San Salvador Weekend

We continued our run of super-fun weekends with a trip to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. It ended up being a four-day weekend for me b-c I took off school on Friday to run some errands in the city, and we have a day off school today (Monday) for the birthday of Fransisco Morazan, who´s like the Honduran George Washington. Love him!!

FRIDAY - Left Ocotepeque at 9am to head for San Sal, which is about 3 hours away, 20 mins to the border and then another hour and a half after that. It was my first time travelling alone here, which was a little scary but mostly exciting b-c everything worked so well. I taxied to the border, argued w- the border guard about having to buy a $10 tourist card, caught a jalon with a nice guy from Ocotepeque and talked w- him in spanish the whole way (he was really into American music, he called Madonna "la chica material"!), then caught a bus from where he left me off near San Sal to the center of town where our hostel is. From there, I caught another bus to get to the American Airlines office, where I had to refund a $900 plane ticket that I had been forced to buy back in August when I was coming back from Florida b-c AA wouldn´t let me into the country w-o a return ticket. So I had been holding this ticket for a month hoping that everything would go ok when I came back to their office in San Sal to get my refund. It took four hours b-c they were out of the refund forms, and I had to go to two different offices, but in the end I got my refund (or will get it in 60 days). So that was good.

Then I met my friends from Ocotepeque back at our hostel and we went for dinner at a fast-food place called BIGGEST, which had not the best hamburgers in town but definitely the biggest, as the boys ordered a full 1/2 pound of meat!! After that we hung out at the hotel for a big and then headed out for a disco called Luna, which has a monthly live salsa band and is pretty much the reason we went to San Sal. The place was gorgeous, with an outdoor patio, and the band was fantastic! There were many fantastic dancers, and lots of girls all dressed up for dancing, which made me wistful for my dancing heels that I left back in New York - it´s hard to feel sexy dancing in Chaco sandals. People there were pretty much paired off already, but I was able to find 2 sucky dancers and then 2 great dancers to entertain me.

SATURDAY - We woke up a bit early to run errands at the mall. Yes, San Salvador has a mall, called Metro Centro, and it´s absolutely huge. Three floors, stretching for blocks and blocks, partly outdoors, movie theater, supermarket, Office Depot, Bass Shoes and Levis, anything you could ever want to buy is there at MetroCentro. Sim spent an hour trying to mail 2 packages back to the states, Kelly waited an hour to get her film developed, and then we were pretty much sick of the mall. We had decided (we being Kelly, Sim, Matt and I) to treat ourselves on Saturday and stay at the fanciest hotel in town, the Sheraton Presidente. Kelly had been there before b-c they let Peace Corps volunteers use their pool (and sometimes we pretend we´re PC to get discounts!), but none of us had stayed there. It cost $100 a night, between the four of us, and it was worth every penny! We used the sauna that afternoon, tried to hang out at the pool but it was raining the whole weekend b-c of that hurricane I think, and then we enjoyed the super-fancy beds and cable tv and watched a bit of a Friends marathon. Perfect! For lunch, we had bought a bunch of cheese and meat and just ate a little picnic in the hotel room, and for dinner we had yet another treat -- Quizno´s subs!! I´ve never appreciated American fast food so much in my life as I have in these past months :) After dinner we went out to check out the nightlife in the neighborhood, called Zona Rosa, which is supposed to be the Salvadoran Miami. There were a few restaurants and bars, and we decided to go into one called Decades (pronounced deck-a-days) for their 70s and 80s night. The dj was fantastic - played all sorts of disco and 80s hits, including such rarities as Madonna´s "Everybody" - and there were tons of cute older couples on the dance floor getting their groove on. They were also all watching us, the only gringos in the place, and a few times we noticed them borrowing our stylish dance moves! Later on, a band came on that was really fantastic. They played everything from spanish romantica to Elvis and the Doors. We left there pleased with our night, and on the walk home spotted another cute looking bar and decided to go in for one drink. Kelly and I sat alone for a few minutes while the guys were outside for a smoke, and we met a big group of Salvadorans who turned out to be quite nice. They bought us drinks and we danced a bit and told us about Salvador -- all in Spanish! I think it´s definitely a milestone in language acquisition when you can pick up a guy in that new language!!

SUNDAY - Despite returning home at 3am, we got a wakeup call at 9am on Sunday so that we could fully enjoy the Sunday brunch that ended at 11am. Our plan was executed perfectly, and we stuffed ourselves fuller than I ever thought I could be on croissants, made-to-order omelettes, french toast, hash browns, grapes and strawberries (hard to find here), peppermint tea, pineapple juice, and other delicacies that were just fantastic. We were pretty much forced to leave at 11am, and all we could do was roll ourselves back up to our room and turn on the tv. We napped for a while, occasionally changing the channel on the tv, til we found the Red Sox game!! We had arrived in time on Saturday to catch the last 2 innings of that disastrous game, but on Sunday we got to enjoy those fabulous first five innings while the Red Sox clinched the wild card spot. We should be able to get some of the playoff games at home here if they´re on ESPN. It´s fun to have a bit of home. We finally left the hotel at 3pm, Matt and Sim headed home, but Kelly and I had decided to stay one more day (since we could!). We made our way back towards MetroCentro to stay at our cheap hostle ($6 a night for bunk beds), but stopped at the mall b-c it was raining so hard and decided to check out a movie. Bewitched was playing in English, and I have to say, it was a lot more fun than I thought it´d be. We left the theater quite pleased with our day and walked back to the hostel.

Here´s the part where I´ll suggest you stop reading if you´re going to worry too much about me .... Kelly and I were almost robbed on Sunday night. We´re fine, and I debated not writing about this, but it´s part of what´s happened here so I feel like I shouldn´t hold anything back. So, we were walking back to the hostel, which is a block off of the main road (super crowded, with Pizza Huts and Wendys everywhere), and it was about 7pm and dark and rainy. We both had our small backpacks and another bag in our arms, and we had reached the hostel - I had begun to open the gate and this guy came out of a car and walked towards us. He almost seemed like he was going into the hostel too, I think I even said hi to him as he passed by me. I heard him start talking to Kelly so I turned around, and I could see that he was standing really close to here, and I thought he was asking her for money - it sounded like "Da me" something, or give me. She looked terrified, and I thought he was just being annoying, so as she started to take off her bag I started yelling. I don´t think that what I said was words in either language - more like a AYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY, but it was totally came out instinctively and it worked and he ran back into the car (which had been waiting for him). Kelly and I ran inside the hostel (where people were sitting who heard me yelling but hadn´t been motivated enough to come outside and see what was wrong) and she was pretty freaked out b-c apparently he had pulled a knife on her!! I´m so glad I didn´t see that b-c it must have been scary as hell. That´s why she had said "OK" and started to take off her bag (he had been saying da me su mochilla, give me your backpack), which was totally the right thing to do when someone points a knife at you! Thankfully, he didn´t get mad when I yelled, just scared. So we went inside and drank the 1/2 bottle of wine that we had leftover from the fancy hotel and stayed in for the night.

Some lessons learned: we may be cool, smart, independent women, but we still are in some of the poorest countries in the world, and as white women we are obvious targets. We both think that if a guy had been with us, this wouldn´t have happened, which sucks and makes me feel like a weak dependent baby, but the fact is that we wouldn´t have needed Matt there to wrestle this guy to the ground or something -- we needed him to prevent the guy from trying anything in the first place. And, as I learned in New York after I was mugged there, there are little things you should do so that you´re not putting yourself in potentially bad situations. We could have taken a cab home from the mall, but it didn´t occur to us b-c it´s so close. Next time we will. And it probably makes sense to wear a money belt when we´re out in these big cities, which I hate b-c they´re so uncomfortable, but more uncomfortable would be getting stuck penniless in a strange city. Another thing that I think I´m glad about is that Kelly and I both had pretty good instincts: when I thought he was just being annoying, I yelled so he´d get nervous and leave, and when Kelly saw a knife she simply started doing what he said. It would have been a huge pain for us to lose money, passports, etc, but those things are replaceable. So anyway, that´s Sunday...

MONDAY - Left the hostel and took the bus with a couple Israeli guys who were staying there too. There are tons of Israeli travellers throughout Central America - after they do their mandatory 2 years of military service, many of them spend a year or more travelling. They´re fun to meet, b-c they´re usually really cute, totally buff after their military training, speak perfect English, and are generally good-natured and quick to laugh. Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye at the bus station, and Kelly and I made our way back home.

Later today a new volunteer is supposed to arrive - her name is Rachel and she´s been bartending in Antigua, Guatemala for a while but wanted to come here for some reason. I hope she´s cool! And on Wednesday, a guy named Ivan arrives from Spain, so it´ll suddenly be a very full house.