Tuesday, January 31, 2006

The restaurant attached to our hotel is pretty good. Nothing fancy - the procedure is to ask what there is and then either order it or go without - but exceptionally tasty and frighteningly cheap. I could have believed the food itself was that cheap, but $3 for two, including the bottled sodas?

We met a couple of guys there, one American and one British. The British guy is doing a trip similar to ours, but not going as far down into South America. Unfortunately his time in El Salvador will be short. Noting the Vietnamese stamp in his passport, a migration official suspected him of being a Communist and only allowed him ten days in the country.

When we mentioned that we planned to go to Tegucigalpa next, the American guy started talking about the girl who had been killed there, the singer, you know, what group was she from, Salt 'n Pepa? He pointed at me, waiting, because surely of everyone at the table I would best be able to help him out.

Luckily I came up with "Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopez from TLC." Whew. My knowledge of TLC begins and ends with "No Scrubs," but thank goodness I was able to represent. Little did he know it's Michael you need to go to with your "black music" trivia.

Today's plan was the Museo de la Revolution Salvadorena. The woman who sells tickets asked us if we were nationals or extranjeros (foreigners). I guess there are two different entry prices, as sometimes is the case, but I assumed from all the staring that it's pretty obvious we're extranjeros. We paid $1.20 each.

The museum was housed in exactly the same type of building as our hotel: tile floors, concrete walls, corrugated metal ceiling. It had a very homemade feeling to it, mostly due to the liberal use of Scotch tape in the exhibits. But the style fit the subject; many of the bombs we saw were homemade as well. Except the big guns, mostly from the United States, a few from China. It's a good museum.

Michael attracted the attention of a guide, who attached himself and insisted on explaining the displays, though he gave no more information than that which was on the typed captions. There were a few people in the museum, and more came as we wandered through, but he liked Michael best. He paid me no attention at all. But we left the museum without tipping him. And by "left" I mean "sneaked away."

Leaving the museum, we passed a little restaurant where the American and British guys were having a soda with a couple of other backpackers. They had been up to the top of a nearby hill to see the bomb craters and said it was a must-see. They said a guy in a black shirt had taken them up there, about a ten minute walk.

Secretly I felt too lazy to walk up a hill for ten minutes to see bomb craters. But the cool kids were all right there and they would have thought we were lame if we didn't go. So we walked back to the museum. We found a guy in a black shirt, but he said no one could guide us up the hill that day. "No hay nadie" he said, a few times. ("There is no one.") He said maybe tomorrow.

I wondered if it was really a question of "no hay nadie to walk a couple of stingy non-tipping gringos up the hill." I felt like telling him we would gladly tip a person whose services we requested, but whatever. Maybe he wasn't the same guy in the black shirt and anyway I was lazy. So we missed out on the craters.

On the way back, we got some licuados to go and ran into one of the Peace Corps guys who had been on leave in San Salvador. He was pretty cool. He's working on some kind of community honeybee project. And also two girls from Alaska who were down on a short trip. One did all the talking and the other one just hung back silently. (She was the me of the two.)

They were from Sitka. I had a coworker who moved there a few years ago and I wanted to ask them if they knew her, but I didn't know how big Sitka is and if that's like asking me if I know Whoopi Goldberg, so I just kept quiet.

The one who talked had a bug crawling on her neck for about five minutes. I was fascinated. How can you not know there's a bug crawling on your neck? When I told Michael later, he was appalled. He said you always have to tell people when there's a bug on them. I guess I was just too busy being surprised that she didn't notice it. And it didn't look poisonous. But next time I'll speak up.

So we've been to El Mozote and seen the Revolution Museum so there's really nothing left to do in town, and tomorrow we're heading back to Honduras, to the capital, Tegucigalpa.

 

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The museum entrance.

Big guns, courtesy of the U.S.

The outside of the museum was adorned with murals done by children... I hope they were done by children... "Don't kill the animals and leave them to grow."

After the museum we stopped for a licuado "to go."