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| A big map of El Salvador at the border. Phew. |
Size: El Salvador is 4 times smaller than Ireland (21,000 km2 vs 84,000 km2)
Population: 6.3 million (an additional 3 million live in the USA)Average Temperature on the coast: 32 degrees
Rate of death from kidney disease: 4th highest in the world (A random statistic, I'll explain later)
Main export market: USA (50% of what El Salvador exports unsurprisingly goes to the US)
Main exports: Textiles, Coffee, Sugar
Human Development Index Ranking: 116 out of 188 countries
Most dangerous country in the world ranking: 8
I fell in love with El Salvador right after riding over the border. I knew nothing at all about the country. I had heard the usual cries of 'It's too dangerous for a solo female cyclist'. But I've heard those cries since arriving into Mexico at the Tijuana border. That was three months ago and since then I've met only lovely people, been offered food and showers and beds in daily random acts of kindness by strangers. So I thought I'd just go for it, cross the border ask for a map and then let the Salvadorians take me through their country. And what a lovely 2 weeks I had.
My 2 weeks in El Salvador were so special because of 3 people. People from El Salvador are called Salvadorians. So I should say because of 3 Salvadorians, Anna, Julio and Jose.
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| Typical Salvadorian breakfast. Beans with cream, fried bananas and of course tortillas. |
My first night in El Salvador was one of those total gems. I crossed the border in the early afternoon so was only a few kilometres into the country when at 4pm ish I started looking for somewhere to pitch the tent. The main coastal road was busy so I had my eyes peeled for somewhere a few hundred metres back. I noticed that a street stall selling watermelons seemed to have a farm behind it. Bobs-your-uncle I thought. Just to put you in the picture it was over 30 degrees every day. I'm saying this right from the start because it impacts everything. When you get up, how far you ride, what you eat, where you sleep, how you sleep, how much water you need to drink, how often you stop to look for shade, your mood.
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| Sweeny Green's first night in El Salvador. In a lane behind Anna's house. |
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| Anna has been selling watermelons on the roadside for years. The round pale watermelons are imported from Guatemala. The long dark green ones are local. Both are delicious. |
Anna ran a watermelon stand at the side of the road. I asked if I could pitch my tent behind her house and she said no problem, that I would be safe. Within 5 minutes of pitching the tent another neighbour offered me a bed. I said I was fine, but thanks. 5 minutes later another neighbour knocked on my tent asking if I wanted a shower. Of course I said yes to that.
It was an outdoor shower. The neighbour asked her son to haul me up a big bucket of the coldest water and I relished every drop I poured over my head with an old mayonnaise tub. I pulled the piece of plywood that's lying against the well in the photo below, across as a door. Anna was none too please with me going to the neighbour's house for a shower. Anna said that unlike her neighbour she had a shower INSIDE her house and if I wanted a shower before I left the following morning I should use HER shower. She was very keen to show me her INSIDE house shower. Hilarious.
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| Anna's neighbour offered me a cold shower (little white walls behind) with water hauled up from the well by her son. A bucket and a bar of soap. Glorious. |
Anna had sold watermelons for years. But now that her husband was on kidney dialysis and couldn't work she had to be creative so she opened a little restaurant beside her watermelons. She and 3 girls from the village worked from 7am-7pm 7 days per week. It was doing a flying business. I mention the kidney dialysis just because in the 2 weeks I spent in El Salvador I met 3 families who had members on dialysis. I thought that a little strange. At home I have one friend who has had a kidney transplant, I know no one personally who is on dialysis. Locals here said it's due to the pesticides sprayed by aeroplane on the corn and sugar crops. Hence my quest to see where El Salvador lies in the 'rate of kidney disease' world ranking.
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| Anna's 4 month old restaurant. |
I ordered grilled shrimp with garlic for dinner. Normally I never buy any food in restaurants but street food from a roadside cafe is fine. I usually ask in advance what the price is as I want to be sure I'm not being ripped off as a gringo (white American tourist), but this time it didn't seem appropriate. I was happy to pay whatever she charged as she was giving me somewhere safe to sleep. As I eat the most delicious plate full of scrummy shrimp, salad and rice I told Anna she belongs in a Michelin star restaurant in London and not a roadside stall in El Salvador. She laughed, we laughed and she told many of her customers who came to her stand for the rest of the night what I had said.
Anna's husband had had a leg amputated a few years ago because of a traffic accident. Recently he has developed kidney disease and requires dialysis twice per week. It costs 125 usd per 4 hour session. His family and her family take it in turns every week to drive him 2 hours to the hospital. Everyone chips in to pay. She works 7 days a week to pay the medical bills, she hardly sat down for the 24 hours I was there.
Another lovely moment after dinner was when Chris de Burg's 'Lady in Red' came on the radio. Anna started to sing along not knowing what any of the words meant. I did a little quick simultaneous translation as I sang and again we both laughed. She was a great character, fully of life and energy and get up and go, such a lovely welcome to a new country.
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| Anna and her husband resting in their hammocks on the roadside. |
Meeting Julio
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| Julio showing me his Salvadorian flag on his bicycle top. |
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| The family dog King thought that me doing yoga on my pink mat was a game. |
Julio and his wife kindly invited me to stay with them in San Salvador, El Salvador's capital. It wasn't on my route but sure I wasn't in any hurry so thought I'd take them up on the offer. I would climb from sea level to about 1200m. So I knew it would be cooler. Sapo, one of the team members was a bike mechanic and offered to service and clean my bike for me. And they all invited me out on their weekly Thursday night city bike ride with their club, CTU.
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| Sapo is a kind and gentle soul. He spent 4 hours working on my bike. He changed all my cables, gave me some new bearings (I'm not quite sure where). It shone when I picked it up. |
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| Me giving a short presentation about my trip to the mountain bikers before the night ride. |
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| The CTU Thursday night city bike ride. About 80 people showed up. El Salvador del Mundo is the national monument equivalent to our Spire I guess, but much more loved. |
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| Cycling around San Salvador on a Thursday evening as you do. That's me in the middle. |
Along with the Thursday night bike ride, the comfy bed, ESPN3 to watch Ireland beat France, the 3 yummy meals per day cooked by Blanca the lovely maid and the day trip to see the local volcanos; Julio's invite also extended to taking part in my first ever mountain bike ride that Sunday morning. To avoid the heat Salvadorians get up at crazy o'clock in the morning so at 5am I was up and dressed and heading for the hills.
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| About to set off for my first mountain bike ride with CTU, Santa Tecla bike club. |
Julio's wife Maria Eugenia a keen mountain biker, stayed with me towards the back of the pack for the whole ride as I was a bit nervous on the stoney sandy mountain dirt roads. Sapo (the bike mechanic) had arranged for me to have a mountain bike from his shop. He also presented me with my first ever cycling jersey with pockets at the back and a flag of El Salvador on the sleeve. It was the first time really that I had ridden a bike with knobbly 2 inch tyres. I couldn't believe how un-slippy it was on the dirt. And although I had to work really hard and was pretty knackered at the end. I quite enjoyed my new adventure. You can whizz so fast on a light bike with no luggage!
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| That's me riding over a bridge over a river. It's about 7am and I'm somewhere in the middle of the Salvadorian mountains. |
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| Me and Julio's wife, Maria Eugenia enjoying the dirt road. |
Meeting Jose
Jose is almost the one and only Warm Showers host in El Salvador so everyone ends up staying with him whether they are traveling south to Nicaragua or north to Guatemala. So it's just as well he owns the largest house in the whole of the country. It may be a construction site but it fitted his whole extended family plus 5 hungry dirty cyclists just fine.
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| I came for 1 night and stayed for 3. |
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| And then we were 5 cyclists. |
The morning after I arrived, Jose asked if I wanted to join him on a shopping trip to San Miguel. Jose had lived in Montreal, Canada for 20 years working as a cleaner. But he always wanted to come home. So here he is, married to Marie with 2 young children and the owner of 2 shops. He lives like a king, by local standards.
Every 2nd day he drives his truck into San Miguel, the 2nd largest city in El Salvador and goes shopping. I'm googling 'weather San Miguel El Savador' as I type just to put this shopping trip in context and today it's a balmy 37 degrees at 13.00. We must have gone to at least 50 different shops, each one because it sold cheaper toothpaste or flip flops, washing detergent or talcum powder than its neighbour.
His two shops are located in very rural areas so stock a little bit of absolutely everything. We left home at 6am and 14 hours later returned having delivered a tuck load of 'stuff' to his 2 shops, we arrived home exhausted. I hadn't worked so hard in a long time.
I also have to confess that I only managed about 3 shops at a time before having to duck into the air conditioned Pollo Campestre (the local equivalent of McDonalds). It was just so so hot. Julio would leave me there for about 20 minutes and then collect me again, to continue shopping. We bought beans, potatoes, tomatoes, vegetable oil, toilet paper, washing detergent, oh and some sombreros. At home the likes of Julio would just head to Musgraves and load up a few trolleys. Not in El Salvador.
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| Jose examines the spuds. He buys 2 * 50kgs bags. |
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| We buy 2 crates of tomatoes. |
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| Jose hires a man with a van for 1 usd, to carry all the veg back to our parked truck. |
Some delights along the road in El Salvador
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| A lady sells glasses of coke and fanta from a big bottle. Way cheaper than buying a can. |
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| A little girl sells green birds. 15 usd each. |
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| Grilled tamales are delicious and super cheap. Potato and corn inside a banana leaf. |
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| I love this clever use of pallets. Note the round pale watermelons are from Guatemala, those long green stripy ones are local. |
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| This lovely lady takes a coconut out of the ice box at her roadside stall. I drink the water and then she chops up the flesh inside for me too. |
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| Denis O'Brien flying the Irish flag all over Central America. This is honey. |
Cycling between petrol stations from one fire station to the next
El Salvador is so hot that you really have to laugh at the situation most of the time. I greet every single person by saying 'que calor'. No one else seems to even notice. On the days I didn't stay with Anna, Julio or Jose I found myself cycling between petrol stations and staying at the multiple fire stations I found on my route. Whether the petrol stations were 2kms or 20kms apart it didn't matter. I was so hot and sweaty and sticky and dirty and going crazy with the heat that I left my bike outside and dashed in to the air con. I bought whatever was the cheapest drink in the shop and sat, often for a couple of hours, reading. Luckily every shop in El Salvador has armed security at the door. Very for looking after my bike.
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| Reading John Boyne in the air conditioned petrol stations. |
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| While reading I would stick my water bottles in the fridge. Otherwise you'd be drinking hot water. |
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| The bomberos at Zacalucateca |
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| Breakfast was included in this 5 star hotel. |
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| Monday evening in Zacalucatecas is inline stake night in the central plaza. About 50 kids were milling around a course having a blast. |
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| Passed the 7,000km mark in El Salvador |
