Saturday 2 November 2024

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

Friday 1 November 2024

El Salvador - The Struggle to love San Miguel

October 21-25


Hello everyone!


With two weeks of holiday, lots of conversation at work has revolved around travel destinations. Some going to Europe, others jetting down to Panama or even the Galapagos. People therefore seemed confused when I would proudly announce that we were going to…San Miguel.


San Miguel volcano looming large in the background

It is also called Volcan Chaparrastique

For those without an extensive knowledge of this country’s geography, San Miguel is El Salvador’s third city and sits in the eastern part of the country, dominated by the eponymous volcano sitting to its western side. It is not known as a place to visit.

The straight line distance from Santa Tecla to San Miguel is about 120 km

The population of the San Miguel department is
estimated to be slightly over half a million

What it does have is that volcano, dominating the sky and looking particularly spectacular from our AirBnB balcony. It is apparently a difficult climb, with lots of scree and not a lot of protection from the Sun. It is also apparently a dangerous climb, as it is an active volcano. How active? Well, it’s been a year

Mini pondering whether she could run up the volcano

This is not the May 2023 eruption, just some clouds
throwing shapes as we watched from our balcony

We were never going to climb that volcano. Why we were staying on the outskirts of San Miguel was to explore lots of lakes and lagoons in the surrounding area. Having arrived on Monday afternoon, we drove south to Jocotal on Tuesday, which I wrote about in the previous blog.

El Salvador's Okavango Delta!

Laguna de Jocotal

The plan for Wednesday was to drive an hour west to Laguna de Alegría, a volcanic lake which can turn green if the light is right, after stopping at some swimming caves nearby. It was a trip I’d been booked on at the end of August, but which got cancelled with less than 24 hours notice, so I was excited about our plan. I say ‘plan’ because, having packed the car with everything we needed, I tried to turn it on…

The problem was the starter motor - quite important


This is not the car we regularly use. That car, a previously reliable Suzuki, conked out just over three weeks ago. This is the car I initially bought shortly after moving to El Salvador, which has probably taken years off my life through stress. It’s been working well of late, so we decided to use it for our trip. Working well until this moment…



The car insurance allows one free tow a year

As it was, this tow truck took me into the centre of San Miguel for the first time. Maybe a chance for itself to show its sunnier side?

I spent a lot of time here - the car workshop...

Pollo Campestre, one of El Salvador's biggest fried chicken
chains, originates from San Miguel. They are everywhere.

Poor word choice, there. It doesn’t need to be any sunnier. Or hotter. In those aforementioned chats about travel, people who have visited San Miguel before had two things to say:

  1. Asking why on earth we were going there;

  2. Telling us it was really, really hot.

They weren’t lying. The joke here goes that people from San Miguel, if they end up there for whatever reason, complain that Hell is too cold. That’s Hell, the place often depicted with roaring flames. It certainly felt hot.


I spent some time in this shopping centre. Mainly for the air conditiong.

Hilariously, this Uber driver's temperature gauge said it was -38 outside!

The mechanic shop in San Miguel, in tandem with my regular mechanic from San Salvador, were figuring out the problem. This gave me a bit of free time to walk around. A quick internet search had shown me that San Miguel has a ‘famous’ soup: sopa de mondongo. There was a ‘famous’ place nearby. I went there. I ate it. I will never do so willingly again. Pig skin, possibly some tripe, a bit of yucca…then it got weird. The strangest part was the piece of banana…with the peel still on…

One of the stranger soups I've eaten


Upon my return, having sweated out most of the soup through walking, the mechanic told me that, as predicted, there was an issue with the starter motor. It would need fixing, and was being sent to an electrician. This gave me more time to explore, starting by walking to the main square.



Random artwork, but my route didn't have many murals like
one would find in other towns in El Salvador 

It’s not much of a square. Not much of a cathedral either, if we’re being honest, though it does dominate said square. Next to it is the city hall, and opposite is…a China Wok. I got out my camera at this point to take some photos…and it wouldn’t turn on. Turns out it was too hot. San Miguel is very hot. At least my phone was working!

The cathedral was completed in 1962...
100 YEARS after the first stone was laid

The main square of San Miguel

As I’m starting to walk back towards my wonderful car under a now thankfully cloudy sky, I get a phone call to say that there won’t be a fix today and to collect it tomorrow. With perfect timing, the heavens open. Nearby was a beer hall. I didn’t need a second invitation.

The water was also needed - I blame the soup

Being determined to not spend the first week of my holiday sitting in an apartment waiting for a phone call, I looked into what I could do on the Thursday. As Hannah had to work, she kindly decided to keep the dogs with her at the AirBnB whilst I trekked away. Trekked is the right word, as I couldn’t find a bus to get on. I decided to walk 6 kilometres to get to the caves I hadn’t seen the day before: Cuevas de Moncagua.

Dreaming of being on a paddleboard

Swimming pools in the Cuevas de Moncagua complex

When I arrived, I was greeted by a closed gate and lots of sleepy stray dogs. It was at this point that I remembered why I had wanted to go on Wednesday; they do weekly maintenance of the complex on Thursdays. An hour’s walk to a place which was…shut.

Closed

Well, it was until I asked if I could enter just to look at the caves, rather than swim. This was fine. The caves are quite small but with beautiful, linear colours in the rock which created them. Apparently you can’t actually swim in them, instead swimming in the nearby manmade pools. The water looked enticing, particularly after striding along in the ever-growing heat for an hour to get there. At least I’d been allowed in, I thought.

I think the rock is pumice

You can swim up to a certain point,
but not in the caves themselves

From there, it was a slightly longer walk to see something else that had been on the list: Quelepa Ruins. They’re listed on Lonely Planet, so were probably worth a visit. The walk between the villages of Moncagua and Quelepa was worth it in itself, showing off some lovely countryside.

Tree-lined lanes reminded me of the UK

A Salvadorean version of a canal?

As I began to trample off-road, I became glad that I hadn’t tried to drive to the ruins. This became very clear when I found that I would have to cross a river. I asked a lady washing her clothes nearby, who gestured that it would reach knee-height. I’d come this far…

The path to the ruins


This now felt like proper exploration. Following my map, I hooked a left through that unidentifiable gap you see in the picture below, before trampling through and over long grasses and plants. I had to avoid a large spider at one point as well.


My path, according to Google Maps

Can you see the spider?

Eventually, I came to my reward. You can look at this from a half-full or half-empty perspective. For the latter, you can hardly see anything. It just looks like a stone. Being more positive, however, this means that this is still pretty much undiscovered as a ruin, and that hardly any people have seen this memorial to pre-Hispanic history before.

The bottom of what is thought to be one of up to 40 terraced platforms

The site was inhabited by the Lenca tribe
between the second and seventh centuries

I viewed it more optimistically, though admittedly was a bit underwhelmed. The week as a whole has been a bit underwhelming, unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of our control. As we rolled a rental car away from San Miguel, we reflected on a trip that hadn’t lived up to expectations. At least the rental car had air conditioning…

Cuevas de Moncagua

Maxi showing the mood perfectly


Extra note: The following Monday, I: 

  • drove back to San Miguel - with the now-fixed part - in the rental car; 

  • hung around for a bit whilst the part was installed;

  • started to drive back to Santa Tecla;

  • turned around and came back to San Miguel as the engine light was on;

  • after this was sorted, drove back to Santa Tecla in our car;

  • had a beer. A well-deserved, cold beer.


Oh, Frijoles


Love you all,


Matt