At the Guatemalan-Salvadorean border I avoided paying the US$80 "exit fee" that a shifty looking man in sportswear tried to levy. They were rank amateurs though: starting with an amount that just made me stare, then laugh, then immediately halving the alleged tax. No, I thought, I'll just chance my luck without this vitally important signature.
Mayan-Guatemalan women are slim, dressed in loose-fitting traditional skirts and blouses, have long clean hair and wear no makeup. They are beautiful. Salvadorean women are fat, wear tight cheap fashions that make them look fatter, put makeup on with a trowel, and apparently comb their hair with goose fat every morning. They are not beautiful. The men look at you suspiciously. Certainly this is a country less used to outsiders. However, when I have actually stopped to talk to people, I have found everyone to be more than welcoming, and helpful and friendly. Eating breakfast pupusas in Sonsonate, the owner came down with a big grin and invited me to stay in his house! Lots of people here speak some English, as a huge proportion of people are or have worked in the US.
San Salvador is odd. The affluent and leafy Western suburbs (where my hostel is situated) seem like a North American city, in lots of ways. There are three malls, and many gas stations and US fast-food establishments. Then, you can take a bus or a 30 minute walk to the centre, which resembles nothing so much as a huge 30-block street market, with a Cathedral and Plaza more or less buried in the middle, and pretty much not a lot else. I went looking for the Science Museum but didn't have the exact address, and two sets of other Museum curators plus the Sheraton staff couldn't tell me where it was. In fact they thought it didn't exist. It was about two blocks away.
So apart from the capital, I've been hiking in Bosque El Impossible (swimming in the river yay!), and hung out for a day on Lago Coatepeque. I managed to be present for the FMLN's political rallies in both Suchitoto and San Salvador -- quite an experience! They are the party that formed out of the guerillas of the Civil War, and the revolutionary spirit is still very much alive. It was quite fun standing in a city Plaza packed with people wearing red chanting "Hasta La Victoria Siempre!"
Now east, through Eastern El Salvador, then skipping through a very small and by all accounts unremarkable corner of Honduras to Nicaragua. It's hot here!
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