El Salvador - Julia’s wild, windy long weekend

 October 8-10

Hello everyone!

El Salvador is said to be coming towards the end of its rainy season. If it is, it’s going out with a bang…or at least a massive gale.

Car: broken down, not blown away

Screenshot of flood devastation
from Tropical Storm Julia

The way it works here means that rain somewhere else in the country can affect schools elsewhere. So it was towards the end of September, when our school in Santa Tecla was forced to close owing to rainfall in other regions affecting their own education establishments. On that Friday, for us, it was…sunny.

A 20 year chart of average rainfall in San
Salvador. September is the highest bar.

Elsewhere, it wasn’t. I was supposed to be in a race in Comasagua, a town 50 km to the west, on the Sunday. You can see why the run was delayed by a week…

The message delaying the run by a week. As I was at
the lake, I've deferred my entry for next year.

That particularly ‘rain day’ was announced at 2pm the day before, leaving us with little time to digest and comprehend the news. This month, however, we had been well aware of a storm around the corner. Or, more specifically, across the Central American landmass in the Caribbean…

Satellite picture of Julia as it moved towards Central America

Hurricane Julia, which became Tropical Storm Julia as it neared El Salvador, had been projected to cross Nicaragua and Honduras before affecting my little home on the Pacific side of the region. Leaving school on the Friday, we were well aware of the likelihood of a ‘rain day’ being called. It’s not up to the school, though. It’s up to the government.

The projected route from Venezuela

This time we were also told we
couldn't offer online provision

Specifically, MINED: Ministry for Education. Their announcement came on the Saturday afternoon, just as Julia was blowing her way towards Nicaragua. 

The weather was nice enough for me to
go to my local Saturday market

I also explored, finding these not-in-use tennis courts.
The place is being renovated for hosting the regional warm-up
event for next year's Pan American Games in Chile.

Sunday was when Julia made landfall, battering a route west across Nicaragua. Central El Salvador was a bit windy, a bit cooler than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. That, allied to not having to work on Monday, meant going out for food on Sunday night.

Teklebab: good hummus

I drove. I was tempted not to as the place is very close to my house, but thought it better to be safe. I was driving a friend home and had turned two corners when, approaching an intersection…

Estoy confundido

Nothing. Unable to move the wheel. Unable to accelerate. The car…simply…stopped. Pretty close to the middle of the intersection of one of Santa Tecla’s busiest streets during the daytime. Happening at night, it reduced the traffic issue. It did, however, heighten the security issue. 

Sticking together!

If your car is going to break down, Sunday night isn’t the ideal time for it to happen. If your car is going to break down, doing so before you’ve managed to sort out insurance isn’t the ideal time for it to happen. If your car is going to break down, the night before a potentially apocalyptic hurricane/tropical storm isn’t the ideal time for it to happen. Not. Ideal. At all.

This took a while to shift to neutral,
which allowed us to move the car

What made this situation better was having a friend in the car whose native language is Spanish and was completely unfazed by the situation, by having other friends who came back to help us push the car to the side of the road (that was a lot harder than it should have been as the automatic gearbox had somehow locked itself in ‘park’), and by having very helpful people in a WhatsApp group.

The being backed onto the two truck

Long story short, half an hour later a tow truck had shown up to get the car back to my house. There was no way I was leaving my new, uninsured car on a different street overnight and with a storm approaching. It also had the perk of me bonding with my neighbours, who subsequently helped me get the car fixed for no cost as they wanted to ‘welcome me to my new home’. Lovely people, which has been a common theme of my time in El Salvador so far.

It somehow squeezed down the narrow street to my house

That pink box, the relay, was the main culprit

It was a good thing the car wasn’t in downtown Tecla the following day. Not because of the usual volume of Monday traffic…but the volume of water. The wind which had buffeted houses like mine through the night eased off but was replaced by rain. It occasionally had the heavy, hard monsoon feel that I saw regularly in Malawi. But this rain, though maybe not quite as fierce, just did not stop. Not until the late afternoon, anyway.

A rainy, rainy Monday

As you'll see below, there was a little
leak which I woke up to

I found it interesting that Julia didn’t actually come onto land whilst passing El Salvador. Having reached the Pacific Ocean through Honduras, it maintained a steady trajectory along the coast before popping back in on Guatemalan territory. Still, the damage was very visible in much of the country. Ten people died, five of whom were soldiers who were buried in a collapsed building due to a landslide.

It got pretty close!

Internet picture of soldiers helping with rescues elsewhere in the country

The damage across the country led to another school shutdown on the Tuesday. The weather in Santa Tecla was once again nice. Though I imagine a lot of clean-up happened late on Monday, there were a couple of clues around suggesting there had been a bit of weather. Cafetalon, the park I usually run in, was shut.

Grass blown around on the main street outside my residencia

At least 83 people were killed regionally by Hurricane Julia, and countless more were negatively affected. My car deciding to shut down was not the priority. Though cycling to school in that rain would not have been fun…

Hopefully people affected recover soon

Love you all,

Matt