Best-selling author Amanda Foreman
visits the Central American jewel hit by a hurricane
and war - but now poised for a tourist boom.
I'M GLAD I GAVE EL SALVADOR'S PEACE A CHANCE
My happiest memories from my graduate-student days are
of spending time with Marisol, my Salvadorian flat-mate. We
used to waste hours just chatting about this and that.
She had a way of talking about her war-ravaged country
that made it sound heartbreakingly beautiful. The
real El Salvador, she assured me, was a magical paradise
of tropical forests, ancient volcanoes and empty beaches. I
promised her when she left that one day I would see the
country for myself.
It was eight years before I redeemed the promise. During
that time, El Salvador cemented the peace agreement with
the Left-wing FMLN guerrillas and became a fully-fledged
democracy.
Free elections, a free Press and a free economy on a
par with Chile's have transformed this tiny country, the
size of Wales, into the fastest growing region in Central
America.
It has the accoutrements of a modernising nation: mobile
phones sushi restaurants and Perry Ellis. But, remarkably,
there are precious few tourists.
Throughout my stay I met plenty of business travellers
and foreign engineers, but not a single European or American
holidaymaker. El Salvador's tourism is almost entirely
homegrown. The civil war trapped people in their
houses and many are now exploring their country for the
first time. The chief consequence of this boom is
that Salvadorian-owned hotels, as opposed to the international
chains, all follow the custom of separate beds.
In general, a double room has two full-size beds, allowing
luxurious room for one person or a romantic proximity for
two. I suspect this will change as foreign tourism
increases.
I was picked up from San Salvador's smart new airport
by Jorge, a guide with the country's national tourist agency,
Corsaturs.
Just like Los Angeles, the private car is king here
and there is very little public transport that a tourist
should or could use. There are no trains at all. Rural
workers depend on ex-American schoolbuses painted in fantastically
psychedelic designs. When you drive through El Salvador
it seems as though the entire country is on a massive road
trip to see the Grateful Dead in concert.
Like all developing countries, the road from the airport
to San Salvador does little to render El Salvador more
attractive. Hoardings, shanties and government housing
projects line most of the route. Yet the hotel manager
of the Princess, where I stayed, told me that the recent
lighting of the motorway had been one of the government's
biggest achievements. It's funny how you can take
these things for granted. I did not know that El
Salvador, like the rest of the region, had been devastated
by Hurricane Mitch three years ago. It certainly
looks and feels undamaged now.
The Princess not only has the best hotel gym I have
ever seen, it exudes a cheerful confidence and sophistication.
I slept in comfort, watched my favourite US shows on cable
TV and dined extremely well there on a mix of local and
international cuisine.
There are at least five or six first-rate hotels in
Sal Salvador, including the Marriott, which has a resort-size
pool and gardens to match. As you go down the scale
the rooms get smaller and the swimming pools greener. Although
the international chains are more expensive, with the average
double room costing £100 a night, they offer the
best value. The big hotels can arrange day-trips
and adventure tours and can provide an English-speaking
guide. Even though El Salvador is relatively safe,
its high unemployment rate and little experience of tourists
make having a guide common sense. I had never travelled
with a guide before, but Jorge was so knowledgeable and
such fun to be with that his company never felt awkward
or superfluous.
Jorge asked me what I wanted to do, and I gold him "be
a good tourist", so he took me to San Miguel, the
local farmers' market of San Salvador. It is a huge
covered market in the heart of the old city. The
route into it passes many of the old colonial houses once
inhabited by members of the "Fourteen Families",
the oligarchs who used to run and effectively own the country.
Most of them left during a series of earthquakes in
the Seventies. The rest moved into walled compounds
in the suburbs during the war. As a result of the
flight, inner San Salvador has a raw, working class vitality
to it.
The pavements are jammed with street-sellers, the buildings
are generally low-built with tangled wires hanging precariously
from overhead power cables and, of course, there are cars
nose-to-tail everywhere.
By contrast to the noisy jostling outside, San Miguel
market feels open and airy. It has everything, from
a vast array of edible flowers to wild fowl and freshly
caught fish.
El Salvador has many kinds of fruits and vegetables
utterly unknown in Britain. I sampled several, including
a giant broad bean pod-like thing called a paternas. Its
delicacy is the sweet white pulp that surrounds the beans. Raw,
the beans are not edible, but the Salvadorians boil and
eat them with chilli sauce and pumpkin seed spice.
They make a similar, delicious side dish with crunchy
green mangoes. I ate and picked my way through the
market and then tried lunch in one of the many market commodores
- restaurant kitchenettes that serve local cuisine.
Salvadorians are like the British and tend to rate their
national cuisine rather poorly in comparison to French
or Italian. Yet their food is varied and delicious. It
bears little resemblance to Mexican or South American cuisine,
being lightly spiced but also heartier.
The most popular food in the country resembles a very
thick tortilla pancake, called a pupusa, which usually
contains cheese, edible flower or pork stuffing.
The best place to try local cuisine in San Salvador
is at the commodores in the market, a working-class chain
called Comapronto, and another more upmarket version called
Typicos Margot.
Otherwise there are very good international restaurants
serving European, Chinese and Mexican food. I had
a wonderful dinner at a Spanish restaurant called Tasca
Ole, which served very fresh, spicy sausages.
Jorge drove me on a sausage trip to the hillside town
of Cojutepeque, which is nationally famous for its earthy,
slightly spicy mixtures.
Every window and doorway of this one-road town had strings
of fat little sausages hanging from it. People were
stopping in their cars to buy them. I tried a few
for lunch at a charming country hotel called La Posada
de Suchitlan, in northern El Salvador. They were
not unlike chorizos, only bigger and courser. However,
I was too busy admiring the view to really notice them.
La Posada resembles a colonial hacienda, with ochre
walls and copper-coloured windows and doors. The
hotel would be charming anywhere, but it becomes an unexpected
showcase when combined with panoramic views across a valley
of forests and lakes.
The owner showed me the new guest cottages, which are
sparse but comfortable and private. The only thing
I could hear were the cries of exotic birds. Not
surprisingly, the hotel is a popular honeymoon destination.
La Posada is conveniently located between the colonial
town of Suchitoto, with its cobbled streets and 18th century
church and San Sebastian and Ilobasco.
The latter makes brightly coloured pottery, the former,
San Sebastian, is famous for its weaving. Here, instead
of sausages, it is thick, freshly-dyed skeins of wool which
hang from every door and lintel. Nearly every house
contains an artisan workshop or dye works.
As far as I could tell, the process has not changed
since a Spanish priest first introduced handloom weaving
in the 17th century. In one house an old woman sat
at a Sleeping Beauty-style spinning wheel, making cotton
reels. At lunchtime everything stopped; I followed
the workers into the local covered market, where women
were cooking fresh tortillas. Each tortilla was hand-made
and then thrown on to a clay platter which was wedged over
a hot fire. I tried one, still warm, wrapped around
some local cheese. It was the best I had in El Salvador.
The striking thing about San Sebastian and almost all
the towns I visited is that, except for the churches, the
buildings are squat and brightly coloured.
Salvadorians disguise the size of their houses. What
appears to be a small and narrow dwelling from the street
often stretches back inside to include several rooms and
a courtyard with trees and flowers.
The most beautiful city in the country is Santa Ana. It
not only contains the greatest remnants of El Salvador's
colonial history, it also has the magnificent Teatro and
the country's largest Gothic cathedral. The 1900s
theatre is being restored to its former ravishing state. The
frescoes and ornate carvings have come back to life, the
Edwardian staircases have been polished. Yet the
feeling of a theatre suspended in time remains, with its
wooden seats and tiers that are still supported by narrow
columns. Santa Ana would be the perfect place to
hold a music festival. It also happens to be only
an hour and a half from San Salvador.
I soon realised that nothing is very far from the capital. El
Salvador can be crossed from one end to the other in several
hours. Great extremes in climate and sea level exist
in unlikely proximity. A short 40-minute drive south
from Santa Ana took us to the hillside coffee plantations
of Apaneca.
The cool, mountainous air was thick with the scent of
coffee flowers. The smell is a heady cross between
jasmine and lily of the valley. Coffee plants like
to grow under large trees, protected from the wind and
harsh sun.
The plantations are beautiful places just to experience,
which is why there are several very good scenic hotels
in the area. I had lunch in one, Las Cabanas, that
offered simple food and accommodation but unrivaled views
of mountain plantations. I was told that the higher
the cultivation the better the quality of coffee. Sadly,
Salvadorian coffee has few export markets, even though
it is just as good as its South American rivals.
I drove through a plantation on my way to visit Los
Andes National Park on the Santa Ana volcano. There
were few signs of activity as this was the off-season,
and the workers had either migrated to the sugar fields
or were planting new trees.
Higher up the volcano, the plantations suddenly disappeared
and lush grassy slopes emerged. There were even cows
grazing amid the wild flowers. Higher up still, the
grass gave way to a lush, primary forest with hanging Tarzan-like
fronds and giant orchids growing off tree-stumps.
This was Los Andes. Hikers can camp here in preparation
for the climb up to the top of the volcano. It takes
several hours, but the sight from the top is worth the
effort.
At the mouth of the volcano there is nothing to see
but rock and black lava and it feels as though a piece
of Mars landscape has dropped on the tropics.
El Salvador is blessed with a great number of
inactive volcanoes, most of which offer outstanding nature
trails. However, one of the best ways to see them
is from the air. The army offers helicopter rides
over the whole of the country.
For "war-tourists" and other adventure-types,
it's possible to visit the FMLN former military campsite
in the jungle forests of Perkin - now a nature reserve
with a hotel run by an ex-guerrilla - and then fly over
Perkin in an army helicopter, mimicking its former reconnaissance
missions.
I chose to explore the country's beaches and archaeological
sites instead. It was a day I shall never forget;
waterfalls, lava fields, Mayan ruins, hidden marinas, lush
mangroves - I saw things I could never have imagined. All
the time I wished that my fiancé was with me so
that he, too, could enjoy these things.
We stopped for lunch at a seaside hotel called Suites
Jaltepeque that occupied a huge, empty streth of beach. The
fish was so fresh that one of Jorge's clams flinched on
contact with lemon juice. My grilled shrimps were
enormous with meaty, almost like lobster.
The manager gave me a tour of the hotel, which is especially
geared towards families and provides self-catering facilities. It
was, like so many that I saw, clean and unpretentious,
and very good value.
Before I left, I tried to meet different Salvadorians,
including a journalist and a civil servant. They
all talked about their hope for the country. It is
something even a tourist can pick up, a sense of bustling
activity and growing awareness among the people of the
country's potential. Everybody works hard. Yet,
El Salvador is a breathtaking place that inspires peace
in a visitor's heart. It is a tiny natural oasis,
far from the madding crowd, unknown and unspoiled.
