I got up and went for a run on Monday morning. All the roadside shrines had been dismantled,
but I could see the remains of designs that people had made with colored sand,
corn meal and flower petals. It was very
subdued out there after the frenzy of Semana Santa. The hotel was deserted. They took advantage of the slow period to
replace the roof of the kitchen and clean all the grease out of the ventilation
system. They set up a temporary kitchen
in part of the bar. No one was ordering
food, anyway.
 |
| Cayuco on the Rio Lempa |
After my shower and a brief period spent on the internet,
Venus, Patrick (a Frenchman single handing a catamaran), and I set off for La
Herradura in Venus’ little boat. It took
us an hour to motor up the river. We
came to the point in the river where it split around and island and, instead of
taking the left fork to go to the Paradise Marina or Lynn and Lou’s, we went to
the right. We worked our way through a
series of channels between islands, tending generally to the right, until the
roof of a large palapa emerged from the mangroves. We tied our boat up to the seawall at that
restaurant and climbed up onto the shore via a tire hung on the side of the
wall for that purpose. We were met by a
young man whose job is to watch people’s dinghies while they go into town. He charged $1 for this service.
 |
| La Herradura |
Patrick needed to go to the ATM, so we headed up the main
street towards the bank and the grocery store.
La Herradura is a rough and unattractive place, rumored to be dangerous
for tourists. We saw some young toughs,
but no one bothered us. Patrick couldn’t
get any money out of the ATM, probably because they had set the limit rather
low. I got $100 with no problem. I
didn’t really need money, but wanted some small bills because all I had was
hundreds.
The grocery store was across the street from the bank, a few
blocks up the road from the estuary. It
was a small supermarket. We had all come
in search of fresh vegetables, but there weren’t many offered. I got a couple of small heads of not too limp
iceberg lettuce, a bag of onions and a few tomatoes. The most attractive things there were the
grapes, so I bought a small bunch of those, even though Scott didn’t like
them. I did manage to get some
disposable razors and napkins and some very nice small bags of sauces that were
perfect for seasoning the one pound lumps of meat I had bought from Emely up
the road. The sauces cost 35 cents per
envelope. It was all I could do to spend
$14 at that grocery store, since we didn’t need meat or alcohol. They were kind enough to change my $100 bill,
however, so I left with a good supply of small bills. None of us bought much.
 |
| Pangas in La Herradura |
We headed back down the road towards the restaurant on the
water’s edge. There were a bakery, a
phone store, a few eateries and a couple of small grocery/liquor stores. A small inlet held the local pangas and there
were more stored on shore. La Herradura
did not give off a happy vibe. The
restaurant where we had left the boat was nice, though. It was a big place with a two story high
roof. We stopped there and had cold
sodas before hopping off the wall into someone’s panga and then climbing across
to Venus’s boat. The tide had turned in
our favor, but the wind was now against us.
We had to hang onto the beach umbrella on the way back. We saw lots of men fishing from cayucos, the
local variety of dugout canoe. We got
back to the marina about noon.
Bill had been to the boat while I was gone and he and Scott
had determined that our starting battery had been fried by our faulty starter
and the starter was still, indeed, useless.
Bill checked around for battery deals, but couldn’t come up with
anything in the way of 8Ds. Scott spent
the day reading in his cabin. I spent
the afternoon finishing the last hatch screen and then went for a quick swim
when I just couldn’t stand the heat or Scott’s silence, anymore.
 |
| Hotel Beach |
I couldn’t sleep on Tuesday morning, so got up, took a
shower, and spent the morning using the wi-fi in the bar. The wait staff has given up trying to sell me
coffee and breakfast. I sat up there
until my back started to bother me and I got hungry. Then I headed down to the boat to make
breakfast. Venus came by the boat,
later, with her friend, Lucio, who was the captain of one of the power boats on
the dock. Lucio knew where to get batteries
at a discount and had a truck to take us there.
I thought Scott would welcome this information, but he just ignored me
when I told him. He spent all day in his
cabin, reading, and never mentioned our mechanical problems or what we might be
doing in the future. I was going crazy
because people kept asking me what we were doing and it was very embarrassing
to have to say that I didn’t know.
Ramona and Jan came by in the afternoon and I jumped at the
opportunity to go out to the beach with them for a walk and a drink. It was good to get out of the stuffy boat and
even better to get away from Scott’s mood.
The best thing I could do when he got in a mood like that was to make my
own plans and get on with life. If I
hung around the boat, waiting for him to act, I just ended up feeling like
Cinderella, missing out on the ball.
 |
| Swarm of Bees on Porto Venere |
Ramona, Jan, Patrick, Venus and I had agreed to meet at 6:45
am on Wednesday to go to El Tunco.
Patrick, Venus and I were ready, but we didn’t see Ramona and Jan. Knowing that they had had trouble with their
outboard the night before, I tried to call them on the radio to see if they
needed a ride. When we couldn’t reach
them (their batteries were too low to use the radio), Venus hopped in her
dinghy and went to get them. She met them
being towed by another boat and took their line to bring them over to the
marina. While Venus was fetching the
Millers, Patrick and I watched the swarm of bees that had infested the power
boat next to Venus’ boat. We had seen
them arrive the day before and quickly put up all our screens to keep them out
of our boat. It looked for a time at if
they were going to occupy an unattended sailboat, but they swarmed around the
reel on one of the fishing boats instead.
Patrick suggested that they smoke them out and we later heard that they
had done so with apparent success.
 |
| Scenery on the Road to La Libertad |
Once we were all assembled, we quickly found a bus going to
Arco. Every time we took that bus the
fare was different. That morning, it was
85 cents. At Arco, we changed to a small
bus going to Comalapa, which cost us a quarter each. From Comalapa, we took a #187 to La Libertad
for another 60 cents. The coastline was
very scenic. We stopped at the Super
Selecto grocery store in La Libertad to use the bathroom and then spent another
quarter to hop on a #80 to El Tunco. The
whole trip took us about three hours.
 |
| Main Street of El Tunco |
 |
| Surf Shop in El Tunco |
El Tunco was a funky little surfing beach with a lot of
backpacker/surfer hotels, surf shops, and restaurants. You could rent a surfboard for the whole day
for $10. We had originally planned to
eat at one of the restaurants on the beach, but they were no longer serving
breakfast and the lunch menu was expensive.
We turned around and went back into town where we got a very nice and
reasonable ($2.50 for eggs, beans, rice, cheese and rolls) breakfast at a
second floor restaurant. Once fortified,
Ramona, Jan and I went for a walk on the beach while Venus and Patrick (who
didn’t like to walk) sat in a café and drank coffee. El Tunco gets its name from a rock
outcropping just offshore that (supposedly) looks like the snout of a pig. I thought that it must have eroded some since
it was named because I couldn’t see the resemblance at all. The beach wasn’t very pretty, but the waves
were nice. What sand there was appeared
very dark from the volcanic rocks in the area and much of the beach was
composed of round stones such as are usually found in riverbeds. When the waves receded, you could hear the
stones rolling back into the surf, which was kind of cool. Two rivers meet the sea in El Tunco. One parallels the town and we walked down the
beach as far as the second one. There
were pleasant, hippy sort of hotels all along the beachfront. One of them had hammocks strung under a shady
structure that looked quite pleasant.
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| El Tunco's Namesake Rock |
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| Hammocks on the Beach at El Tunco |
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| Riverside Businesses in El Tunco |
After the clothing store, we hit the Super Selecto to buy
groceries. It was the nicest grocery
store I had seen in El Salvador. They
even had fairly nice produce, although I couldn’t find any bananas. I bought a very nice, large head of red leaf
lettuce for 52 cents and finally found some carbonated water, which had been
unavailable at the other stores we had visited.
I got two bags of groceries for under $10. By the time we were done shopping, it was
2:30 and we were all hot and tired. We
decided to share a taxi back to the marina.
There were no taxis visible, but a fellow saw us looking for one and
offered to drive us home for $40. That
wasn’t bad split five ways, so we agreed.
We were somewhat dismayed when he arrived with his vehicle,
however. Instead of the small sedan we
expected, he appeared in a mini truck with a crew cab. Once we got him to remove his sub-woofer from
the front seat, there was just room for all of us to cram into the cab. We loaded our plunder into the truck bed and
set off for Bahia del Sol. It took an
hour and 15 minutes to drive back to the hotel.
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| Used Clothing Store in La Libertad |
Thursday morning, I got up early to run. Everybody along the road is used to me
now. Even the dogs ignore me. The bread vendors all wave at me, even though
I never buy bread. It was extra hot and
humid. I ran down the road for five
kilometers and then turned around. I was
done in after 6 kilometers, but still had four more to get back to the hotel,
so I just kept running. I literally had
to wring out my clothes when I got back.
 |
| Janet with Her English Students |
Just as I was walking back to the boat from the showers, I
ran into Venus. She invited me to come
to the local water park. My English
teacher friend, Janet, was taking her students to the park to celebrate her
birthday. Jan, Ramona, Venus and I went
along. We took ten kids. The park was very generous. They let the kids in for free and even sent a
van to collect us. These were kids from
the island and they didn’t have a lot. They
live on an island and none of them had bathing suits. They had a great time at the park and the
simple grilled chicken lunch we had was a big treat for them.
 |
| Water Slides at Atlantis |
The Atlantis Water Park was very nice. They had several big water slides, a wave
pool, a kiddie pool with smaller slides, and a river you could float
around. There were nice paved walkways
that were easy on bare feet and plenty of shade structures to keep us out of
the sun. There was only one other family
group with older teenagers there. The
staff followed us around and turned on the water wherever we decided to
go. Shortly after we got there, I went
down one of the big water slides in a double float with one of the boys. The float was a little low on air and folded
in half when we hit the water. The boy’s
head smacked me hard right in the nose.
There was blood everywhere and it hurt like crazy. He was mortified. I assured him that I would live and the staff
took me into the snack bar and got me some napkins to clean up my nose. I sat in there until it stopped bleeding and
then went back to our shelter and lay in a hammock for a while. I was ready to play again when the wave pool
started up.
 |
| Wave Pool at Atlantis Water Park |
 |
| Traffic Jam at the Pelican Slide |
The park ran the wave pool for an hour in the morning and
another hour in the afternoon. Both
times, everyone in the park was in the wave pool. They gave us floats to sit in and we were
tossed about on the waves. They actually
got quite high and I was even tossed in the air a couple of times. We had fun playing bumper cars with the kids
and each other. Rubber doughnuts do not
steer like surfboards. There was one
really tall water slide that started out going straight down so far that you
actually flew back up the other side and got to come down a second time. Venus and I had to try it. It was pretty wild. They had us lie down on our backs so that our
heads wouldn’t collide, which also meant that we couldn’t see where we were
going. By the end of the day, I was
exhausted from paddling and climbing up and down stairs. I wouldn’t have run so far if I had known I
was going to the water park later. We
were all subdued in the van on the way home, but the kids were happy.
Bill had stopped by the boat just as I was hurrying off to
the water park, so I had left it to them to organize our trip to San
Salvador. When I got back, I discovered
that Bill had been unable to find a driver for us. He suggested that I talk to Martin, the chef,
who had filled our propane tanks for us earlier that week. Martin is a very useful guy to know. I asked him if he knew someone who would like
to take us to San Salvador the next day and he quickly arranged for his friend,
Edgardo, to take us. Then I went back
and talked with Bill on the radio to get all the directions to the places we
needed to go.
Edgardo picked us up at 7:30 (OK, 7:45 or so) on Friday
morning. Jan and Ramona came with us
because Jan had a dentist appointment. It
took us a couple of hours to get to San Salvador. The traffic wasn’t bad until we got to the
city, but then it was awful. San
Salvador is hilly and made up of many different neighborhoods. The contrasts are striking. One neighborhood would be made up of
corrugated tin shacks and the next would be neat homes in gated
communities. The historic center was a
zoo of traffic and small vendors. Newer
parts of town boasted modern shopping malls and American fast food
restaurants. We dropped Jan and Ramona off
where they could find a taxi to the dentist and then we headed for Boulevard
Venezuela. Close to the historic center,
there was a neighborhood full of auto parts stores. We had been directed to try Repuestos
Monterrey first. Edgardo knew where it
was, but we still had a devil of a time getting there because of all the one
way (una via) streets. Traffic was
gridlocked. We could have walked much
faster. Edgardo eventually deposited us
in front of the building. It was a large
warehouse sort of place and they did, indeed, have our starter … almost. It was a very similar model, but the bell
housing had the solenoid on the wrong side.
It would not fit on our engine as it was, but Scott was pretty sure we
could use the bell housing from the old starter. At $260, the price was right. I did have to pay them in cash. They told us that we had bought the last one
and they were no longer available, although some of the parts could still be
obtained.
 |
| Doesn't Look Much Like a Parts Store, Does It? |
 |
| Super Repuestos Was a Zoo |
While we were driving through the tangle of one way streets,
we had seen a Ford OEM parts store, so we headed there next. We were really hoping that we could find a
second starter to have as a spare. The
store we had seen didn’t have one, but they sent us next door to Canhuati. They had the same starter we bought at
Monterrey, but their price was $565.
That did include the labor to switch the bell housing, but we
declined. Next, we decided to stop at
the huge Super Repuestos, since we were there.
They were having a huge 25% off sale and had a DJ blaring music so
loudly that we couldn’t hear a word and had to resort to writing notes. They didn’t have our starter, but we did buy
a can of carburetor cleaning fluid.
Next, we went to Colonia San Mateo to seek out an industrial parts
supplier that I had found on the internet.
I had the address and had located the street on the map, but it looked
all wrong when we got there. The address
was a nice residence. I rang the
doorbell and told the woman who answered the intercom that I was looking for
industrial parts and wondered if I was in the right place. She said we were and let us in. They didn’t stock parts, but could obtain
them. She promised to call her boss and
see what they could find for us. We left
our phone number in case they could come up with what we needed.
Satisfied that we weren’t going to find another starter that
day, we set off across the city to go to the Battery Center where Bill had
arranged for us to get an 8D battery at a good price. The Battery Center was close to Redondo
(traffic circle) Masferrer. This was a
newer, cleaner part of the city with nice, modern stores and even a BMW
dealership. The Battery Center was
expecting us and was happy to sell us an 8D battery for $175, which was a good
enough price that I didn’t mind having spent $100 on a driver for the day. They even took my credit card. Everywhere we went, we had asked for a 3-way
battery switch, without luck. Finally,
we went to the main location of Marinsa and managed to find one there. While we were there, we ran into two other
couples from Bahia del Sol. It seemed
that everyone was in San Salvador that day.
 |
| Gridlock in Centro Historico |
I wanted to kill some time until Jan and Ramona were ready
to come back and I also needed a new hobby since I had finished all my sewing
projects. I wanted to buy a cheap
guitar. Bill had told me to try a store
called Electronica 2000, which was located in the historic center, according to
Edgardo. We headed over there and
immediately got stuck in the gridlock.
While we were sitting in traffic, Edgardo noticed another music store
called Omni on the corner. We stopped
there. Their prices were so low that I
bought a nice Yamaha guitar and a bunch of accessories. They wouldn’t take my credit card without my
passport, but they were very apologetic and gave me a 10% discount when I paid
cash.
 |
| Chinese Fast Food in San Salvador |
By this time, Jan and Ramona were ready to go so we went and
picked them up. We all went out to lunch
at China Wok. It wasn’t very good
Chinese Food, but it was something different.
After lunch, we stopped at Despensa Don Juan to do some grocery shopping
while we had a van to schlep heavy items like beer and water back to the
marina. When we finished, it was 3:30
and time to start the drive back to Bahia del Sol. Edgardo dropped us off as close as he could
get to the docks, but we had a lot of heavy stuff to carry to the boats. I was guarding our goods while the others
ferried items to the boats when a young man from the hotel picked up the
immense 8D battery, balanced it on his shoulder, and carried it off to the
boat. Then he disappeared. We wanted to give him a tip, so had to get
Martin to call him to come back. He was
clear at the beach side of the hotel by the time we tracked him down. I waited until he came back to give him a few
bucks and tell him that he was welcome to take the old battery for the salvage
value. He was glad to do so and even
helped Scott heave the new battery up onto the boat. By the time we put all the groceries away, we
were ready to drink cold beers in the pool.
There was lightning and thunder in the evening and it rained
during the night. We woke up in the
early morning hours because the electricity had gone off and the fan had
quit. We had closed the hatches to keep
the rain out and it was sweltering in the boat.
By morning, there was still no power and we were getting low on
battery. A lightning strike had knocked
out the power in a fairly large area.
Not only did we need to live without fans, we had no internet! The hotel was using a generator to operate
important items like the pool filter and the stereo, but there was no power for
the margarita machine or the blenders. It
was mid-afternoon before we had power again.
Scott spent Saturday taking the new starter apart and
replacing the bell housing with the one from the old starter, since the new one
had the solenoid on the opposite side where it would have prevented him from
mounting it next to our engine. When he was
done with that, he replaced the melted battery switch and installed a new
battery switch to control which batteries were being charged by the generator
alternator. The new battery switches
were much smaller than the old one, so he had to mount them on a piece of
phenolic (a composite material) and then use that to cover the existing hole
where the battery switch had been. It
looked pretty spiffy when he was done.
Because he still hadn’t installed the new starting battery, we didn’t
yet know if the engine would start.
At high tide, Venus took us and my 5 hp Mercury outboard
across the estuary to a mechanic named Juan on the island. My outboard had been sitting for a long time
and had a clogged carburetor. It started
fine, but would die when we tried to give it gas. Ramona and Jan and Venus had had the same
problem and he had cleaned their outboards, so we were confident he knew what
he was doing. Later in the afternoon,
Bill gave me a ride over to the island to get my memory card back from
Janet. It was interesting to see the
island in the daylight. Jean and I
walked from their house down to Janet’s and she showed me some of the flora and
fauna on the island. They have little
blue land crabs that scuttle around. The
islanders have hunted them almost to extinction, but the properties of the
gringos serve as wildlife sanctuaries.
Since the houses are mostly open, the rustling of crabs at night was a
problem for the residents.
 |
| Cashew Trees |
I knew that cashews were grown in El Salvador, because I had
bought them from vendors on the bus, but I didn’t realize that the flat topped
trees I saw everywhere were the source.
The nut grows inside what looks like the stem of the fruit. The fruit is also edible, although somewhat
astringent. It is refreshing. I had often seen piles of the fruits rotting
by the side of the road. Suddenly, I
understood that someone had been harvesting the nuts. According to Bill, the hulls around the seeds
contain an oil with an effect similar to poison oak. I thought I’d leave the harvesting of cashews
to the experts. I could see why they are
expensive to buy, even where they were plentiful.
We had invited Venus over for dinner, so I made beef and
carrots in green mole (called pipian, according to Venus) with Spanish rice and
bacon slaw. The beef that I bought at
the little market down the road turned out to be incredibly tough, so I spent a
long time cutting all the gristle out of it and then stewed it for a couple of
hours just to make it edible. The effort
was worth it. Venus didn’t like
Salvadoran food much, so she was very happy to discover that I had made Mexican
food. We were amazed that such a slender
woman could eat two big plates of rice with mole. There were no leftovers.
I got up early to run, but only ran about six kilometers
because I was still a little sore from my 10K run a few days before. It was quiet on Sunday morning, except for
the bread vendors and the milk man. The
milk man poured milk from his big jug into whatever containers his customers
produced, just like something out of Fiddler
on the Roof, except that he carried his jugs on a tricycle instead of a
wagon. I wondered if the cows I saw
wandering up and down the road were the source of the milk. I heard thunder while I was running, but it
didn’t start raining until just after I got back when the sky really opened
up. The rainy season had come to El
Salvador. It was almost cool while it
was raining. The temperature got below
80 degrees. Of course, it was before
eight in the morning.
I just couldn’t get going on Sunday. We went back across the estuary to pick up my
newly repaired outboard. Juan had
cleaned the carburetor and the internal fuel tank for $20 and it ran fine. Scott took it for a little spin and was
actually able to get his hard bottomed inflatable up on a plane, at least with
just him in it. I did a little hand
laundry because the hotel put everything in the dryer and that was pretty hard
on spandex and bra hooks. Passing pangas
laughed at my unmentionables waving in the breeze. Scott finished reworking all the battery
switches. We then had three: one for the
main engine, one for the generator (it didn’t work, but we could charge
batteries with its alternator), and one for the solar panels. That allowed us to control what batteries
were being charged by which system. I
napped most of the day and finally had to drink a diet coke just to stay
awake. I made dinner and then stayed up
late playing the guitar. I hadn’t
brought any music with me, so had to figure out songs one at a time. Unfortunately, my iPod died just when it
would have come in handy. It seemed that
the humidity (or perspiration from running with it) had done in the charging
socket. It had been new when we
left. I would look for someone to fix
it. It was much easier to get things
repaired in Central America than it would have been at home.
Cruising changes your outlook on the world. Things go wrong. Some plans fall through, but then unexpected
adventures materialize. You learn to
slow down and enjoy what comes or you go crazy or go home. Once you have adapted, it is hard to imagine
going home where every minute is planned and schedules are rigid. The cruisers who have moved ashore, here in
El Salvador, were tired of living on a boat, but not ready to go back to the
rat race. Living in a third world
country is a lot like living on a boat.
There are challenges and something is always breaking, but those
hardships keep you busy and force you to be creative. It is a social lifestyle because people have
to share resources and depend on each other.
I could see living here one day, as long as the bedroom was air
conditioned, I had reliable internet, and the blender worked.
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