Road Rules in El Salvador

In Mexico I met a few people who had driven down from the US and they all had stories of being hitten up by the cops for a bribe for minor transgressions, so when we came a cropper with the fuzz in El Salvador, the experience was a little surprising. After a night of emptying a few bottles of rum from the in pool bar, in classic '80s movie style, a little worse for wear all four of us packed in to the Tamboleo Azul (The Blue Wobble - a VW camper van that a Kiwi guy had driven down from California) with boards piled on top and headed Nicaragua way. About an hour in we came to a junction, and confused without a map we stopped and asked a local for directions, he pointed us straight ahead. A couple of hundred metres down the road we realised we should have turned, so on a two lane one way highway we do a u-turn and drive against the flow of traffic. The first car we said heading towards us is, yep you guessed it, a cop car. They signalled to pull over and then stopped just in front of us, turning the car off, and wandering over the see what we were up to. Bevan, the Kiwi driver, in is best broken Spanish, responded to their demands for the papers for the cars, and then simply said we wanted to go to the border, we missed the turn-off and so we were going back. There was a very pregnant pause, the cops looked at each other, and then admonished him for driving the wrong way on a one way street.
That seemed to be the length of it, as they then proceeded to explain how to get to the border, and then gave us an escort, lights flashing and all, driving the wrong way back to the turn off, and then a further couple of kilometres to a petrol station at the next turnoff.
Moral of the story - if you want to drive the wrong way up one way streets, do it in El Salvador.
As Bevan replied to a gringo we met at the border who inquired about driving difficulties in Central America, I prefer it here, because the only rule is, if you can get away with it, do it - it is far more intuitive driving !!

El Salvador magic

Well I finally managed to find some good, uncrowded waves in El Salvador.
I am in the east, camping on the beach, surfing every day and having a ball.
Counting down the days to the one year anniversary of the last time I had a job.
Life is tough in this part of the world !!!


Well

Guate, Guate, Guate !!

Wearied by the heat of southern Mexico I jumped on a few buses and found
myself arriving in Panajachel, on the shores of Lake Atitlan, in
Guatemala one rainy afternoon. Marcelle absconded herself from work, and
came and met me on the main tourist strip. It had been three years since
we saw each other last, when she left Australia and I was just starting
that strange period of going to work everyday in a suit and tie
pretending that I was a lawyer and knew what I was talking about.
Perhaps because we see ourselves almost every day we don't notice the
effects of the passing of time, but after a three year gap, the first
impression I had was, my little sister has grown up. (Strange because
she was already 26 when I saw her last !!) Perhaps it has more to do
with the fact that of late I have noticed that I have done some growing
up of my own - must be those grey hairs !!
I spent two weeks in Pana, catching up, hearing all of the latest small
town gossip and meeting those referred therein, enjoying a couple of
sunny days with swims in the lake, finding a whole new library to chew
my way through and checking out the Pana night life in all its glory.
Unfortunately on Sunday the rain started and didn't really let up for
the whole week, so our proposed volcano hiking trek, which had got
Marcelle serious about some training, had to be postponed.

So instead I spent some time helping Marcelle out at her work,
reformatting her resume and rewriting her job application letter (with
such application that I was called pedantic !!!) It reminded me how I
too once had a job, and did work, and made me wondered whether that
would ever happen again.

As I told Marcelle when I left, I will be back for her 30th, I wonder if
anything will have changed in Pana.

Mexico City - cat and mouse

I spent a day in Mexico City wandering around el zocalo, the central plaza, people watching.

Despite the air pollution, general filth, ridiculous amount of traffic, the decay of colonial era buildings, general seediness of wandering street vendors, endless packs of police and the non-stop full throttle pace of life, the city does have a certain something about it.

I spent half an hour watching these women take out their wares (See photo), and then quickly pile them back in to the bags as police approached. The cops would come and have a chat, and a laugh, then wander off, everybody seemed to know they were playing cat and mouse, as this happened at least five times in the half an hour I was watching. As soon as the cops were out of sight, out would come the goods for display again. I am sure there is some important bureaucratic reason for this, but it does make you wonder whether such police resources could be used in a more appropriate and effective way. Although considering the spate of assassinations of police by drug cartels this year (already 1400 people have been killed) I am sure the local cops are making this job seem extremely important !!

Paracutín and the church that was

I finally managed to escape Guadalajara, and after some qual ity Mexican driving by Emery (as soon as the hat goes on he the speedo rises and he begins seeking every possible opportunity to overtake) we managed to make it to Morelia. After a pop-corn fuelled night at a local bar we set off for Paricutin, a nearby volcano which erupted in the 1950's, covering the nearby town with its lava. We were in the state of Michoacan, one of the poorer, hillier and indigenous states of Mexico. (This is a combination that one continually stumbles over in Latin America, the more hills, the more poverty and the more indigenous people you find) Some of the smaller towns we drove through reminded me of Indonesia, but perhaps that was just the shared habit of throwing rubbish everywhe re, so that it accumulates on the sides of the road, and thus is the main thing you see in Mexico. The Muestra un poca de cultura y no tire basura (Show a little culture and don't throw rubbish) signs have apparently little effect, other than as points which collect the litany of plastic wrappers, bottles and bags that the wind blows around.

As we pulled in to the nearby town we were suddenly besieged by the cavalry, ten or 15 cowboys on horses that looked like it had been a while since they had eaten a decent meal, trailed us in hot pursuit trying to convince us to abandon shank's pony and get on theirs. We politely decline their seemingly unending offers, and headed of through the pine forest, in the direction of the foot of the volcano.
All that remains of the town is the local church, half buried in cooled, hardened lava - which is actually made up of huge , grey, pock marked rocks. We managed to scramble up to the top of the church, via a high wire act, and as the volcano towered behind us in the background, a storm rolled in from the opposite direction, the darkening sky and accompanying thunder made it all seem very ominous. As a few Mexican families showed up, six pack in hand (I have rediscovered that there isn't many places a Mexican man is willing to go without beer - hence the failure of the Mexican space program I suppose) we headed back, and stopped at a small collection of lean-tos from which small local indigenous women were selling food and drinks - and beer as well, of course. In the five years since I was last in Mexico, like most of the rest of the world the country has witnessed a mobile phone explosion. (I remember once hitching a lift with a Telmex, the privatised telecommunications monopoly sold at a song to the worlds richest man Carlos Sim, technician who told me how in some places in Mexico people still had to wait five years to get a phone connected, so I suppose the market was ripe for the picking) After dutifully hand making our tortillas, then cooking them on charcoal fire in a half 40 gallon barrel, the fifty something indigenous woman dressed in appropriate local, colourful costume, answered a call on her mobile and proceeded to hold a conversation in her native language. I was immediately struck by the peculiarity of it all, here in the hills of Michoacan, 40 kilometres from the nearest town, indigenous people, still living a fairly traditional life, have adopted the latest technology, whilst still getting around on burros.
Who says indigenous languages are at risk of dying out....mobile phone to the rescue.
I bid a sad farewell to Indira and Emery and hitched a lift with Emery's sister on to Mexico city.