If I recall correctly, today was the day we had to get up early to get to the beach because the lady we were visiting didn’t like being out after dark and we had to take along her armed escort in the form of her adult son. Regardless, once we arrived we found yet another lovely beach house and were treated to another amazing spread of food.
The waves were pounding the shore when we got there but soon the tide went out and we were able to swim a bit. I got in the best run of body surfing I’ve ever done, only to be unceremoniously dumped into 6″ of water when the surf broke. Sufficiently exfoliated, I retreated to the hammock.
She Who Shall Not Be Named and others had already retreated inside to nap, thanks to various ailments.
I, too, wasn’t feeling 100% but when lunch arrived I couldn’t resist. Tortilla soup with fresh avocado for starters.
Then a big heap of ham, chicken, sausage, rice and slaw – all amazing.
Unfortunately, my eyes were considerably bigger than my stomach which was in the first stages of revolt. I lay down in a hammock and tried to tune out the incessant Latin grooves blaring out of the nearby boombox.
While the rest of the gang enjoyed lunch and the sea, I battled some bug. I suspect it was something the locals are long resistant to, but it gave me aches and fever and nausia. About half our group suffered the same over the course of the week, while others were brought down by a mild cold.
On the way home I snapped this picture.
We saw this everywhere on the way into town on our first day, painted directly on the volcanic rock that the highways are carved through. Our cabbie told us it was a political party. The guardrails around San Salvador are all painted GANA orange all the way out into the countryside where, in some places, you cross a bridge and suddenly the guardrails are all FMLN red. The amount of paint and labor used in these efforts is incredible. I suspect they could repaint every school in El Salvador, rather than painting already-galvanized guardrails. That’s politics for you – tell the people what good you’ll do them, rather than doing them much good.
Another sight you’ll see everywhere – buses.
Because most people don’t have cars, buses are omnipresent. You’ll see school buses with U.S. districts still marked on the side. Many of them have been customized with garish lettering on the sides, shark fins jutting from the roof, spoilers, etc. Most of them have the front end jutting up into the air. At first I thought it was because the back end was overloaded but our driver told us they’d actually done this to the suspension because some of the roads have such steep hills that the front end would otherwise jamp into the ground at some intersections.
Next episode – the Museum of Archaeology and visiting the site of a civil war massacre, and more comida tipica.
