Banana Republic

Santa Ana – Usulutan, El Salvador, via San Salvador

No. We didn’t go shopping at a trendy clothing store. Have you seen my wardrobe? I’m not sure you could improve on it anyway . . .

Growing up I think the sum total of my knowledge relating to the world south of the Rio Grande came from the game of Risk, combined with a vague idea that the countries in Central and South America tended to be “banana republics.”

For those who haven’t played Risk, it’s a board game about trying to take over the world. You are probably better off if you’ve never played it, because inevitably you end up really mad at the other players – who presumably started out as your friends . . . The thing is that, like you, they are trying to take over the world so eventually they have to attack you. It’s kind of Monopoly in that regard. Everyone starts out all chummy, but later, after you have built houses and hotels on Marvin Gardens and Pacific Avenue, reality sets in and someone’s going off to bed in a huff . . .

Anyway, Risk simplifies the world pretty drastically. There is no Mexico or Guatemala or El Salvador. They are lumped into one place – Central America. Which, as I have learned, is wrong right from the start because Mexico is part of North America. (I think this Risk error is why I wasn’t sure where Mexico belonged until a few weeks ago . . .)

But don’t worry – Risk is wrong on an equal opportunity basis. According to Risk there are only four “territories” in South America: Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. This simplication does make it an easy place to conquer and defend in Risk, but that is a discussion for another day . . .

On the banana republic front, I’m not sure where the ideas that were in my head came from. But the general theory was that there were a bunch of countries that tended to have coups all the time – so the governments and the countries were unstable. The banana part? I guess that’s a way of grouping these countries easily – maybe countries that tend to be around the equator . . . 

Of course, it’s interesting to throw Central and South American countries into this mix because, while they have bananas now, bananas are originally from the Malay archipelago in Southeast Asia.

But I guess that whoever coined the term wasn’t really that worried about accuracy or anything . . .

Okay – long introduction. Aren’t we talking about El Salvador? Yes, of course. And, I think, based on what I’ve learned since being here, El Salvador did have a pretty unstable government until the early-90s. But since their civil war ended they have, I think, had a pretty regular democracy. And more recently I guess they have also really cracked down on violent crime – making for a pretty safe and great place to visit.

The end result of this stable government plus the crackdown on crime is a country that, to our eyes, should be the envy of Central America. The roads are nice – and, based on all the crews hard at work around here – will be getting even nicer in the years to come. With some pretty notable exceptions, the housing stock in El Salvador appears to be nicer than in Guatemala and Mexico. Fresh coats of paint. Not dilapidated. You get the idea . . .

We visited the presidential palace, the national theater, the national library and the grounds around these places in San Salvador last night. I’m a huge believer in the symbolism of places like this – and we were just super impressed. It’s clear that El Salvadorians are really proud of their republic and the country generally – and they want to show it off to the world. It is that type of pride that, I think, helps keep people involved in civic life – voting, running for office, offering opinions, etc. 

Yes, the volcanoes are cool. And I guess there is some great surfing. But the base that El Salvador has to build on goes way beyond its natural features. Maybe one way to put it is that if I were in charge of investing in different countries, I would put my money in El Salvador way before I would Guatemala. It just feels more stable and like it is headed in the right direction. 

Alright, I know you want to know how our riding has gone and whether I’ve recovered from my own volcanic activities, and I’ll get to that. But I just want to add a few more interesting facts about El Salvador . . .

Like the rest of Central and South America, the Spanish took over this area in the early-16th century. As I understand it, El Salvador (or Salvador as I think it was called then) was basically part of New Spain – which, as I understand it, was basically all the Spanish stuff in the “New World.” 

After Napoleon took over Spain early in the 19th century, the country was weakened and at that point the Mexicans started their revolutionary war. When the Mexicans finally won that war in 1821 the rest of Spain’s holdings – like El Salvador – won their independence from Spain as well. 

But then Mexico – or the Mexican Empire as I think it was referred to at that time – tried to assert its control over the Central American territories – what would become El Salvador included. I guess at that point El Salvador petitioned the United States for statehood. (I find this fact to be particularly interesting. Lots of things would be different had El Salvador become a state. For instance, we would be doing even better in surfing competitions at the Olympics. And the Chipotle of pupusas would probably have spread from sea to shining sea . . .)

Soon thereafter, Mexico started having its own problems and in 1823 El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica formed the Federal Republic of Central America – with a constitution modeled on the United States. Infighting and civil wars followed until the Republic was dissolved in 1841 or so. 

Everyone muddled along for a while, but from 1896 to 1898 El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua made another run at it – forming the short-lived Greater Republic of Central America. 

I don’t know much about the 20th Century – but from what I understand El Salvador was pretty unstable – with a number of coups and authoritarian regimes coming one after another until the country went into civil war in the late-70s. As we talked about earlier, the civil war ended in the early-90s and the country has been a stable republic ever since . . .

Alright, so that’s my history lesson for the day. Now it’s time to get to the important stuff – like the story of how Diana and I got dinner last night. 

So we stumble onto the presidential palace and there is a wonderful young lady acting as the concierge. She tells us that the presidential palace is open until midnight and that we can come back to get a tour after we have eaten dinner. She tells us that her favorite restaurant – The Parilla Grill – is across from the national theater – which is around the corner. They have pupusas there – and since one of our major goals for the evening was having pupusas (having failed to get pupusas in Santa Ana – procuring a sad Mr. Bean hot dog instead) we decided to go there. 

We find our way to this restaurant, sit down, order, and wait for our meal. We are starving by this point – because we really haven’t eaten since we finished our ride earlier in the day (me at least partially because I’m still having stomach issues and am not feeling great . . .). 

We’re sitting there kind of blankly staring at the walls – which happens when you are too hungry to even hold a conversation – when our waiter comes up. Mind you this restaurant is more full than any restaurant we have probably seen in Mexico or Central America. People everywhere. Eating food. Enjoying food. You get the idea. Anyway, he comes up and says something in Español. We try to employ all of our language learning but we’re not getting it. Finally we have him type it into Google Translate. 

“Your food is not coming because we are out of gas.”

I guess this is the type of thing that happens when there is no central fuel line. You run out of propane. Kind of a bummer though – they are going to lose a lot of business . . .

Now we’re REALLY hungry. We end up in a queue out the door at this other restaurant. There’s a fierce north wind and we’re both hungry AND freezing now. Diana looks up a review and it says this restaurant has decent food but poor service – often telling customers that the wait will only be a few minutes when in reality it ends up taking much longer . . . But what can we do? We’ve already invested like an hour in this dumb dinner. What? Are we going to leave now? And go where?

But you know what the worst part is? These places that make you wait forever like this – they end up benefiting. Because by the time you order you have committed so much time and you are so hungry that you completely over-order. We ended up getting the 12 pupusas special plus a whole other meal. Which ended up being about eight pupusas more than we could possibly eat – especially because I still have stomach issues. 

But how were the pupusas? They were good. I think it’s fair to say that we both love the concept of the pupusas. But that was another down side to the 12 pupusa special – most of them ended up being bean pupusas. Bean pupusas are okay – but hardly worthy of more than one pupusa. The better ones were the cheese variety – but there was only two of those in the 12 pupusa special . . .

Live and learn. 

From now on we’re asking if they have re-filled their propane tanks before we sit down . . .

Okay – a few words on the riding and then it’s off to bed . . . El Salvador is super beautiful. Not the huge mountain ranges – but rolling hills dotted with volcanoes. What’s not to like!

Yesterday we biked past a huge black lava rock field type thing. They actually had a viewing area and some interpretive signage – again, not something we have seen since Texas . . . I guess we were looking at three volcanoes and one of them had a big eruption like 60,000 years ago – and, from what I understand, all this lava rock stuff has been sitting there since then. 

Pretty cool.

In general El Salvador feels like you are biking through Palo Alto, California or something. Many of the roads feel almost like parkways – with big shade tree canopies. The cars somehow seem fancier too. Definitely not as many noisy motorcycles or crazy tuk tuks . . . 

And . . . get this . . . there was a super-nice bike lane along the side of the road for about 20 miles today. (Actually, from our perspective nicer than American bike lanes – because this one actually took us where we wanted to go – not 37 miles out of the way through Uncle Bob’s corn field – because that’s where they happened to get the right-of-way . . .) 

But we did encounter another huge traffic jam – kind of like the one in Mexico – only this one was about 15 miles long. We just weaved our way through . . . And I think if you take the traffic jam into account it was probably faster to bike the 75 miles from San Salvador to Usulatan. Seriously. Crazy!

Me? I’m still not feeling super great. Definitely a few roadside pit stops today . . . always a good thing to have the extra roll of TP along . . . But Dr. Liu is taking good care of me, and I’m hopeful that I’ll feel better one of these days . . . Though this is probably the longest I have ever had stomach issues in my life – my iron tummy has always been a strong suit for me . . .

Tomorrow? On to La Union on the coast. And then the next morning we take a boat from there across the Gulf of Fonseca to Nicaragua. Supposed to be super beautiful crossing as there are a bunch of islands – I’m presuming they are volcanic islands because we’re still in the land of volcanoes – that we’ll pass along the way. 

Nicaragua thoughts or advice?