Monday, October 29, 2012

Sonsonate and San Antonio del Monte

Sonsonate is a great little city. It's like any other typical Central American town, with its bustling street markets where you can buy anything imaginable under the sun from fresh fish brought in from La Libertad to machetes, electronics and other necessary household utensils. Saturday is market day pretty much wherever you go and this is no exception.  The open air bit offers a wide and varied selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, and this time of year mobile vendors walk around with dried and fresh beans on offer. A pound (450g) of dried red beans for 60 centavos - local currency is USD - a bushel (as much as you can carry on your head) of fresh unshelled beans for 2 dollars. Although who would want to pay such exorbitant prices when you could just as easily pick them yourself for free from the fields? Further along, the open air market gives way to covered stores and fast food joints like La Bomba! and Pollo Campero, who in the spirit of market day plug their best salesmen into a set of speakers and have them rattle away their deals of the day.

Despite it's vibrant market scene which I obviously loved, (who doesn't love the smell of chicalín* and the distorted sound of a clipped sales pitch at full volume?) most people travel to Sonsonate for religious purposes. A short walk over the hill away from the market will lead you to a colorful but quiet square, one of the few places in El Salvador where you can still find adobe houses. They are old and discolored, but still standing after countless storms and earthquakes. As you walk down the hill you will see the white arches of the iglesia San Antonio del Monte, host to a tiny sliver of bone which is said to have belonged to the late saint. We arrived in time to see a procession of nuns reverently filing out of the chapel, a great contrast to my grandmother who went to give the good saint a piece of her mind.

The church itself is a large white structure with heavy wooden doors. The decor is simple but nice with but one mural of St. Anthony himself and his followers dressed in green. Women sell artesanias all along the left-hand wall of the church, but on a quiet day like Saturday when everyone is living the life at the market, there is not much business to be had. Despite the deceptive calm of the day, I am told that people travel far and wide to visit this site to thank San Antonio for his miraculous deeds. 

After paying homage to the saint our little troupe of non-believers shuffled back to our pick-up truck and headed back through the market crowds, Caluco, fields of sugar-cane in flower, and fields of molten lava and headed back to San Salvador, following the 205 bus and chasing coconuts and bundles of fresh red beans along the way.

*Chicalín is sun-dried shrimp often used to add flavor to soups and rice. It is not particularly appetizing but there are worse smelling things in the world. In El Salvador, nearly all markets smell of chicalín.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

San Salvador

San Salvador is a rather ugly city covered in black diesel and petrol fumes, so grimy and sooty that not even torrential tropical rains and earthquakes can shake off grime. Imagine a city that experienced an American commercial boom on a limited budget through the 90s paired with the effects of an incompetent government whose primary interests since the end of the civil war have been to maximize personal economic gains - the impact this has had on the city's infrastructure and public mentality. This is our capital city. A materialistic commercial whorehouse with bad roads, bad traffic and terrible drivers. It is a monster that is slowly but powerfully expanding, engulfing our beautiful Quetzaltepec, completely disregarding and stomping all over its natural beauty and biodiversity.

The trouble is that my grandmother's house is a little oasis at center of it all. Up until recently this area was mostly a residential zone, with steep meandering roads and overhanging trees and bushes. I am told that at one point it was even possible to walk across fields and monte all the way to the mouth of the volcano. But this was way before my time. Today, it is a web of pot-holed roads, offices, and congested traffic, but sitting in my grandmother's garden it is easy to filter out the chaos and focus on the colorful vegetation and exotic fruits and flowers. It is a garden that has remained virtually unchanged over the past 25 years, with the same white, iron-lace garden furniture, strategically positioned and permanently discolored stone cranes and an impeccably kept array of tall wild orchids, hanging orchids, geraniums, flowers of paradise, galan de noche, and countless other flowers I don't know the names of. So when I venture out from my personal Garden of Eden for the daily errand run it becomes particularly frustrating when I find myself stuck in a knot of black-fumed traffic.

My grandmother at one point while driving, looked at me and asked, "Como ves San Salvador?". "Sucio". Polluted like no other. I'm probably experiencing a type of culture shock, which I suppose is understandable but difficult to accept. At least winter is round the corner which means lots of tropical thunderstorms and earthquakes which means cleaner air and rivers and hopefully more environmentally-friendly, political decisions due to seasonal fears. That and I will be completely distracted by the excitement of thunderstorms, earthquakes and the numerous new streams and mini-waterfalls.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

30 hours

For the first time EVER, my travel bag is packed a whole day in advance. I don't know if it's the fact that I love my new rucksack, the fact that I'm really quite excited about this trip to El Salvador, general boredom, or a combination of those things. I started selecting and laying out my clothes yesterday. A systematic folding process followed and little piles of carefully selected and counted outfits emerged, all of which were eagerly rolled and stuffed into a 60L orange rucksack.

I think it's a good time to go. I'm blogging about packing of all things and the cats and I have a reached a new level of understanding with each other which means they are quite happy to use me and any part of me (including my face) as a bed, pillow, washbasin, strategic vantage point, fort and full on war-zone. In case you are not familiar with the Dohle cat situation, not that you should be, the two cats hate each other but currently love me. Thus they very often engage in 'en garde' situations with me blissfully slumbering in between completely ignorant of imminent danger. Lots of hissing, growling, scratching and yelling later one is banished to the outer confines of my room while the other is allowed to stay. But enough about cats.

In 30 hours I will start my journey.  

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Urban Nautical Adventures

Paddington Basin
pat...pat...pat...

Is the first thing I hear when I wake up in the morning. That and the soft murmur of voices sharing an early morning gossip before heading their separate ways to conduct their daily lives. The first is the sound of joggers on their morning runs, a surprisingly peaceful way to wake up compared to the ...STOMP...STOMP...STOMP of commuters at Paddington station. The stress of commuters bounces off the tall glass buildings and settles into your dreams during the night until you are abruptly awakened by the harsh metallic clang of the footsteps of urban civilization. I am generally ambivalent towards Paddington, but I never want to live there on the canal again.

Morven making breakfast
 Boat life suits me greatly. It's impossible to be stressed out on a boat and as a person who likes to juggle a million things at once this is a great benefit. Unless you are living in Paddington basin of course. Otherwise, it's great. After being gently summoned from the deep recesses of sleep, you fling the curtains, windows and doors open and you're outside. Fellow boaters are probably having breakfast and coffee outside as well, the occasional cat will blink at you vaguely for having interrupted his own private sleep. You learn to ignore non-boating folk and greet your neighbors cheerfully and they smile and nod back contentedly. Back inside you make yourself and your fellow marinero a fresh pot of coffee and breakfast and watch other narrow boats pass you by as they make their way towards new adventures. You're always meeting someone new on a boat, whether it's a neighbor or a tourists staring gawp eyed at you trying to save a flailing boat in a windy thunderstorm.

But back to breakfast. Definitely a cosy affair which requires excellent timing otherwise you end up with burnt toast and coffee paired with hardboiled eggs instead of runny centers. Five steps and you're outside again in the 'dining' area, or a further two steps and a hop and you're on your rooftop garden enjoying the view and sun. 20 minutes of sun and food later and it's time for your day to start, get dressed and go. Close the windows, lock the doors, make sure the mooring ropes are secure and you're set to go. You glance back at the boat you call home and start humming the theme tune of the day. "I've been dreaming of you since I don't know when..."


Hackney

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Windhagen

The windy hills of yonder, the sheltered forest, the land where cows are your neighbors and frogs are your friends. I wouldn't call myself a city girl, but I certainly felt like one the first time I was confronted by a moo and a croak in my own backyard. Now three years later, this is the place I like to call home and enjoy exploring.

Take this morning for example, a rather late start to the day but the whole valley was still covered in thick white fog, yet all I wanted to do was jump into the still whiteness and disappear into the forest. It took some time to get out of bed, fed and washed - the cats received their quota of attention for the day as well - and I embarked on a short walk past the fields towards the babbling brook. Each journey is always different no matter how many times I've walked down the same route. There's always a new hidden path to explore, a new shortcut to be found and different farmers to annoy and I always end up trekking up some hill or other. What starts off as an intended 20 minute wander towards the edge of the forest often turns into a 40+ min hike.

I took my camera with me this time. The fog was already clearing but there was still plenty of pretty dew on the ground. You can tell autumn is just round the corner.