El Salvador - Turtle Power

November 17

Hello everyone!

I’ve mentioned before that one thing I miss about living in Africa is going on safari: the chance to see nature in the wild. El Salvador is very different in that regard, though it does have some special fauna of its own. Particularly…turtles!

A baby Olive Ridley turtle

A bale of baby turtles

I have seen turtles before, being lucky enough to witness one coming onto shore to lay and hide its many, many eggs one night in Costa Rica. If that event was nearer the start of the reproductive cycle, what I’m writing about today is closer to its end…

Divots such as these indicate a turtle nesting area -
this was in Tortuguero, in Costa Rica

Other species lay larger eggs than the Olive Ridley -
here are some in the company's information centre

With many other people connected to school, I headed down to Playa San Blas on a surprisingly dreary Sunday morning. The mission: to release baby turtles into the Pacific Ocean.

San Blas is next to El Tunco, which is El Salvador's 'Surf City' area

That dreary Sunday morning later turned to non-stop rain for over 24 hours,
resulting in having to teach online on the Tuesday

I mean baby. They hatched the night before. They had been alive for less than 24 hours. Of course, in the wild they would head to the water as soon as they had broken out of their egg shell. Unfortunately, human intervention is needed to protect the eggs to even allow the little reptiles the chance to scamper to the sea.

The eggs are maintained and checked here - there
could be dozens of eggs in just one little square! 

The turtles' first-class carriage to the beach

Before helping the little creatures scamper to the ocean, we had a talk from the team who organise the release. This is one of many which exist on the shores of El Salvador. With the chances of a hatchling surviving to adulthood being judged to be 1 out of 1,000, it’s probably a good thing that there are a multitude of them.

Art on the wall on the way to the information centre

Our information talk went through this board

The talk was in Spanish, but one of our friends speaks Spanish and was able to translate for us. They told us that four of the seven species of turtle visit Salvadorean shores. The most common one, which we were dealing with, is the Olive Ridley turtle. 

Class as 'vulnerable', the Olive Ridley is nonetheless
by far the most seen turtle in the area

When laying eggs, many turtles will try to return to the beach where they were born. The problem with this are the large construction projects being undertaken in many countries, not just El Salvador, which now encroach on these beaches. This, in addition to darker elements such as illegally selling the eggs, are reasons that companies need to intervene to protect the turtles.

Life cycle of a turtle

More restaurants, bars and accommodation are
being built on or close to the beaches

After the talk, we came to the beach to get our turtle. You can’t simply plop them in the ocean; they need to be able to get there themselves. We stood on a line, pinched the sides of the shell of our tiny creature, and slowly lowered it onto the black sand. 

Preparing to release the turtles

I called mine Shelly

My turtle made good progress, its little limbs flapping and flailing as it headed slightly diagonally towards the foam. It soon got swept up in the sea…and brought back almost to the start. Undeterred, it did make it to the water without being munched by a bird or crushed by a child. 

Shelly starting strong...

...getting ever closer to the Pacific...

The morning was a nice way to feel like we are contributing in a positive way. Hopefully at least some of these turtles survive in the big ocean and they return to keep the cycle going in the future.

Which one will survive?

Turtle Power!

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Futbol Forever…unless it’s against Bonaire…

November 14

Hello everyone!

A lot of people in El Salvador, like much of the world, are obsessed with a game which involves kicking a round ball towards a net. It may not look like it from the crowd below, though…

Estadio Cuscatlan, watching El Salvador play Bonaire.
Not one the masses wanted to see...

This burger, one of the thinnest I've ever eaten,
was being cooked at the bottom of the stand

Football is the national sport of El Salvador. It’s all the kids in school want to play. It’s an easy conversation starter with a stranger. Admittedly, most of them focus on Barcelona, Madrid or Miami, but football is clearly a passion for millions of Salvadoreans.

Football merch on sale outside Estadio Cuscatlan

Messi's Inter Miami team played El Salvador in January. Tickets
for that were trading for hundreds of dollars. It ended 0-0.

It’s fair to say that El Salvador’s national team, La Selecta, has underachieved of late. They have qualified for two men’s World Cups, the last of which was in 1982. They haven’t even made it to the semi-finals or final round of their regional competition, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, since 1989.

El Salvador's first World Cup finals appearance, in 1970, happened
after the 'Football War' between them and Honduras during qualifying

El Salvador suffered the biggest defeat in World Cup finals history in 1982

Their current world ranking of 83 (sandwiched by Angola and Bulgaria) highlights the fact that they haven’t been doing well for a while. It explains why they’re not even in the top league in the latest regional tournament. Instead of mixing with Mexico and cavorting with Costa Rica, they’re in a division with some of the lesser lights of Latin America and the Caribbean…

St Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat and
Bonaire are the other competitors in ES's group

The other team in the group, Bonaire, don't have a FIFA world ranking

One positive of El Salvador plunging these depths is that tickets for their matches are readily available. The way this tournament works is different to the European version. Here, one of the teams ‘hosts’ for a weekend, in which each team plays twice. In this case, the four teams in El Salvador’s group were playing on a Thursday and a Sunday, with all at the capital’s largest stadium: Estadio Cuscatlán.

According to Wikipedia, this is the largest stadium in Central America.
I'm assuming that doesn't include Mexico, which has many massive arenas.

The stadium hosted a Guinness World Record attempt a while ago...
for the most people brushing their teeth in one place

A group of us decided to venture to the stadium, in the eastern side of the city, to watch them play Bonaire on Thursday evening. Traffic heading in that direction was intense, though it became clear upon arrival that this was due to regular rush hour traffic, rather than a special event at the stadium.

The stadium is in a district called Antiguo
Cuscatlan, perched halfway up a hill

After a stadium crush killed 12 people last year, stricter rules have been implemented in stadiums in El Salvador. One of these is that no alcohol is allowed. This led to the slightly bizarre scenario of many people being outside the stadium drinking as we walked up the hill to the entrance. It might have been as many as there were in the arena.

The line to enter the grounds. Some people were frisked. I wasn't.

We had bought tickets for the cheap seats. A remarkable deal, this $5 ticket allows us access to all four matches happening this weekend. You can’t expect an actual seat for that price. Some people had come prepared…

Bum pillow: useful

An expectant crowd was pretty quiet in the first half, owing to very little happening. Any gripes with players from Bonaire (one of whom plays for Dundee United in Scotland and looked far better than anyone else on the pitch) or the referee were greeted with whistles and chants which are homophobic when translated.

This was a reminder lesson of words and
phrases I shouldn't try with my students

Having hit the bar twice and missed numerous chances, a deflected shot finally breached a tiring Bonaire defence in the 84th minute. El Salvador comfortably saw out the game 1-0.

A hard-fought win

Most of us agreed that the experience was interesting enough, but that we don’t need to head back to the stadium on Sunday to see whether El Salvador can win their group by not losing to mighty Montserrat. La Selecta may not be playing there much longer anyway, with plans afoot for a new 50,000 stadium in the centre of the city. Maybe more people would turn up there…

Ground was broken in September 2022

Futbol forever!

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Read All About It!

October 30

Hello everyone!

El Salvador has changed a lot, even since I arrived in 2022. One of the more eye-catching changes has arrived in the old center, known as Centro Historico.

BINAES - the National Library

A clever sign in BINAES

This is BINAES. National Library (BI) (NA) of El Salvador (ES). It is the country's fancy new library. It also looks spectacularly out of place compared to the other buildings around the old city's Captain Gerardo Barrios Plaza.

The National Palace is on the left and the Cathedral is straight ahead

This panorama shows the contrast between the old and new

There was a library here before, quite an old one, in fact. This had been demolished in 2021 to make way for the 21st Century structure, so on my first visit to Centro Historico at the end of 2022 , it looked like this…

A picture from the construction phase in 2022

It is only about 12 km from my house to the library,
but that is over an hour in rush hour traffic 

The new library, which is the largest in Central America, has been 'donated' by China. This is part of an agreement reached in 2019 between the two countries. China has recently invested in many historically 'developing' countries - Malawi was the same when we lived there. People far more qualified than me could explain the positives and negatives of this cooperation.

$54 million was donated by China for the library

One of their next major collaborations is a new national football stadium

What it has meant for El Salvador is that it has a new, state-of-the-art library downtown. It was wildly popular when it first opened in November 2023, with people queuing through the night to enter. With getting to Centro Historico a traffic-laden nightmare on weekends, it was somewhere I had avoided up to now.

A picture from the inauguration in November 2023

The library is open 24/7

As the busyness has dropped from its initial peak, and being on holiday, I used this early Wednesday morning to explore the shiny new library. 'Early' meant leaving before 6am to beat traffic, particularly as the car still wasn't firing on all cylinders at this point. Side note: the mechanics in San Miguel hadn't completed all the connections when fitting the new starter motor, meaning the car wouldn't go above 2,000rpm and really struggled to go up hills. It's fine as of this Friday!

Apparently the design evokes elements such as reefs, waves and volcanoes

"Elementary, my Dear Watson" never appears in an original Sherlock book.
Wonder if it does in the Spanish language versions...

I was pretty much the only person in the library when I entered. The entrance is bright, spacious and…lacking books.

The main lobby

Zone for smaller children, near the main entrance

It's not that there aren't books. It's more a common theme as you move up the floors that there seems to be quite a lot of space for more books. Surprising, for a library. What it does have are zones based around books which have become more popular with the masses through film and television.

The Little Prince zone, pertinent in El Salvador
because the author's wife was from here

Lord of the Rings zone

Other zones seem less obviously connected to reading. What they do is attract more children to the library, after which they may take a book home.

LEGO zone

Star Wars zone

Understandably, most books are in Spanish. Seeing some of the translations of popular book titles interested me. Others, such as 'The Hobbit', were self-explanatory.

This sign is not inviting you to read at people;
leer is the Spanish verb for 'read'

"A Promised Land" by Barack Obama

The library has seven floors, meaning you get some lovely views as you move up the building. I had never noticed the Jardín Centroamérica (Central American Garden) before, as it was only built ( with some controversy ) this year.

The garden has 14 flags from Central American and Caribbean nations

The garden has 172 trees

BINAES is an interesting and innovative addition to San Salvador's historic central district. As the city has become safer, more people are likely to move around freely and explore this part of town. It may look like it has been transplanted from another planet, but it is a library of which the country can be proud. A few more books wouldn't hurt, though…

View of the main plaza from the terrace

They've moved the 'El Salvador' sign from in front of
the palace to now sit in front of the library

There are books, I promise!

Love you all,

Matt