Before we dive into the various ways in which I was unprepared to travel again, I want to do a little rambling. As is my nature. One of the most common questions I get asked about traveling across the globe is how do I manage the different languages. My travels at this point have involved countries claiming at least 19 different official languages, not to mention various regional dialects and minority languages. Obviously I do not speak 19 languages. Even Marcus Brody only spoke a dozen. The real answer to how I navigate these different countries and their languages is disappointingly simple; everyone everywhere speaks English.

Now this is not to say that every person in every country that I have ever visited is fluent in American English. But almost universally, if you visit a country with any amount of tourism, and you go to a tourist destination in that country, it will be nearly impossible for you to find yourself in a situation where no one speaks English. The hotel/hostel staff will, as will at least a couple if not the entirety of the staff of most restaurants. English tours are the rule, museum displays are in the local language plus English, hell in Portugal the bus advertisements and street signs are in English. The ubiquity of the English language actually makes learning other languages difficult. The number of times I have tried to greet someone in a local language only to be met with an immediate “it’s ok I speak English” is almost annoying, though it comes from a place of kindness¹. There have only been a few places in all my travels where communication was difficult because I did not speak the local language, most of those have been off the tourist path stops I found because of friends. Until now I have been to exactly one country, Nicaragua, where I would say the majority of the people I encountered did not speak English.² But this whole giant preamble was just a setup so that I could tell you that I have now been to two such countries. The wonderful people of El Salvador, and they truly are amazing, do not speak English.³

It is the first full day of our trip. We have booked a free walking tour for 2PM, and after an understandably slow start to the morning we set off on a walk to get some breakfast and coffee from a place I found while lackadaisically scrolling around on google maps. We set off on our journey and get our first real feel of the city, and that first feeling is it is distressingly hot. There is a type of heat that exists in many, especially tropical⁴, cities of the world where it feels as though you have been assigned your own personal sun that follows you around, inching ever closer as the day drags on. It isn’t even temperature dependent, as these places rarely clock in much past 93, uncomfortable of course but my, home regularly gets above 100. The difference is difficult to quantify, this heat is oppressive and omnipresent; and a huge factor is there are few chances to escape it. By nature backpacking almost always involves choosing to walk rather than ride any distance under 45 minutes. But even succumbing to the temptation of a ride provides precious little relief. Public buses, the cheapest and thus most common choice for transport as a rule do not have air conditioning, but even taxis and ubers rarely provide you with more than a cracked window. Restaurants, unless they are catering to Westerners priced accordingly or are a literal McDonalds. almost always simply eschew walls to allow a breeze. Sometimes they have fans. So it has been in Manila, Managua, Phnom Penh. So it is in San Salvador.

The city also has the hectic traffic patterns endemic to Latin America, crosswalks and sidewalks are scarce or ignored, rules of the road are mere suggestions, especially to motorbikes. Honking could mean: move the light is green, it could mean hello, thank you, I’m turning, I’m merging, no you’re not, yes I am. Sometimes people in San Salvador honk to get our attention just so they can wave and smile at us.

We navigate this environment as we meander toward our destination. Google maps says its a 25 minute walk, but it doesn’t account for picture taking or street crossing fear. The apparent deterioration of the neighborhood as we approach also begins to produce some anxiety. But San Salvador is in the post crisis boom period where every neighborhood is simultaneously deteriorating and rejuvenating. Finally we turn a corner and there it is, or rather there is the mini complex that holds our cafe, as well as a hair salon and cell phone store. We sit down and enjoy an excellent coffee and decent brunch in a very chic cafe that as predicted has no air conditioning.

We take a different route back because MapsMe and Google maps disagree and it’s nice to change up the scenery. This affords us a few more opportunities for photos, including one very colorful and very large street mural which we get awkward photos of because we dare not attempt to cross the street to appreciate it in its full glory. When we make it back to the hostel we realize two things, one we need to leave right away to make the walking tour, and two there is no way we are making the walking tour. The heat has won out.

We lay in the non air conditioned hostel bed spread eagle for a few hours before deciding it would probably be best if we at least have dinner. We choose the closest place, a corner restaurant with a tin roof, no walls and an outdoor kitchen that is quite popular with the locals. We sit down and a very young waiter who speaks no English and also speaks very fast Spanish and has no interest in speaking “mas despacio” asks us for our order I “puedo tomar”⁵ and “para ella” us into some drinks before realizing I have forgotten to bring cash. I ascertain that I cannot pay with a credit card but as I try to explain that we have to go get cash the waiter either doesn’t understand what I am saying or more likely is providing me a solution that I do not understand. What I do know is he keeps insisting we order food so finally we do, hoping it all works out. The food is predictably wonderful for me, a grilled steak in a green sauce with a rice and bean mix on the side, though Megan is lukewarm on her pupusa. Afterwards and with a lot of broken Spanish and hand signals I finally determine to return to the hostel to grab cash as it is closer than the closest ATM. I leave Megan behind as collateral.

The next day we wake up determined to complete our walking tour. We meet our guide in Cuscatlan Park where the tour begins at a memorial to the dead and disappeared of the Salvadorian Civil War, a 12 year crisis that saw over 80,000 casualties and basically every type of human rights abuse imaginable.⁶ This civil war and the devastation it wrought still plague the country and its reputation today. A joyous beginning to the tour. We continue on to the Centro Historico, the oldest part of the city. Along the way we get lessons in the feasibility, or rather extreme lack thereof, of using bitcoin as a national currency,⁷ of the benefits of your president having formerly been a business associate of Donald Trump, of how using Chinese funding for new projects comes with a lot of strings attached. We also, among many other churches, visit the Iglesia del Rosario, one of the most beautiful and unique Catholic churches I have ever seen. Designed by Ruben Martinez Bulnes, an admitted non Catholic who nevertheless loved deeply his very religious grandmother, the church is built entirely of modern materials, concrete, glass, and steel. It uses only natural light, and the effect is absolutely beautiful, though it took the Vatican some time to agree. Our tour ends with recommendations from our guide for both food and coffee and we take his advice on both. The local food of course is pupusas, and among the most fantastic meals I have ever had. The coffee is equally fantastic, though acquiring the correct blend as recommended by our guide tests the limits of my Spanish abilities. Afterwards we head at last to a museum.

The Dr. David J. Guzman National Museum of Anthropology to be exact, a modest museum with considerable construction occurring, but as it was a museum I was happy. The Mayan artifacts were great, especially a display of elaborately carved musical instruments, and an exhibit on the importance of migration was particularly enlightening. But it quickly became an internal issue that demanded my attention. Something, be it the pupusa, the skirt steak, the gas station hot dog⁸, something is making its presence known in my stomach. I make the first of two trips to “el sanitario” while in the museum, the results concerning but not yet a crisis. So we continue to a local craft brewery as planned.

Cadeja Brewing Company is a 20 minute walk from the museum and is as much a restaurant as a brewery, but they do have styles of beer other than lager so it meets my current beer craving needs. None of the beers are fantastic. But also none of the beers anywhere are fantastic except maybe in Chambly. But as we continue drinking something besides my drunkeness increases, and that is my number of trips to the bathroom and not just to “hacer pipi.” After 5 beers, a pizza with fried cheese balls on it, and 17 visits to “los sanitarios” I tell Megan we need to get to back to hostel. We catch an uber, I pop a pepto pill and pray, we arrive without incident, but only just barely. We are supposed to travel to a new town the next day but it is very obvious that is not going to be an option, the Hostel however is completely booked up so we have to move somewhere. Finally I admit defeat and book a private room in a bed and breakfast type place where at least I will have my own private throne on which to exercise my demons.

The next day we make the move, though I am still not really in a position wherein I should be outside a 10 foot radius of a toilet. Luckily the uber is short, though I’m sure our host had a lot of questions about the way I walked as he showed us the property. It was a lovely place, with a pool and garden, and most importantly a private room with a bathroom and air conditioning. We settle in to an afternoon of alternating cramping and releasing and just as we resign ourselves to a night in the bottom falls out in a different way. Our home in OKC has been broken into and robbed.

1Usually. One French Canadian girl in Montreal was fairly rude in her dismissal of my attempts at French in a way no one in Paris ever was.

2I will add that while it is still pretty easy to find people who speak English, the Spanish speaking countries have a noticeably lower English prominence than other places. This includes Spain, the country in Europe I found to have by far the fewest English speakers.

3I almost hate having to clarify this, but in case someone gets upset, I do not expect people in other countries to speak English. I am not upset when people do not understand me. I actually love being in a place and hearing people speak other languages. This is not a critique of Nicaragua or El Salvador. It is an observation.

4 Here meaning between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, not necessarily tropical in climate.

5Someone who has only studied Spanish and never traveled with it is gonna be confused so let me pass on one of the few things I know about functional Spanish. I have never heard anyone in Central America use the word “beber” in any form. It is always “tomar.” “Algo de tomar” “para tomar” “que esta tomando” I have heard. I have occasionally heard bebida. Now if you use “beber” they know what you mean, they just don’t use it. Do with that info what you will.

6I’m putting this in a footnote because I want these blogs to be mostly humorous and non political but I also believe in the honest telling of history. The civil war only lasted as long as it did because the USA dumped millions of dollars and sent military advisors to help the Salvadorian government because they were anti communist. That they were also brutal, tyrannical, corrupt, and oppresive was unimportant. In the end a UN commission found over 85% of atrocities in the civil war to have been committed by the government of Salvador. The left wing rebels accounted for 5%.

7Yes this is still technically the case in El Salvador, but it really didn’t seem to be working.

8My actual assessment is it wasn’t food poisoning at all but a stomach bug of some kind. A weird distinction I know, but Megan became symptomatic a full day before me and also recovered faster. But the fact that we both got the exact same thing, at least symptomatically, and only had one meal where our food was at all similar leads me towards some other contagion.