El Salvador - Big Mouth

August 7

Hello everyone!

It’s always a bit of a blur at the start of living in a new country. So much to take in, understand, excite…and then share with the wider world. Some might say you would need a big mouth in order to share so much. Luckily San Salvador has one of those on its doorstep…

At the crater of Boqueron

Actually, more like in its upstairs bedroom or attic. You see, El Salvador’s capital city sits close to and below a rather large volcano. This is called El Boqueron in the local tongue. It translates as ‘Big Mouth’.

The park is 23 km from the historic centre
of San Salvador - it's even closer to
where we are in Santa Tecla

Many pine trees have grown on the crater

The reason for the name? We were told but I can’t actually remember. Like I said, so much to take in. Taken literally, it does potentially look like a cavernous orifice. Well, once you get up there.

The volcano is to the north and northwest of the
cities, parts of which are actually on the slopes

What’s interesting is that many newcomers, myself included, won’t actually pinpoint the volcano itself. I was looking at the triangular point on the eastern side. It turns out that the crater is further west.

The view of the volcano from one of the
apartments we looked at on Sunday morning

We went to Boqueron on Sunday after viewing some other apartments and a house. Having been out the night before, a few of us were a bit fatigued and not fully focused during the hunt. 

One of many apartments we saw on Sunday morning

At this point we weren’t sure we were going to be going up the volcano owing to traffic. It’s a popular weekend jaunt for people from the city, and there is only one main road up to the national park which houses the crater. If you can take your eyes off the fairly narrow road upon which all kinds of vehicles jostle for space, you get some pretty good views.

In the distance is Lake Ilopango, to the east of San Salvador

The big dog is a stray which came to say hello

The entrance to the park is cheap - $2 or $3, I can’t remember - and opens up some trails for you to explore. Going off-track is apparently not to be done without a guide. No further explanation was offered. As usual, there were security guards with fairly sizeable guns at the ready.

Getting to the crater viewpoint is well-marked.
Getting into the crater apparently isn't.

Getting up to the top means you are about 1,900 metres above sea level. This is quite something when, traffic permitting, you can probably be at a beach on the Pacific Ocean in 45 minutes from here.

This is the lake - the Pacific is to the south

You may be wondering where the videos of spitting magma and lava rivers are at this point. As you can see, it’s not particularly active. The most recent eruption occurred over 100 years ago, in 1917, and actually led to the crater lake evaporating.

The crater is 1.5 km in diameter

The result is a strange phenomenon. Volcanic soil is incredibly fertile, resulting in lush vegetation sprouting and flourishing across the volcano, including in the crater itself.

The cinder cone at the bottom, called Boqueroncito,
was created by the 1917 eruption

There is lots of colour if you look closely

Pines covering the crater

There’s a fair bit of wildlife up here as well. I’m not sure what the bird is in the video below - it looked like a bird of prey to me - but it’s swirling arcs suggested that there is living food for it to find in the crater.

The crater is 550m deep

It was a whirlwind visit to Boqueron - we were being whisked off elsewhere for lunch - but one which was very enjoyable. It’s nice to be in a place with such a variety of nature on your doorstep (well, if you have a car). I’ll definitely be back and will encourage people with my not-so-big-mouth to visit ‘Big Mouth’ if they ever visit El Salvador.

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Tequila Sunrise makes you miss the Sun rise

August 6-7

Hello everyone!

I’m usually a morning person. Jet lag, particularly when moving west, amplifies that situation. So it was quite an effort for me to miss the sunrise on my first Sunday in El Salvador. Mainly due to this…

Some sort of strange gyrating competition in Hard
Bar. Thankfully for everyone, I'm not involved.

Let’s rewind slightly. I arrived on Thursday night and am staying, with other new recruits, at a hotel which bridges Santa Tecla and San Salvador. One of the many missions this week is to find a place to live.

Many older houses look charming from the outside

We started house hunting on the Saturday morning. A couple of pitfalls with this were that it was a Saturday which was following on from a public holiday. This meant that many property owners had left the urban sprawls.

A 'garden'. The one in the first house
was about one square metre.

I had other issues. Having two dogs meant that my criteria are a bit more restrictive. I needed a reasonably-sized garden, for example. The numerous apartments we were shown were lovely but simply not feasible for Mini and Maxi, even though it seems that quite a few were inhabited by four-leggeds.

Santa Rosa apartment complex

House hunting in the heat with jet lag resulted in a bit of fatigue setting in. We were taken from a nice but slightly soulless apartment complex called Santa Rosa to a nearby bar, which is part of a microbrewery chain in the country called Cadejo.

There are some of these at the beach as well

Cadejo roughly translates as wolf. There is apparently a Salvadoran legend about two wolves, one with a black head and one with a white head. I imagine I’ll be at many Cadejos over the next few years so there’s plenty of time to learn and share that tale. What was more pressing at this point was enjoying one of the tasty beers.

The one in green is called 'La Suegra'. It translates
as 'the mother-in-law'. It was quite strong!

More house hunting followed for some of us…mainly because the next place was an actual house with a garden. A really nice garden, too. At $1500 per month and needing a car to get places from it, it was also way out of my budget, but it was nice to see that there are places with gardens for the two dogs to enjoy.

Having a covered parking space may be important in rainy season 

One of the bigger gardens - and houses - that we saw

Soon after we were back at Cadejo, meeting some non-new teachers. This involved getting an Uber. The ride-sharing company is simultaneously brilliant and frustrating in equal measure. It is so cheap to get around in an Uber…if the driver decides to collect you. We’ve had many instances of drivers cancelling when only minutes away, even after making contact with personal messages.

I don't think I've paid more
than $4 for a trip so far

I’m in the habit of saying yes to pretty much everything at the moment. This led me and some others in our newbie group to an area called Paseo el Carmen. 

The street is in the centre of Santa Tecla 

On the street is a large church called Iglesia el Carmen

I assumed that this would be a street filled with people, noise and euphoria, especially as it was a long weekend. My assumption was incorrect, unless we were very early. Having returned since in daylight hours, there are a few bars but these are interspersed between shops and even a vet’s practice.

Empty by night...

...and the following Saturday morning,
when I went for a run in the area

We entered a place called Hard Bar, which was playing the reggaeton music some of us were looking for. It was $10 to get in, which could then be recouped in the form of drinks. We got a $10 bucket of beers and danced part of the night away. I found it interesting how varied the age range was on the dancefloor. People of seemingly very different ages all dancing together to the ‘dum-be-dum-dum’ of the music.

Dancefloor at Hard Bar

Whilst sitting down, we noticed some colour out of the window. Women in costumes which wouldn’t have seemed out of place at Rio Carnival. They came in, the dancefloor cleared and some far more professional moves started to be seen.

There is a large carnival in San Miguel
on the last Saturday of November

We were stood on the side watching this performance. Soon after, we were moving back through the crowd. Four chairs had been put in the centre of the floor. Four women enthusiastically rushed up to sit on the chairs. I really didn’t want to be one of the men, and luckily I wasn’t chosen. It would have been embarrassing for everyone. The four chosen men were assigned a woman and…well…danced for them.

No. Idea.

It didn’t seem overly fair, as one man seemed far more athletic than the others. The man with the round belly next to him, who also whipped off his shirt and gyrated in an unorthodox fashion, didn’t seem to care.

I think the man in the white shirt 'won', whatever that means

You may be wondering at this point why this blog has its given title. Well, another one of those $10 papers was used to buy three tequila sunrise cocktails. They tasted like Sunny Delight, if you remember that from back in the day. Akin to having sugar directly injected into the bloodstream, we didn’t really notice that they were quite strong. I noticed the strength of the tequila shot we had soon after. I didn’t notice much of the great dancing happening on stage.

We called it a night in good time, though the slight headaches the sunrise drinkers coped with the following day suggest we could have finished a tiny bit earlier. It was a great evening and a gentle introduction into nightlife in the city in El Salvador. I do hope to have more authentic tequila sunrises in the future, maybe in my own garden, whenever I find a house which has one…

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - A Walk in the Parque

August 5

Hello everyone!

I’ll be living in El Salvador for at least the next two years. Apparently there are some spectacular sights and experiences to be had here…with a car. Having arrived at 10pm at night, this wasn’t an option the following morning. So here’s a park close to the hotel.

Cyclists on a trail in Parque del Bicentenario

A colourful section of trail in the park

This is the Parque del Bicentenario. It translates as Bicentennial Park and is located between the cities of Santa Tecla and San Salvador. 

Internet photo of an entrance to Parque del Bicentenario

The large Ecopark is to the northeast

I’m going to be living and working in Santa Tecla. The impression I have is that it is a city in its own right but also closely connected to the country’s capital to its immediate east. 

Part of the campus where I'll be working

Bananas growing in the park -
not ready to eat, unfortunately

Back to the park. I had no idea why it had this name, mainly because I know very little about El Salvador. I did know that it, along with most places around here, was part of the Spanish Empire a few hundred years ago. I discovered that in 1811 there was the first significant revolt against Spanish rule in the region. It happened in San Salvador, with many unhappy with the lack of liberation after revolutions in America and France. Their feelings were exacerbated by the appointment of an unpopular man, Antonio Basilio Gutiérrez y Ulloa, as governor.

I wonder whether it was really this smiley...

From what I’ve read, it seems that the initial revolt withered due to a lack of broader support. Nonetheless, this event, known as the First Shout of Independence, is still an important part of the country’s history. It is celebrated every November 5th, and was memorialised 200 years later with the creation of…you guessed it…Parque del Bicentenario! 

17,500 trees were planted between 2011 and 2017

The aim is to recover the forest area to a
size similar to which existed before
coffee cultivation took over

My body felt like I could have slept for 200 years after the marathon effort of getting here from the UK. My body clock, however, had different ideas. There’s a seven hour time difference. My body clock telling me that I was being lazy as it was past midday therefore got me up just after 5am. Better to explore than twiddle my thumbs, I thought.

The entrance is only a kilometre from the hotel

I really want to treat El Salvador as its own experience. However, there are times, particularly at the start of any new adventure, when your mind is drawn to previous experiences. I seem to be comparing things to Malawi a lot, which must be mildly irritating to the new friends I’ve made who haven’t been there. One example here is the picture below. San Salvador has many good roads with multiple lanes! One in Lilongwe can only dream. I also took this photo because it possibly shows the standard of driving. Car crash at 6am. Reporter on the other side of the vehicles, talking into a camera. Standard Friday morning?

The white truck kept edging closer as the yellow lorry
was trying to tow the car, leading to a bit of a stare-off

The park itself isn’t enormous - I know there is at least one more in the city that is larger - but it houses a lot of variety. It has picnic areas, trails and an adventure playground for kids. There is also plenty of shade which seems to be needed even at 6am. It feels a bit sticky but not overly humid.

It's surrounded by native trees - most
invasive species have been removed

Banana leaves and (I think) bougainvillea

There is a perimeter route but the real fun comes from running through the midsection of the park. It feels very natural, with verdant green trees and bushes spreading themselves across parts of the earthen pathways. The tracks are pretty well signposted, though many of the maps placed at intersections seem to have ripped.

An intact map showing the different trails

There are some trails which seem to extend outside of the park. I may have accidentally taken one on my first day, heading west and possibly outside of the park boundaries. An elderly man with a rather large machete was sitting at an intersection. He got up, rotten teeth exposed, and pulled out a book which looked like tickets. I had a suspicion, since confirmed, that I didn’t have to pay to use the park. I had enough Spanish up my sleeve to talk my way out of the situation and get him to point an alternative route back to the park. He wasn’t threatening, and I think the tickets were connected to parking, which you do have to pay for.

Not sure whether this is lack of maintenance
or the result of a previous storm

Steps in the eastern section of the park - because being
over 900 metres above sea level isn't high enough

Parque del Bicentenario is said to be home to more than 420 species of fauna and more than 500 specimens of wild flora. The flowers are vibrantly beautiful. I’ve seen a couple of different bird species and a couple of unknown animals which look like massive hamsters. Plenty more to find in here, too. My buddies said you can find armadillos in the park, and I read that it’s a common stopping point for parakeets that migrate to different points in San Salvador and La Libertad. I’ll keep my eyes open!

Being rainy season, colours and flowers are in full bloom

Well, that’s when I’m not looking at the floor. It is the wet season and the park’s trails can get quite muddy…

I almost slipped and faceplanted in this section

According to my research, this is the first protected natural area that is located in the metropolitan area of San Salvador. It’s really nice to have a place in which to escape the noise, traffic and general hubbub of city life. I came three times in my first week, and will be here many times in the future. Not a bad ‘First Shout’ for a place to explore in El Salvador…

Running through a damp, verdant Parque del Bicentenario

Some very heavy-set eyes, there

Love you all,

Matt