Sunny San Salvador...

‘Fly to El Salvador, I don’t know why and I don’t know what for’ flow the lyrics of the song by Athlete and arriving in San Salvador (by bus obviously) we were inclined to agree. Home to a notorious gang culture that leads to the highest murder rate in the world (58 deaths per 100,000…to put this in context in the UK it’s 2 deaths per 100,000*), a cruel wealth disparity between rich and poor, gated communities, a simmering civil war legacy and frequent earthquakes we felt it was the perfect place to kick-back and relax for a couple of days.

So it was with some degree of wary trepidation that we hopped on a bus into the centre of town, a definite ‘no-go’ zone for foreigners after dark. We left the secure, locked-down suburb of our hostel, where the heavy presence of uniformed guards toting pump-action shotguns was both reassuring and worrying at the same time, and entered the thrumming central market. We kept our eyes and wits about us and left all our valuables safely behind.

In fact the market felt no more or less edgy than any other we’ve visited. The fragrances of foetid flesh and fresh fruit and straining stalls of unappealing plastic tat were all too familiar. As were the lurid covers of pirated hard-core porn DVDs. Less recognisable were the many mobile merchants. Women with literally hundreds of bra’s slung on each arm, with more cup-sizes than a trophy shop, and traders wheeling barrows of neatly stacked potatoes and cucumbers all roared for your attention. At times it felt like the vendors outnumbered the shoppers.

The noise was also unlike any other place we’ve experienced. Everything could be bought for a dollar (El Salvador officially adopted the US dollar as it’s currency in 2004), so the cry of ‘dollar, dollar, dollar’ rung in our ears from all sides. Music blasted from CD vendors at levels more commonly associated with US Army interrogation techniques in Guantanamo Bay (aka ‘torture’), the stallholders managing to doze blearily amid the din. To top it all an evangelical preacher, dangerously armed with a microphone and amplifier was pontificating away on one corner, and whilst not technically speaking in tongues might as well have been given the incomprehensibility of his distorted, breathless, hyperbolic delivery.

Later we escaped town and took a bus up to ‘El Puerta del Diablo’ (The Devil’s Door), where we got some fresh air and some moody, misty views down over the volcano pocked landscape and down to the hazy Pacific coastline below. We ended the day in an internet café where each computer was housed in a discrete wooden booth allowing ‘user privacy’. Unfortunately there was a window cut into the partition between my booth and the next so I was treated to the sight of the bloke next-door unself-consciously perusing pornography. Whilst Skyping my Mum. Which was nice.

*Wikipedia - List of countries by homicide rate