Intro to El Sal

Chris and I have been in El Salvador for a few short weeks and it feels like we've been here forever. This is my first time posting so please remember that I am an engineer, much more comfortable with graphs than para-graphs.

For those of you unfamiliar with El Salvador I'll provide a very brief gringo overview. The country is small and covered in volcanoes. Although only 150miles by 60 miles, roughly the size of Massachusetts, the terrain is difficult to maneuver. It takes about 3.5 hours to travel 120 miles by car.


El Salvador has the highest population density in the region, approx 290 people per square mile. The official population of the country is 6.7 mil, but the unofficial count is that over 2 million of these are in the US, legally and illegally, working and sending money back to family members here. The capital is San Salvador, pop. 2.5 million, they use the US dollar for currency, same time zone as Lincoln NE, and the electricity current and plugs are the same as the US. El Sal is beautiful and tropical and strangely accommodating. There is an obvious lack of gringos here. Due to the recent civil war and current gang problems, tourism is not a mainstay of the area. They are working on it by building new all inclusive resorts, but it has a way to go.

El Salvadoran people are very, very kind and welcoming (except on the roads). But even then they sometimes surprise you. Chris likes to say that driving in El Salvador is like being in a fist fight. We have yet to see a traffic cop and have accepted the El Sal practice of optional turn signals. It is not strange to us to see a herd of cattle, a man with his three kids, or a makeshift double decker pickup truck with three layers of dinning room tables stacked up on top of each other with people sitting at the very top swaying with the moving traffic, crossing the 4 lane pan-Americana highway a dusk. It is different than what we are used to, but it seems to work down here.

There is only one guide book for El Salvador, Lonely Planet. I am going to borrow a well written introduction to further describe the country...

"Your going to El Salvador. People ask why. You tell them about the surfing, the hiking, and the museums, and they've already stopped listening. You mention being interested in the civil war and they turn around and ask you: 'Isn't it dangerous there?'

You remind them the war has been over since 1992, for the more than a decade. Over longer than the war in Guatemala, in fact, and didn't your sister spend two weeks learning Spanish in Antigua? But what about gangs? You point out that it's not as if gang members hang out on every street corner. That more tourists get robbed in Mexico or Costa Rica than they do in EL Sal. They shake their head. No, there was an article in Newsweek. They're not convinced.

And they may never be. You'll return with pictures of cloud forests and moonscapes on the tops of vocans. You learned to surf on the best waves in Central America. You caught a funk band at a boho bar in San Sal. You went hiking in Perquin with a guerrilla-turned-tour guide, who told you about the war as it was: terrifying, thrilling, boring, inspiring, confusing and sad. You ate pupusas in a city park watching little boys chase pigeons. ....Like a colonial church, bright blue, battered by earthquakes, El Salvador is still standing."


Nicaragua & El Salvador. Lonely Planet