about 50 shots I managed to grab the exact gold of the clouds.  I was standing up on the rooftop of my hotel where I could catch the sounds of Suchitoto settling down for the evening.  Rooftops have that lovely way of managing to let you observe with out forcing you to be a part of everything, sort of the perfect place for me at the end of a long day.  I like the quiet that evening brings, the chattering of birds as they settle down for the night, the slowly quieting hum of people heading home at night.
I'm in Suchitoto, a small town about two hours outside of San Salvador which sparkles with that magic of a not quite discovered place, and makes you feel like an ultra-savvy traveler for just knowing it exists. I've spent my last two days here soaking up the beauty of its white washed walls and tile roofs.
There is something so satisfyingly beautiful about those curved red tiles.  They turn a range of reds and browns at sunset, colors which I have fallen in love with.  The roofs were the same in Trinidad, where I spent most of an afternoon trying to coax the color from the worn-out palette of my 16 year old water colors.

a surreal life

My life lately has taken on the feeling of a chapter out of 100 Years of Solitude: multiple generations of my family eating meals at long tables telling stories of my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents; dreams which feel like life; life which feels like dreams.  Add to all that my outing to see the Surreal Friends exhibition at Chichester's Pallant House Gallery and every thing has started to take on a sepia tinted fuzzy-ness. Surreal Friends focuses on three European women who fled Europe during World War II and met in of all places, Mexico.  Their work is influenced by the surrealist movement and is rich with magic filled details, straight out of the works of Hieronymus Bosch (that's a remnant of all those expensive Art History courses I took at the Dub, parents take note!).  I went with my mum/mom, and her best friend Judy. Watching them chatter in hushed voices in the galleries reminded me of a trip to the museum of Modern Art in San Salvador which I took with a one, Alexandra, a bit earlier this year.
Seeing the art and learning about the lives of these 'European Bitches,' as Frida Kahlo nicknamed them, was inspiring.  Even more so after Eva told me that if I found myself an apartment in Colonia Roma she might come join me to live in D.F. The serendipity of her comment being that Colonia Roma is where these three women made their home during the 40's.
Learning about these creative women standing around their kitchens, telling one another stories, finding inspiration in friendship, laughing about the absurdity of life, sharing their knowledge and encouraging one another to create art, all during a time when women were expected to be perfecting their Sunday roasts, gives me even more faith in the strength and determination of the fairer sex.  Though these days my dream kitchen in Colonia Roma has to be a virtual one, formed of brief emails, inspiring blogs, long winded chat sessions, and the occasional post card from my breath taking group of friends, I am grateful for what I have.
(image: Leonora Carrington, The House Opposite)

Alex and spicey mango.

  I am a cantankerous terrible person to travel with, but somehow Alex managed to put up with me for a whole week as we soldiered through El Salvador visiting hotels and chatting up the locals. She got to eat her first shrimp ceviche on the black sand pacific coast, ate pupusas which I am pretty sure gave both of us 'funny tummy,' survived the wild streets of Santa Ana, and tried mango with hot sauce all over it while drinking cocktails on the sidewalks of Juayua. 
Anyhow Alex knows how to appreciate all the things that make traveling great and even managed to take the piss out of me a couple times.  That's all I can ask for out of life, sassy friends, good mojitos, and a nice sunset.

vacas, límon, y maize

Overland travel has its perks that aren´t solely limited to sweaty knee pits. Take today for example. I bid my peace corps homies good bye and set off on my way to San Salvador. I took a chicken bus to the border full of Honduran and not a single gringo besides myself. This meant the flavors of Honduras were going full force. We had to avoid a herd of cattle being led down the roadby a man with a red flag, everyone was drinking little plastic bags of water (that is how they roll here) and I got to check out the local scenery (lots of hills and laundry drying in the sun). The border crossing at Amatillo was my favorite yet. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala have some agreement E.U. styles where you only have to go through customs once. So I strolled across the no man´s land bridge and right into El Salvador. I did have a pleasant conversation with a customs official who wanted to make sure I knew I needed to leave within three months of entering, but other than being harassed to change my lempiras to dollars it was a mellow country change.
Once in El Sav I jumped on the bus headed to Santa Rosa de Lima where I was told I could catch a ¨direct¨ bus to San Salvador. This bus had a tv mounted above the driver in the front and was blaring music videos at full force. The last man to board the bus had bags and bags filled with limes, the whole bus smelled of the them which was lovely until we hit a truck filled with corn. First off I want to say that from my limited experience I am pretty sure that all El Salvadorian bus drivers think they are f-1 racers. We were cruising along at top speed and ran straight into the back of a pickup filled with corn plants. Everyone on the bus had their heads hanging out the window to check out the damage, and within seconds were bailing from the bus like it was sinking. I followed their lead and joined the crowd on the street. Within a minute a hilux truck pulled up and the driver started yelling, ¨¿Santa Rosa?¨at all of us, so I along with límon man piled in the bed and went racing off to Santa Rosa, which was good because I just made the bust to San Salvador. The límon man ended up having to pay the truck driver in limes because he wouldn´t take lempiras which made all of us except the driver laugh. And then I was on my way to San Salvador on a bus that stank of windsheild fluid and oil.
The bus ride was a bit wild, we wound through hills covered with corn at speeds where it felt like the bus was going to tip over. I kept knodding off much to the amusment of my new friend ¨Sabado,¨well at least I think that´s what his name is. Sabby is a vaquero, I know this because he stuck up his pointer fingers as horns and mooed at me. I said, ¨¿vacas?¨and he said, ¨sí, bacas.¨ And then he asked me I liked to drink beer and if I wanted to get a hotel with him. I said, ¨No,¨ and then spent the rest of the ride staring out the window. Gringas are supposed to be easy didn´t you know that?
Anyways now I have my own room with no cowboy and I am going to try and obtain some El Salvadorian pupusas for dinner. I tried the southern Honduran version, ¨¡que rico!¨ right eva?