The airport reminds me awfully of touching down in Trivandrum, hot dusty tarmac rimmed by coconut palms. The ‘visa’ line is empty, and they seem so surprised to have visitors that we are ushered to the front of the line ahead of residents. The customs guy rambles on in Spanish, of which I only hear the word ‘declarar’. I emphatically declare ‘nada’ (nothing), later praying I hadn’t just done something illegal. We wheel out and around, coming upon a throng of people waiting for loved ones (Trivandrum again!). R and J find us easily- I guess the two lost-looking foreigners is an easy call :-) Amazingly, I feel like a giant in El Salvador, the men here come up to my shoulders. This is a completely new feeling for someone who’s been a pygmy most of her life! We drive out and stop by a street-side ‘Coco helado’ (ice-cold coconut) vendor. This is our typical Kerala coconut water, except that instead of drinking it straight from the fruit, they pour it into a bag with a straw! We marvel at the concept of taking something so intrinsically organic and environment-friendly and turning it into something non-biodegradable. R tells us that’s how most things in El Salvador are- there’s a big focus on ‘disposability’. A little nervous about the hygiene, I take small sips of my coco helado in a bag, it’s cool and refreshing, not too sweet. They’ve also scraped off a few chunks of the cold delicious fruit into the bag for good measure. We stop at the bus terminal to buy tickets but are told it’s the wrong place, the right one being in the heart of mangy scary downtown San Salvador. J drives us nervously there. The entrance is a small door, at which stands a guard brandishing a Civil-War era rifle, I mean, this sucker’s huge! We buy our tickets and are deposited in our Hotel ‘Happy House’, where they speak no English. R takes us on a walk to MetroCentro, one of the big malls, which is right down the block. It all seems very modern but in a decidedly un-American way, which I love! We stop in at Mr. Donut, which sells traditional food. B points at some empanadas, and I can’t take my eyes off a black sticky mess of plantain. The empanada is tasty but familiar, the black stuff turns out to be called ‘Platanos en miel’ (plantains in syrup), though what it really is like is the dense black sticky jam we make in Kerala out of jackfruit that’s had the heck boiled out of it with jaggery..yum! We walk back in the hot sun and pass out in our cool room for two hours. R comes to get us and we drive up to Los Planes de Renderos (a place famous for the traditional dish called ‘pupusas’, which are stuffed tortillas, and for a make-out hill where much of the last generation is believed to have been conceived!). I have some hot chocolate, which is delicious and completely unlike the Swiss Miss version! This one is bitter but sweetened overpoweringly, boiling hot and thin. The pupusas arrive after a long wait and they are wonderful! I try a corn stuffed with cheese, and a rice stuffed with beans and cheese. B goes for the meat. There’s a humongous jar of some kind of pickled cabbage on the table, we take heaping spoonfuls to go with our food. I’ve never tasted refried beans like this in my life!! I do it Indian style and lick my fingers happily :-) B wishes for an aloo (potato) or mooli (radish) pupusa! We walk back and look over the mountains. R’s incredible sweetheart of a best friend, who goes by T, makes conversation about the weather, during the course of which I mistake the word for ‘wind’ as ‘snow’, leading to some excited debate. R puts us straight soon enough :-) We go home and fall asleep.
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