El Salvador: August 2006

Page 2 - On the Ground in El Salvador

Well that was easy.

Very uneventful flight.

Sat and read a nice book about a lost painting for the most part, up until the very end. Once we started our descent, the sun began to set, and the sky erupted in all kinds of blues and golds. We passed downward through multiple layers of glowing clouds, and once we got to where we could see the ground, a large conical volcano made its presence known. We banked right and flew right past the thing, its summit crater going by just off the right wing, well above the altitude we were flying at.

We touched down just as dusk was setting in for real.

The airport in San Salvador is refreshingly small, and lacking in all of the modern annoyances you tend to associate with airports in the USA.

Kind of a long walk to get to customs, but no big deal. Once there, you gotta cough up ten bucks for a tourist card to the pretty señorita behind the counter, but otherwise it’s quite painless.

Hand the paperwork over to the customs guy at the baggage check area, and out you go.

A Taca representative was standing right there, with a sign that read “Taca Experience.” Quick introduction and he then hands me off to another Taca guy outside who directs me to a bus that’s parked in the parking lot, a very short walk away from the main building.

The air is warm and tropical, and I can hear insects and birds doing their thing in the dark.

This airport is nice and small, downright cozy. I like it.

I’m sitting here on the bus, with a few of my fellow travel professionals, and we’re all waiting for one more guy to show up, and then we can go.

Ok, we’re go.

The bus is now rolling through the dark, and they say it’s gonna take about an hour and a half to get to the hotel on the coast.

Way cool.

Ok then, ride’s over.

Took nearly two hours. We wound along and around and I tried my best to take in at least a little of what was happening outside the windows, but in the dark it was pretty difficult.

We drove more or less right around the capital city, San Salvador, and did so from an elevation above the place and it looked all sparkly and pretty down there in the dark.

The roads are just as good as you could imagine them to be. Quite the refreshing change of pace after Costa Rica. No potholes. Traffic wasn’t all that bad, either. Every so often we’d go underneath a pedestrian crossover, above the pavement, and it seemed like all of them had long, brightly-lit advertisements for banks on them, and it was never the same bank, either. Not sure what the significance of that might be.

What little of the scenery I could make out in the gloom seemed verdant and tropical, and hilly too. We went up and down a lot, but didn’t really get into very much of that windy stuff that you see in Costa Rica sometimes.

One thing of interest is that they use traffic circles here, and we repeatedly slowed down to merge and flow half way around one, only to get spit out again on the far side, still on the same heading. It was different.

In the environs of San Salvador, there was plenty of houses and people and all the kinds of stuff you associate with towns. No big surprise there. Once we got more or less clear of the city, we just kind of highballed it through the dark. About the only thing of real note was the busses we passed all the time. Old school bus looking things, but all gaudied up with a variety of paint schemes, reflectors, and even fancy lights sometimes. Much nicer than the dull, impersonal busses you see at home. People here and there, singly and sometimes in surprisingly large groups, waiting on the next bus to come by and pick ‘em up.

As we rode through the dark, our little group talked amongst themselves and generally attempted to banish the tedium of the ride as best they could. I was more interested in what was going on outside, and therefore didn’t really get into much by way of conversation.

Eventually, we arrived at a place called The Decameron Hotel.

In the dark, it’s hard to really tell what the place is like, but as of right now it reminds me of the Fiesta at Boca Barranca. Kind of nice. Full service deal, complete with the free food.

Gotta like that.

Check in was a breeze, as they were expecting us, and I was out of the lobby and into my room in short order. On the table in the room was a bag with some Taca swag in it, which was cool. At check in they said to go up to the second floor buffet, as they were expecting me.

So I did.

The rest of the FAM group was already at the table, chowing down.

I went over to the buffet and loaded up.

Once back at the table, however, the conversation somehow got sidetracked to Israelis and Palestinians, and it didn’t take too very many seconds of that to wear thin on me. I’m pretty apolitical, and on top of that I really didn’t come all this way just to rehash the latest Daily Dose Of Death on the tv news.

So I sat there, pleasantly enough, hoping the conversation would find a way out of the war zone, but no such luck. The participants seemed to relish things just the way they were, and so after what I hoped would be a polite interval, I excused myself and departed, camera in hand, to go and see if I could get a few pictures of the place in the nighttime.

One or two of ‘em came out, but for the most part it was a waste of time, excepting that it succeeded in getting me away from the tedious business at the dinner table.

So now I’m up in my room and it’s just about time to go to sleep so I can at least get half way rested before tomorrow’s exertions, whatever they may be.

See ya.