The “Real” San Salvador?
Day 63
Early monday morning in Juayua and the streets are being cleaned and street stalls from the weekend festival put away for another week. The cleanup seems like a lot of work each weekend, back home a festival like this would happen maybe twice a year. Certainly not every weekend. Jordana and I grab a quick bite to eat at a small bakery located at the corner of the main square. I’ve been continually disappointed by the crap coffee I’ve had since we left Mexico. Down here all the good stuff is exported and the result is instant coffee at nearly every cafe. As we finish our sweets and coffee I see the our bus pull up to the stop. We rush out and board the converted U.S. school bus, today we are headed to the big bad city, San Salvador.
About 5 minutes into the ride a clown boards and stands at the front of the bus. Decked out in full costume, face paint and a big red nose he breaks out into a comedy routine. Now I couldn’t understand a thing but the fact that a random clown just boarded our bus was funny enough for me. Not many people laughed at his joke but some gave a few cents for the act. Across from me sat a young man named Carlos. His english was much better than my spanish so we conversed in english. He was an intelligent guy and very curious about Canada and how we lived life in the great white north. Carlos wanted to know everything from what sports we played to how much money we made. Did we all speak French? and was Canada just like the U.S.A.? We were both surprised to learn how old each other was, Carlos only 16 and I 30. I was guessing he was at least 23. As we pulled into the suburbs of San Salvador Carlos jumped off and told us to be careful. It means more when a local tells you to be careful rather than an outsider.
Our bus stopped on a main road that looked like an industrial area and we were told this was the last stop. I was hoping for a busy area with taxis. Although it was far from busy a few taxis roared by and we flagged one down. Turns out we weren’t far from the hotel we had picked out from the guidebook. This part of San Salvador is supposedly safer than the rest, well at least during the day. At night we have been told walking is a no go anywhere in the city and you must take taxis anywhere you go. With years of civil war and several natural disasters the city is now spread about not in neighbourhoods but large car friendly suburbs. I’m shocked at what we find. Huge malls and fast food lining 8 lane roads, cars honking and a few poor souls walking on the roasting pavement of the treeless sidewalks. San Salvador looked to be everything a city shouldn’t be, add to this the incredibly high crime rate and you’ve got just about the worst city you could imagine. Well that was our first impression from the cab ride, hopefully this would be dispelled over the next few days.
The one positive so far was that our hotel was run by a friendly family, our room spotless, chilled by A/C and over 100 channels of cable. We checked in and then did like most other upper-middle class San Salvadorians and hit the mall. The Metrocentro is the largest shopping mall in central America. We cooled off in with an ice coffee and wandered the frigid air conditioned mammoth mall. You could have told me we were in any high end mall in any city in the world, Nautica, Hugo Boss, Channel were all here. This wasn’t the San Salvador I expected, although it did bear a slight resemblance to the up scale Zona Rosa of Guatemala City.
We spent our afternoon at the mall, caught a movie and then broke down and had some American fast food, Pizza Hut. We left the mall in the dark so as a local would do we caught a taxi at the mall taxi stand straight to our hotels front door, safety first. The streets were deserted and it was only 10pm. We didn’t really experience anything different this first day in a new city but we did experience a day as a upper class San Salvadorian. Tomorrow we find out how the rest of the city lives.
Tags: crime, El Salvador, malls, San Salvador
Michael Coroneos
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