In which Roz and Layla sample San Salvador, journey across three nations, and admire papier mache people

By Layla

I woke up at the disappointing time of 5:30am, and read my book til Roz awoke at a more presentable hour. So presentable, in fact, that we found we’d missed our hotel’s breakfast. The guidebooks are very nervous about San Salvador – it has a high crime rate, and one is advised to take taxis even 2 minutes down the road and never go near the centre after dark, so we removed all our valuables, left our camera and iPhones at home, and hid various bits of necessary cash in various parts of our clothing. We settled down at a nearby rather posh little cake shop where I had waffles, Roz had a large bread basket, and we both had tasty orange juice and contemplated first our possible security overkill (as the other customers tapped away on laptops) and then the day ahead. Priority number one was sorting out bus tickets to Nicaragua for the following day. Fortunately both bus companies offering said journey had offices within 5 minutes of our hotel (or within 20 minutes up a big hill, if walking the particular route I misguidedly selected). Ticabus had sold out, much to my distress, as it was the cheaper option; King Quality, however, still had seats and we bought two tickets, leaving at 11:30 the following day.

Duty done, we returned to our hotel to drop off tickets and then headed out again. Our hotel was in Zona Rosa, one of the safer areas, and so we were delighted to find that the top attraction, an excellent modern art museum (MARTE), was in the same area, just a few minutes away. We climbed up the hill and found ourselves in a lovely, tasteful art gallery, and even more excitingly, there was a museum café where – after last night’s solitary dining – we encountered a crowd! We joined them for lunch, a delicious focaccia sandwich for Roz and a walnut, pear and blue cheese salad for me, and a large amount of people watching for both of us. Clearly MARTE is where the well-heeled El Salvadorean Sex and the City type ladies lunch. Heels, flashy jewellery, and sleek outfits abounded. We gazed shamefacedly at our outfits… and enjoyed the ambience.

After lunch we went to the museum, which absolutely lived up to the hype – beautifully displayed interesting exhibits, including several which Roz commented on as reminding her of Alice in Wonderland. When a very sweet security guard tracked down an English booklet for us that explained the room’s pictures were intended to be reminiscent of Alice, Roz’s smugness was unbearable.

Having properly enjoyed the art, we walked back down the hill, and caught a taxi to that den of terror, the city centre (apparently comparatively safe during the day). What an odd city. We were dropped off after a 20 minute taxi ride on the main square. Which was filled with people who essentially seemed to be hanging out. The centrepiece was the cathedral, with an interesting dome, and brightly coloured mosaic entrance. A government building lined another side of the square. We stood. We looked. And we wondered: what now? The guidebook directed us to a (closed) theatre with nice architecture. We located it a block away. Its architecture was indeed pleasing. We walked into another square and contemplated our guidebooks. According to both, we’d seen all there was to see in the city centre. There was nothing for it – we jumped in another taxi, this time to the famed lefty bar Casa de Luna y Arte, only to find – after a rather long journey – that it was closed for new year. Alas! We had the delighted taxi driver take us back to Zona Rosa.

Upon debating our dinner options, we realised the art gallery’s restaurant was open for dinner that night, so seduced by the thought of dining with other people, we decided to give it a go. We had a couple of beers at a little Italian restaurant first, reading our books and getting hungrier as the clock ticked towards 7pm, the time our guidebooks claimed was the epitome of dinnertime in El Salvador. We climbed back up the hill, only to find we were yet again the only people in the restaurant. We stalled with gin and tonics and a tomato dip til more people started arriving, acknowledged that really El Salvadoreans eat at 8 or 9, and tucked into the sole vegetarian option, gnocchi with fresh tomato. Which we have had rather a lot recently… We had a very cheery dinner, and then headed home to bed, still not feeling entirely well (again, declining dessert).

Disappointingly I was up at 5:30am again. But this time, Roz woke up in time for us to have the hotel’s buffet breakfast, on the roof terrace overlooking the city and the volcanoes beyond. Very pleasant. Then we set off to the local cafes on a mission to stock up on food for the horror that awaited us: a 10 hour King Quality bus journey from San Salvador through Honduras to Leon in Nicaragua. Fully armed with a giant bag of sandwiches, crisps, water and a sneaky beer or two, we grabbed our suitcases and caught a taxi to Puertobus, the bus terminal.

We were there far too early (my paranoia), and the bus was an hour late, so by the time it eventually departed, we were already exhausted (and peckish). The seats were wide, with great leg room, but despite this, there really is only so pleasant a 10 hour bus journey can be. Roz was listening to Stone’s Fall, an audiobook, while I gazed out the window, and watched the remake of The Karate Kid dubbed into Spanish (fortunately a simple plot, and despite not understanding a word, I wept copiously at the end, much to Roz’s amusement). Time ticked by slowly. We got to the El Salvador border, and the bus staff took our passports for their Honduras stamp. Then more driving. As we drove through Honduras it went from brilliant sunshine to blackest night, and we reached the Nicaragua border in the dark. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, we were deposited at a petrol station just outside of Leon, where I immediately had an argument with a waiting taxi driver who was innocently trying to tell me the cost of the taxi; I had forgotten the change of country meant a change of currency, and was horrified that he was suggesting 20 dollars each; in fact he was suggesting 20 cordoba each, i.e. $1. Roz packaged me into the taxi, rolling her eyes and apologising.

We arrived at the Hotel Real which, unusually compared to El Salvador, was expecting us. The man carried our bags to a small but adequate room. As the whole town seemed to have gone to bed (but we were still awake from our day of forced inactivity), we played cards and drank fizzy drinks til we were adequately sleepy. Alas I was more sleepy than Roz, who listened to the end of her audiobook, and then spent the rest of the night sleepless, distressed by the book’s ending (wuss).

Morning came, and we ventured out into Leon after a rather nice hotel breakfast of watermelon, fried egg, beans, and tortilla, with orange juice and coffee. Leon is Nicaragua’s second city, a university town with colonial architecture and a lot of charm. We were intrigued to find that a 10 hour bus journey had made so much of a difference to the climate – hot and humid! Having staggered down to the main square and watched a procession through the cathedral by a bishop and a large number of holy men, we retired to a squareside café in the shade to drink a fruit liguado (Roz) and rather disgusting chocolate milk drink (me). Afterwards, we tried to follow the Lonely Planet suggested walking tour but it proved too complicated so I devised one of our own. First to the martyrs’ monument, with an eternal flame that seemed to be out. And a big mural depicting Nicaragua’s past, mainly warriors and poetry. Apparently Nicaraguans are big on poetry, worship their national poet, and write poetry themselves. Then past the cathedral and down to a ruined church, and the hilarious Museum of Myths and Legends, housed in an old prison. It’s composed of hideous, life sized papier mache models depicting local, well, myths and legends. Alas the tour was in Spanish but we had been given a book of translations when we arrived, so I made Roz read me the stories while in front of each model. I particularly liked the one about the chief who spent much of his life trying to stop his daughter’s Spanish suitors from getting their hands on his fortune. He hid the gold and they never found it. After he died, legend states that he sometimes appears as a golden crab. You can follow the crab to find the fortune (though with an unfortunate side effect is that you lose the power of speech for a few days). I liked the papier mache crab… A particular interest in the museum was that behind the displays of papier mache legends was realistic line drawings on all the walls of prisoners, as they might have spent their time when the building was a prison, thus depicting two different histories of Leon at once. I was glad we couldn’t understand Spanish so as to be spared the tales of their tortures…

After the museum we walked up past the city’s theatre (nothing on this week, alas) to the famous art gallery, housed in a beautiful old building. We zoomed past the religious Renaissance paintings to more interesting modern art from Central American artists, including an interesting one by Diego Rivera, interesting as I’ve just finished The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (about his life), and Roz is currently reading it.

A diversion to the bank to acquire thousands of Cordoba, and then we headed to Terrace M for lunch. London food prices, but quite nice. I had a crepe with goats’ cheese and tomato and Roz had a mozzarella sandwich (after a nasty moment of thinking it was chicken!), coupled first with bizarre mohitos, and then with rather tasty Victoria beer, one of Nicaragua’s national beers.

After lunch we went to a tour company called Quetzaltrekkers, run by volunteers with all profits going to a charity to benefit street children. Our mission: to book a tour for tomorrow. More specifically, our tentative mission was to book a volcano surfing tour. Apparently there is a big volcano calle Cerro Negro near here – they’ve invented an ‘extreme sport’ where one climbs to the top and then surfs or toboggans down to the bottom. We thought we wanted to go but also thought it sounded scary. The man in the office persuaded us. Sort of. We handed over our thousands of Cordobas, and felt rather scared about 8am tomorrow morning…

And with that, we returned to the hotel, where I am writing this, before we venture out again, to the very pleasing city of Leon.