El Salvador Part One - San Salvador and Panchimalco

29/08/09-03/09/09

As if we had not already been to the cinema enough in the past few weeks, on the morning of our first full day in San Salvador we went to see the new Harry Potter film. I had first heard that it was being shown when we were still teaching in Nicaragua, but not having a cinema anywhere nearby meant that I had to wait. By the time we got to a place where there was a cinema, however, they had already stopped showing it, so when I saw that it was still showing in San Salvador, I was over the moon. Usually, all the English-speaking films are shown in English with Spanish subtitles here, which is great for me, as I always prefer a film in its original language. Unfortunately that wasn´t the case with Harry Potter, which they were showing in Spanish, so not only did I not understand everything, but in general I didn´t find it all that good. I don´t know what anyone else thought about it? The films will never be as good as the books, but the latest one just doesn´t seem to have much of a story. I will have to watch it again in English to see if it changes my mind at all :)

Our first impression of San Salvador was not a great one, and our impression didn´t change much during the week that we spent there. It´s very hot, dirty and polluted...the several ancient buses running around town emit clouds of black smoke, which force you to hold your breath when they go past. There are also people selling food at little stalls all over the place meaning that it smells wherever you go and there is rubbish everywhere! One afternoon when we went to see the few sights that the city has to offer, we were pleased to find that at least this area felt a bit cleaner and was even quite pretty. The cathedral is relatively modern, but is quite striking, both inside and out, and adjacent to it on another side of the main square is the National Palace, which we visited inside another day, and which served as the base for the three powers of State until 1974. There is a green room which served as the President´s office, a yellow room, which was the seat of the Supreme Court, and a blue room, which was home to the Legislative Assembly. If the number of seats on show in the room reflect the size of the Assembly at that time, it must have been quite small as there were only 32 seats. Nowadays the Assembly is made up of 84 deputies. The current building dates from the beginning of the 20th century, the original building having been destroyed in a fire in 1899. The idea for a National Palace was originally suggested by General Gerardo Barrios, and the main square on which the palace and cathedral sit is dedicated to this national icon. The first day we visited the square they were celebrating the centenary of his death and the army were holding a concert in his memory. The army´s orchestra were playing and there were several soldiers around the square with guns, I assume keeping an eye on everything. We watched for half an hour or so, and it was great to see something that was obviously so important to the local people. (There is a short video of part of the concert below).



Another thing that wasn´t great in El Salvador was the food. There are fast food places everywhere (Pizza Hut, Burger King and Pollo Campero, which is similar to KFC) and local food does not seem very easy to come by. We managed to find decent local food for a reasonable price a few times, but on several occasions we ended up taking the easy and unhealthy option of fast food. Also, the bars and restaurants close really early, at around 8pm-9pm, so if you leave it a bit late for dinner, you end up going hungry. One evening at around 9pm we were walking around trying to find somewhere open to eat, and all we managed to buy were some chips from one of those food stalls. They were good chips but it´s hardly what you could call a wholesome dinner :) Oh well!!!

Only spending a week in El Salvador obviously meant that we would not have the opportunity to see much of the country, but whenever we could we spent the day visiting places of interest near to the capital. The first village we visited was Panchimalco, which we had been told was one of the few remaining places where you could still see indigenous people wearing the traditional clothing and speaking their indigenous language. Unfortunately we didn´t see anything near as interesting (the only traditional clothing we saw was on little dolls in the local museum) and even the churches were closed the day we went, so we went back to San Salvador feeling a little disappointed. The highlight of the visit was when we got chatting to a couple of locals during lunch, one of whom had spent some time in Barcelona. Needless to say, he and Vic got talking about football and the rivalry between Real and Barcelona :) As we were about to leave we were treated to a cup of atol de elote, which is a kind of hot soup made from corn, but which they add a lot of sugar to to make it sweet. It is a common dessert here and we both really liked it :) On the way to Panchimalco we had also met a very friendly old man who was asking with interest about where we were from and telling us about other places that we could visit nearby. When we asked him if Panchimalco was nice, he said quite honestly that he didn´t like it, so I suppose we should have known then not to expect too much :) It was better than spending another day in San Salvador though. Our next two visits were to the towns of Suchitoto and San Vicente, more about them to follow in the next post.