March 9th – April 4th --Bahia Del Sol

El Salvador is a wonderful country in which we could have stayed much longer. The time just seemed to fly by as we did boat projects, visited the local places of interest and enjoyed the pool.  First of all, the check in and out of the country was very cruiser friendly.  We were met by officials when we arrived at the hotel of Bahia del Sol. They cleared us into the country and then we checked into the hotel. We paid for three weeks at the dock since our daughter was coming to visit while we were in El Salvador.  We met Jan, a Canadian who lives on the island here in the estuary, and we were invited to the cruisers’ barbeque that she does on Wednesday night.  She charges $8 per person for a chicken dinner but the money is really being raised for her English speaking school.

 The first night we ate at the hotel and had one of the best paella dishes that we have ever had.  Also with the fact that we had joined the hotel’s cruiser club for $14, we would receive a 30% discount on food and beverages.  With these discounts, the price of the dinner was $10.50.  Wow!  What a special! 

 We did boat projects and hung out at the pool the next day, after the sail down from Mexico we were tired and wanted to get off the boat.  The idea of a barbeque was also exciting so when 5:30pm rolled around we hopped into the dinghy and set off for the island.  We found Jan cooking enough chicken for 20 people; she also had rice, veggies, coleslaw and dessert.  We sat and watched the sun go down, lit the hanging lights and enjoyed a special time with many cruiser friends. While we were eating we learned that her school was every Monday and Thursday afternoon from 2 to 5.  I decided that I would go and help out on Monday for we were still getting things organized for our daughter’s visit and I needed the time to clean the boat. 

 We planned to go with Lost Elvis and Alex to visit the town of La Herradura, which is about 25 minute dinghy ride up the estuary from Bahia del Sol.  You need to go with someone who has taken the ride before or you can use the waypoints from guidebooks so that you don’t get lost in the mangroves and smaller tributaries on the estuary.   There were also places that got really shallow at low tide so you had to be careful as you traveled up river. We arrived at three restaurants that had a concrete wall at the water’s edge.  We gave our painters (the rope attached to your dinghy) to a local young man who would tie up the boat and watch it for us.  Walking through the restaurant, we told them we would return to eat lunch after exploring the town.  As we walked we realized that we were in a very poor town that did not get many tourists.  We smiled and said hello to all we met, and felt a sense of quiet friendship.  We were still a little worried about the election to be held in two days, but we noticed that the two major political parties had offices right close to each other.  Flags and banners for both parties were everywhere.  The town isn’t very big and we found that we had soon walked from one end to the other.  Two places caught our interest, the first was the bakery, which we were invited to come inside and see the baking operation in progress.  The floor was dirt and young men were working at stretching dough, shaping rolls, or making cookies.  We purchased some sugar cookies that were shaped like feet with red toenail polish. We also got a loaf of bread that had fruit in it like fruitcake, it too was very good. The second place was the central market, for a cruising friend, Thea, decided that she wanted to purchase an apron that the local women were wearing.  We were told that we would find one in the market.  We did, but if we had not asked, we would not have found it by looking for they were kept under a counter and we had no clue that we were at the right vender when we approached her.  Later at the restaurant, Thea and the server would model their aprons After finding the apron we headed back to the river side restaurant to enjoy a very late lunch.  As we sat and decided upon shrimp or chicken several girls came to our table selling cashew nuts or mud crabs.  We talked to the girls, bought a few bags of nuts and then were entertained by a local juggler.  As we ate the girls came back and tried to sell us more nuts.  We laughed with them but we didn’t realize how good the nuts were so we didn’t buy more.  We loved looking at the mud crabs but knew that we didn’t want to deal with them. 

On Monday at 2PM Betsy went with several other cruisers to volunteer at the school on the island.  Jan has organized it by age and English experience, so the first class consisted of two girls who were in high school and were quite fluent.  They were reading magazines with Jan and she generally wanted us to talk to them, next came the young ones.  Some were not in school yet and a few of them had their mother with them who was also learning English.  This class was concentrating on nouns, names of animals, and food.  The last class, the largest with about 30 students, was the most active.  They arrived at 4 and were divided into 4 different groups.  For the next 3 weeks, Betsy’s “group” consisted of 6 girls and 2 boys.  They challenged her constantly for they were quiet and if you did not engage them with activities, they might just sit and look at you, like they did not understand anything you were saying.  Betsy used all her teaching skills, her Spanish and her English to work with these 8 students.  She did have a parent come up to her and ask why we were leaving El Salvador, for he had 5 sons to educate.

The following day we went with Jan to Zacatecoluca to pick up vegetables and chicken for her next barbeque.  We were excited about making the trip for it would be our first time going inland in El Salvador.  Jan has a newish 4 door truck so we would be traveling in style.  We enjoyed seeing all the lush vegetation and when we got to the city we found it to be a busy place.  We first headed for the central market area and crept along as we went up the narrow streets toward the church parking lot.  When we got out we explored, following Jan as she shopped for vegetables from her regular venders.  We found one who was selling raw cashews for $2.50 a pound.  We also found another vender who had aprons so we got a couple. 

 Finally it was time for our daughter to arrive.  The hotel head chef said that he would be coming by the airport on his way to work so he would pick her up.  We were happy for his help for her flight was scheduled to arrive at 6:30 AM and that would have meant we would need to leave the hotel about 5 to get there to meet the flight.  After the girls had rested by the pool for a while we all decided to walk down the road to have lunch.  One of the first things we showed her was how a cashew grew.  We didn’t realize that only one nut grows on each fruit and that they were dried, peeled and roasted before you could eat them

When visitors come you try to have many interesting things for them to do for you realize that their time is a lot shorter than yours.  We get rather complacent for we never try to jam too many things together.  Visitors are different, so we did another barbeque with the girls, went to La Herradura, and on the week end went to the mouth of the estuary to the stilt restaurants. These are places in the middle of the estuary where the river is very shallow.  At low tide they’re sitting in the sand, but at high tide there is water all around them.  You climb a ladder to the restaurant that is very rustic.  There are tables and chairs and in the corner is a small kitchen.  The waitress/cook brings around a tray of fish and shrimp and you pick what you want.  They cook it on a very simple stove or grill it and bring it back to you.  We had a small red snapper that was delicious.

Sunday was the Mayan celebration of the Equinox and since that is the name of our boat, we felt that we should go.  Jan told us that we needed to dress in white and she would drive us to the outskirts of the capital city to the San Andrés ruin site.  We went with Jan and two of her El Salvadorian friends.  We were told it was to start at 9, then 10:00, and finally when we got there after 10 we realized that the time was mas o menos.   The Mayan descendents were conducting a ceremony to celebrate their heritage and to ask the spirits to give them a bountiful year. They called to the four directions by blowing on a conch shell, talked to the ancient spirits, offered gifts, and asked to be blessed.  We were each given balsa shavings, and cocoa beans to be given to the fire as we prayed to the spirits.  The group was large and we circled by the fire and fed it.  Then later we placed candles and more cocoa beans in the fire as we prayed for happiness but not material things.  They were quite adamant about that, and although it was totally in Spanish the message was clear!  There was dancing of three circles, the children, the men and then the women.  The plan was to circle the area 8 times, we were barefooted and it was fine on the watered grass, but when you were on the dry, sharp grass, you tended to go faster.  Finally the ceremony wound down to the talking stick, where members of the crowd talked to their own ancestors.  At that point we thought that we had absorbed enough culture and it was time to head back to the coast.

 On Tuesday, we asked Martin, who had the day off from the hotel restaurant, to take us on a van trip to San Sabastian, San Salvador, and to Joya de Cerén.  We started out at 8 in the morning and got to San Sabastian about 10.  This is the town that is known for their cotton weaving.  Now days, much of the thread is synthetic and imported, but the weaving patterns and process is still the same.  We found several places that offered woven goods, and even one place that we watched them weave.  This town was different, for many of the shops appeared to have rod iron grates over the doors and you simply told the vender what you wanted and they brought it to the door.  They were also having a water problem in the city, so we saw people getting water deliveries in large pots and containers.  The town was interesting but we had a lot to see so we didn’t linger after the girls had found a few weaving purchases.

 We drove through the capital city on the Pan-American highway to Joya de Cerén.  This is an ancient city that was covered with 4 meters of volcanic ash.  What is so interesting is that it is not like the other ruins that are mainly temples, but this is the only one in the Mayan world that shows how the people lived.  The excavations were mainly being done by a university in Colorado that spends time each summer doing excavations, but since they don’t have the money to build a cover to protect the dig, they bury their recent work each summer. The original part of the dig is very well protected and you observe it inside a covered structure.   What was amazing was that these Mayan builders used bamboo to help support the adobe walls, they also constructed sleeping platforms and the house had storage areas.  Crops were raised close to the house. We had a wonderful guided tour by a Spanish speaking guide and then her words were translated by a younger member of our group.  We later found that most private schools teach a specific language besides their native tongue, when the student is in high school they may go and study in that country.  This gal had been in England for 4 years and now had returned to her family in El Salvador.  We were happy to have her in our group.  We stopped for a snack before the tour.

 Jen and Jen left the next morning, we had another barbeque for them the last night and we even sat around and had entertainment from a cruiser friend.  It was sad to see them go for the week had just flown, the hotel manager took them back to the airport and by that night they were back in the colder weather.

Now was our time to do some serious boat projects, we needed to sew a rain fly for the front of the boat that would allow us to have a cover to keep out the rain, but that would allow us to have the top hatches open for ventilation.  We had purchased that sunbrella fabric in the states and in Puerto Vallarta.  We thought we had all the attachments that we needed but it turns out that we needed 7 snap type closers which were given to us by the boat Effie.  We are so grateful to them for sharing these with us, for it really made the project look professional.  After cutting the fabric, we took the sewing machine up to the restaurant to have more room than the boat offered.  Miguel, the manager offered the conference room when he saw us laying the fabric out on the wooden deck.  He said, “Think of this as your home, use what you need, and do not worry.”  That was the spirit that made this such a wonderful place to be.  Betsy worked on the sewing for 4 days, and finally had a completed rain fly.  She then repaired the other sun cover that she had previously sewed and even did a small job for a fellow cruiser. She finally had to stop for she had run out of needles for the machine and without the right size needles, the Sailrite machine will just chew the thread.   The hotel’s conference room was the perfect “sail loft”

 We went to the port captain’s office the next afternoon to check out of the country and to get our zarpe.  This is your exit visa, and you must have one to show the next country that you are entering.  We had taken our dinghy up the estuary to get to the navy base, tied up next to the navy boat, and walked through the slippery mud to get to shore.  It was low tide!  The Navy was great, and in no time we had all our paper work completed.  We would check out of the hotel in the early morning, and then meet with immigration after the bill was paid.  We had made arrangements with Rogelio to lead us across the sand bar in the early morning when the tide was at high slack. 

Our last night at the hotel, we gathered with cruisers for a special dinner. We asked Miguel if there were any specials for the night.  He went and got, head Chef Martin, who explained what he could do.  We had heard that he made a wonderful fillet with a tobacco sauce.  He smiled and said that someone must have told us, for it was not one of his regular dishes, but that he would make it for us. When our food arrived, we had a beautiful plate with three small round fillets of beef with a light tan colored sauce.  You could see the herbs (tobacco) in the sauce.  Cooked spinach, mashed potatoes, and a wonderful balsamic vinegar salad accompanied the meat.  It looked fantastic and tasted even better.  We would have loved dessert, but we were too full.

 We were ready to go at 9AM and Rogelio was in the hotel panga ready to lead us. We got to the mouth of the estuary in no time.  As we were heading out, a 65 foot sport fisher named Don Juan radioed that they would be passing on our port side.  We watched as the big power boat headed toward the waves and then turned 90 degrees to be parallel with the waves.  This is just the way we had come in, but it was not the way that Rogelio was leading us out.  He was going straight out.  We followed him, tried for speed when he said, “go”, and slowed when he said, “wait”.  You must realize that there is so steering on a boat without forward movement, so it would be hard to keep pointed in the waves with out going forward.  As we waited, it appeared that the waves were not getting smaller, but in fact they were increasing in intensity.  Three times, the panga left us and headed behind us to get out from a crashing wave. At this, Hank wondered aloud that maybe he should have given Rogelio a bigger tip!  Equinox was terrific; she handled the waves like a trooper.  When it appeared that the wave was going to crash over us, she rose with the wave, and then she would go down.  Up and down, our boat bobbed and no salt on the decks.  Finally it looked like it was a moment of calm water, with out waiting for Rogelio to get back in front of us, Hank put throttle down and we started to run for it.  Rogelio came along side and motioned to go for it.  Finally we were through the waves and the bar.  We yelled, “thank you” over our loud speaker.   Rogelio brought the panga right next to the boat, and pounder his heart.  He said that it was a scary time and that we had done great.  When I looked at my watch I realized that it had been 30 minutes since we had been at the mouth of the estuary.  It had gone so fast!  Now Rogelio went to lead another boat the other way.  We wondered what this cruiser felt as he saw our struggle.  Unfortunately no picture was taken that really showed the height of the waves we guess they were between four and six feet. 

 It is with sadness that we leave El Salvador; we loved the country, the people, our cruising friends that we had met and especially all the staff at Bahia del Sol.  Martin said that we would be greeted with open arms upon our return.  Who knows, we may be back sooner that we had planned