Last month I went to El Salvador.

It happened quickly. My sister emailed me to say that an old high school friend of ours was living there and that she had just built a guest house. She thought I might like to go and practice my Spanish?

Because of this paper my window of opportunity is pretty well limited to the two weeks in the middle of the month. So… on Monday my sister emailed me on Thursday I emailed Jan saying I would like to come on Tuesday of the following week.

Somewhat surprised she said yes but that the doors and windows wouldn’t be in the guest house as they hadn’t arrived. Given that the average temperature was 94 F and that it wasn’t mosquito season I thought I would take a chance.

Going to work

Jan has been living in El Salvador for 10 years. She jokingly says that they sailed into Costa del Sol for a five day visit and she’s stayed for 10 years. She lives on an island without electricity or any of the amenities. She has a generator that she runs for an hour and a half each morning and evening to keep her fridge (actually a freezer) cold.

Living on her own, she has become part of the island community, many of whom are squatters living on land owned by others. She teaches local children English a couple of times a week at the school and a couple of times a week at her house.

I had the privilege of helping three young girls with their English. If the truth were told they helped me with my Spanish more than I helped them because they knew more English than I did Spanish.

In previous articles I have written about how material wealth isn’t a necessary prerequisite for happiness and this is certainly true of folks living on the island. The minimum wage in El Salvador is less than $1.00 an hour (El Salvador uses USA dollars for their currency).

A fish feast

Many of the locals use dugout logs for boats. Their main source of income is fishing although every day we would have a couple of young women come by with little freezer bags of juice for sale. The cost was 25cents. One afternoon a couple of women came over to cut down banana leaves for making tamales. My favorite dish was called a pupusa. It consisted of two thin corn or rice tortillas filled with cheese, chicken, veggies or pretty much whatever you chose and fried. They are an El Salvadorian specialty and there is a town on the way into San Salvador that is famous for them.

Each evening I was there two of the local boys came over to play computer games on Jan’s computer. Their excuse for the visit was to charge up their mom’s cell phone because Jan had a generator.

The boy’s father had a ponga (a larger boat with a shade cover) and he took us on a ride on the estuaries into the mangrove for lunch. In the middle of what seemed like nowhere to me was an open air restaurant (on stilts complete with thatched roof). The fish we ordered were scaled and cooked over a very hot wood fire. They were absolutely delicious.

There is a saying that “ignorance is bliss.” It would be fair to say that “ignorance also breeds fear.” As I mentioned the guest house had neither doors nor windows and while it was mosquito free it wasn’t scorpion free. I was somewhat frightened when one day I found a scorpion beside my bed and another in my bed sheets. Needless to say I panicked and shouted, real loud, for Jan.

I did have the benefit of learning the day before that a scorpion had bitten one of Jan’s dog’s puppies the day I arrived causing the puppy to be very sick but able to survive. I figured if a three week old puppy could live through a bite I would probably be OK as well. Nevertheless I have to fess up and admit that I slept in the hammock on the porch the day I found the critter in my bed.

A word about the puppies; there were eight of them. I felt sorry for the mom however Jan was a great support and the puppies were healthy and eager to eat food and drink powdered milk early on.

I really appreciated the opportunity to visit Jan and learn a bit about El Salvador. While it isn’t exactly a tourist destination for us northerners I can see it becoming one. The people are special, the beaches beautiful and the potential for tourism incredible.