EL SALVADOR - 25th November 2009

Introduction

Central America's smallest country, El Salvador is a world of volcanoes, mountain towns, black-sand beaches and resilient locals who have dodged civil war and natural disasters. But it's still a dangerous place and as a recent addition to our route, we decided to just pop in here for a quick feel of its flavour – we just had no idea of quick it would be!!

Background and History

Paleo-Indian peoples populated El Salvador 10000 years ago and around 2000BC the Olmecs followed and diverse cultures subsequently traded here with the Pipils (descendants of Aztecs and Toltecs) dominating. When the Spanish arrived in 1524 they transformed their sophisticated culture and maize farming into plantations of cotton and indigo, enslaving the indigenous peoples. Conflict simmered under this gross imbalance of power and the 1811 revolt culminated in independence 10 years later with the country part of the Central American Federation. Governments came and went with the wealthy elite holding on to their power through El Salvador 's withdrawal from the Federation in 1841. Into the 20 th century, intermittent efforts by the majority to redress the injustices were met with severe repression. Coups and electoral fraud was the face of governments with a series of dictators killing indiscriminately. In 1979 a military coup sparked guerrilla groups to unify into the FMLN and 10 years of a bloody civil war followed. The Reagan administration bristling from the threat of a socialist revolution pumped big money into the military prolonging the conflict until UN-mediated negotiations finally resulted in a compromise in 1992.

Our Experience

We eventually left Guatemala a day later due to problems with the water tank. 40km outside the capital en route to El Salvador , a growing knocking noise persuaded our return to Frido and his company's workshop to reinforce the tank and silicone a leak. While under the vehicle, we also replaced a bolt that the Mexican mechanics omitted when repairing the transmission!

So another night with the amicable Frido and what sounded as the ‘grand finale' of a local custom that continues for over a week as locals shoot off ‘bombs' virtually the entire night making continuous sleep frustratingly unreachable! But thank goodness for this base to sort out all our hassles and by 10am on the 25 th we hit the road again.

Beautiful countryside flanked our route east for about 100km to the border of Valle Nuevo when bureaucratic rules forced a different pace through El Salvador . Our exit from Guatemala was over in 15 minutes, but it took 2 hours of convincing the officials to allow a right hand drive vehicle into the country! For the first time on this journey, the law prohibits vehicular travel with right hand steering but we were allowed to transit through in 6 hours, and only with a police escort. Under their watchful eye we moved through pretty terrain, past volcanoes and lakes that we had hoped to visit, en route to the capital, San Salvador . We then realized that our customs document indicated that we should exit 200km east, but our planned route was to explore Hondura's West and the Caribbean Coast , so another 2 hours of complaining and waiting at the police headquarters before we were escorted north. It was dark by this time and the city appeared a mess of dark chaotic activity – luckily we could simply follow the police pick-up. We couldn't see much of the country in the pitch darkness and at 7H30pm our dreaded concern became a reality. It's generally not advisable to travel in Central America at night and for some inexplicable reason (Mi Spanol es mal!!), the police stopped 40km from the border with Honduras , gave us our vehicle documents and sent us on our own to El Poy. Somehow we were free to travel the winding road up a mountain alone! Luckily the roads are great and by 9pm we arrived safely at the border. Customs however was unable to process any paperwork without the ‘boss', so we had to wild-camp the night away just outside the official buildings with trucks grinding their way past us. Oh, the joys of travel!!!

By 8am we were allowed (without the ‘boss' being there) to leave El Salvador with nearly no paperwork or immigration checks (what was all the fuss about???), but it took another 6 hours to proceed into Honduras – but that is another saga!

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