El Salvador: August 2006

Page 3 - First Morning, Cerro Verde, and Joya de Ceren.

Well here I sit, fat, dumb, and happy, sucking down the wireless in the lobby of the Decameron Hotel.

Nice joint.

With the exception of the music that’s playing right now. Full tilt Republican New York lounge music from the early 50’s. Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, and a host of others, all going at it in that inimitably uptight style that attempts to act like it’s swinging, but instead only serves to remind you that these people would feel buck-ass naked if their button down shirt was so much as not tucked in.

Oh well, we’re out of here soon enough, to see a volcano and then the ruin of a pre-Columbian city that got the exact same treatment as Pompeii. A bit macabre, perhaps, but I’m sure it’ll be as interesting as all hell. Can’t wait to see the place.

Out back, there’s waves in the ocean, but they’re not particularly rideable from the looks of things.

The water’s not especially clear, but neither is it totally murky. Way the hell and gone outside, maybe a quarter mile, maybe farther, there’s these overhead peaks that are occasionally coming over, but they back off immediately and then there’s a lot of dead water before it finally comes in toward the beach, where the hotel, or plate tectonics, or somebody, has built a more or less submerged breakwater and the waves just sort of slosh up against that, sometimes breaking a little bit before they do, and sometimes not.

On the surface of things, the surf here looks worthless, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that when the swell really hits, some of those outside peaks can really light up and throw.

Tide’s high right now, and I don’t know how low it’s gonna go. That may, or may not, have an effect on how the outsides behave later on when it drops. Unfortunately I’m not gonna be around at low tide. Boo hiss.

Ok, it’s 8am local, and I’m supposed to go over to the restaurant (where I’ve already snarfed down breakfast and coffee) and find out what the dress code for the trip to the volcano will be. If it’s high enough in altitude, I wanna be sure and bring something warm.

More in a bit.

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 Ok, I’m back. It’s now six-thirty pm and I’ve spent a busy day.

I’m a little worried about my ability to properly describe all the shit I’ve seen today. We’re going to be up and at it again first thing tomorrow morning and if I can’t get it down tonight it’s gonna lose it’s snap and zing. But I don’t want to rush through it, ‘cause that will fuck it up too.

Ah me.

They came and gathered us up and put us back on a bus and rolled us out of here right around 8:30, as planned.

We’re going to a place called Cerro Verde.

Volcanoes.

I’m looking forward to it.

The ride took about an hour and a half, and I got a bit of a look at El Salvador through the windows with the sun up, as opposed to last night’s trip in through the dark.

We traveled on a very nice highway, no potholes or any of the rest of that crap. The place is put together fairly well down here, infrastructure-wise. Cell phone towers are evident here and there, and I can see by my fellow FAMsters that the cell phone reception down here is just fine and dandy.

There’s plenty of funky stuff too, but nothing too funky. All in all, the place gives a good appearance.

We’re rolling along and as we do, off in the distance a set or mountains begins to make itself clear through the morning mists, and I’m informed by our guides that those are the mountains that we’re going to be taking a nice close look at.

Definite volcanoes. Nice conical shapes, that you’ll never mistake for anything else.

As we head down the road, we start to go past them and we can see how they’re located vis-à-vis each other.

The guide says the whole deal is called the “volcano complex.”

We turn left off the main road, and start heading in the direction of the mountains.

Neato.

We’re going to be going up near the top of Cerro Verde and since it sits right smack in the middle of the group, we’re gonna get a nice look at all of them.

Despite their hulking appearance in the distance, they’re not all that awfully large, as volcanoes go. Nothing at all like behemoths on the scale of Kilimanjaro (which I've never so much as laid eyes on) or Mauna Kea (which I've stood on top of). Seven or eight thousand feet, or somewhere in there. But they rise up from the lowlands, and maybe this is what makes them look so large.

We’re now winding along on a fairly small road and we’re going up and up and up. My companions on this trip are all yammering back and forth amongst one another, and I’m just glued to the window, watching it all go by outside.

The place is well-forested, and there’s trees all over the place up here. The road winds on and we’re starting to gain some altitude.

Eventually, we stop a place where you can see through the trees off to the right, and the guide informs us we can get a look at a lake over there. So we all pile out to go look at this lake.

Whatever.

But when I come over the little rise on the side of the road, I’m presented with a bit more than just “a lake.”

Calling the Coatepeque Caldera a 'lake' is kind of like calling the Mona Lisa 'some old painting.'

There, spread out below me, lies the remains of a mountain that no longer exists.

A prehistoric series of gigantic eruptions has taken an entire volcano and eviscerated it to the point where it’s now a giant green, heavily-forested, crater ring with a stunning blue lake inside of it.

Miles across.

Fucker’s gorgeous!

Well now, this is pretty cool, guys.

Right next door, there’s another volcano, and it last erupted less than a full year ago, in October. Santa Ana volcano is obviously very much 'alive.'

I can see up near its top where the greenery disappears and turns to grey rocks and ash. Tree trunks, stripped bare of all leaves and limbs, are clearly evident.

You guys sure this thing ain’t gonna be blowing up anytime soon are you? Like today?

They inform me that we’re safe and sound and I guess I’ve got to take their word for it.

Pretty cool, though.

Back into the bus and we continue to climb.

Eventually we get to the top of Cerro Verde and there’s a park up there.

Way cool.

Out of the bus and walk around a little bit, and in the opposite direction from the volcano that erupted last October, there’s another one and it’s just as awesome as you can imagine.

Perfect conical mountain, Fuji-looking, grey and bare of vegetation. Izalco. Neat name.

One of the guides, Carlos, informs me that it’s extinct, but I ain’t believing any of that noise. That thing looks WAY too fresh and bare of vegetation to be extinct. Hell, I’m not so sure it’s even sleeping. Looks more like it’s just playing possum if you ask me.

I take a zillion shots of it and return to the group.

We’ve been organized to take a hike around the summit of the mountain we’re on, and one of the young local guides proceeds to walk us through the deliciously cool air up here, and it’s off into the forest we go.

Bromeliad-encrusted trees, ferns, butterflies flittering around, squirrels, lizards, you name it, this place has it. It’s just as beautiful as you could possibly ask for.

And we’ve got the whole place to ourselves. Except for one backpacking couple who have their own agenda.

We keep on hiking around, and eventually, after sundry stops for various edifying and educational this’s and that’s, we come to another opening in the greenery where Santa Ana again comes into view, loud and clear.

The thing is magnificent, and it’s sitting right there in front of us like it’s a museum display or something.

Very nice.

We gawp and take pictures for a while, and then it’s back to the hiking trail.

Around we go, and eventually we come around to a place where we can see the crater lake once again, but this time from farther up. If anything, it’s more beautiful than it was before.

This is really a nice place up here, sports fans, and I highly recommend it. Just as beautiful as you can ask for.

And the weather is cooperating perfectly with a cloud-free sky. We inquire about that and are told that it’s clear like this in the mornings all the time, even in the rainy season, which it is right now.

Back to the hiking trail.

And we wind around farther until we come on a hotel that somebody had built up here, but now it’s very defunct. Apparently there was an earthquake that kind of knocked things around a little bit, and the place was abandoned.

Couldn’t have been THAT bad of an earthquake, ‘cause the place is still standing.

But regardless, it’s now one of those instant ruins that you get when places suddenly go out of business.

So we walk around and check it out, and around a corner there’s a concrete deck and directly in front is the Fuji-looking cone that I’d seen when I first got up here. And from here, the view’s even better.

Snappity snap snap goes the camera.

The whole group is suitably impressed with things.

Did I say this place is bitchin? ‘Cause if I didn’t, then now’s the time to let you know it’s definitely bitchin as hell.

We get our fill of that vista and finally we wind around just a bit more, and find ourselves back where we started, after successfully circumnavigating the summit of Cerro Verde.

I highly recommend it.

And our day is only just beginning.

We’ve got the buried city yet to check out. Goes by the name of Joya de Ceren.

Back down the mountain we go, and everybody’s back to yammering like a flock of starlings and I’m back to staring out the window of the bus.

At least we’re consistent, I guess.

As we drive along, I begin to get a feel for how El Salvador is the most densely populated country in Central America. It’s not like it’s high rises and apartment blocks, but it’s just that there’s people everywhere down here.

Everywhere you look, there’s little houses, or farmland, or roads, or something to let you know you’re not very far from people. Everywhere. None of it manages to obtrude into the generalized green verdancy of the place, but neither does it ever go away.

Lotta damn people in this place.

Which makes sense, I guess, because of the insane fertility of the land.

It just sprouts and grows shit all over the place.

Nobody’s gonna be lacking for food down here, from the looks of things to me. Lotta damn food growing all over the place.

Ok where were we?

Oh yeah, we’re headed to the buried guys.

We continue along the very well maintained roads, take a turn through a pretty funky and low-down little area, and then we pull over in the most non-descript place you could imagine.

Ok then, in the first place this is NOT a buried city. Far from it. It’s just a buried PLACE, that’s all.

Ok, glad we got that cleared up.

We park the bus and get out, and there’s this little museum building, and we go inside of that and check out the displays.

Food, pottery, and all kinds of stuff. More or less preserved intact, and sitting right before my eyes in display cases.

Our guide tells us the tale of the place, and how it’s just about the ONLY place where the lives of the common folk in this area were preserved. Oh sure, you can go to any number of ancient ruined cities and learn what the king and all his big shot buddies were doing, but the common folk, the ones who actually BUILT everything, are signally absent from all the hoity toity ruins.

But not here.

Joe Mesoamerican lived in these buried places and they’re excavating his life here, and nowhere else.

Pretty heavy shit.

We finish up with the museum, and head off toward some tin-roofed structures, low and unprepossessing.

At least until you get up under the tin.

And there, laid out before your goggling eyeballs, are walls, floors, bedchambers, storage rooms, and all manner of structure, emerging from the ash layers like some kind of bizarre stone blossoms or something.

This is the actual place, where they’re doing the actual digging, revealing the actual homes and buildings that these long-dead people inhabited.

In one regard, it’s very small and doesn’t look like very much at all, just a few holes in the ground with funny-looking dirt and stone down in the bottoms of them.

But in another regard, it’s just stupefying.

There’s nothing else quite like this anywhere else on the planet.

I can’t really describe this place any better than that, and it’s a shame, ‘cause it claps you like thunder once the fullness of what you’re actually looking at sets in.

I suppose that for lounge lizards and other people of superabundant coolth, this place might not score very high on the wow-o-meter, but then again, those folks are all from Planet Me, and this place is very much NOT Planet Me.

So we stand in the heat under the tin and just marvel at what we’re seeing.

Or at least some of us do.

Others seem completely unaffected by what they’re looking at.

Ah well, different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Eventually we pile back into the bus, and it’s hour and a half drive back to the hotel time.

And again, the yammerers yammer, and I stare out the window and try to absorb a little El Salvador, down at eyeball level, as it flickers and shimmers past me nearly at arm’s reach.

Once back at the hotel, we get a presentation by the folks who own this place.

They are, after all, one of the main reasons I’m down here, yes?

And so the presenters present, the powerpoint show shows, and eventually it’s all said and done and I’m allowed to head back to my room.

It’s now eight pm and I’ve been writing ever since I got back in this room.

Think I’ll go down to the lobby and fritter away some time on the internet, just for shits and giggles.

See ya.