Perquin and into Nicaragua

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  Perquin, El Salvador
Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Claire and Scott:

In the past week we finished traveling El Salvador and have now arrived in Nicaragua, the 5th out of the 8 central American countries we are visiting. In San Salvador, last Friday, we had to say ciao for now to Han, and she is now back in the UK, I imagine rushing about like a mad thing trying to get herself organised and down to London.
San Salvador was a pretty cool city; it was just nice to be somewhere that required taxis to get around (everywhere else has been far too small for anything like that) and to see all the slogans and brand names we recognise so well (sony, barclays, toyota, etc etc). San Salvador provided us with one of the best meals of the trip - delicious steaks at La Pampa. This was a recommendation from one of the guys we met at the beach last weekend, he clearly has immaculate taste

A wall rembering all who died

.
From San Salvador, Scott and I took a horrendously early bus to San Miguel and then onwards north into the backlands of El Salvador where population is far more sparse and the main town, Perquin, is little more than a tiny central square and a few houses dotted about. Perquin was the stronghold of the FMLN, the guerilla group, during the civil war in El Salvador between 1981 and 1992. Perquin is now the only place in El Salvador to have any kind of museum about the war. Our spanish speaking guerilla-turned-guide told us all about the war and the many martyrs who are celebrated at the museum, describing how they fought against a governmental army who had financial backing from Ronald Reagan´s USA and were outnumbered in terms of both people and, more importantly, arms. The museum was little more than a community centre with a few pictures and old weapons that had been recovered from both sides, as well as three shot-down helicopters in its back garden. Seems a shame that a war that took so many lives is not really remembered in any official way. There was also a huge bomb crater where the army had tried to wipe out this building which had been used in the war as the base up in Perquin.
In complete juxtoposition to all this, we stayed at the Hotel Perkin Lenka, a bizarre compound run by a guy from Montana who seems to have picked a rather random place to build a complex that consists of loads of rooms and an absolutely massive restaurant diner thing

Mural on the new church

. We were the only people there the whole time and we couldnt work out why the heck he'd picked Perquin of all places to build such a nice tourist resort.
The next day we took a pick up and a bus to El Mozote. It was a harrowing day - El Mozote is a vollage of around 90 families in the middle of the countrside and was the site of a massacre of over 1000 people back in the early 1980s at the start of the war. Very few tourists visit, but those who do are welcomed because the current population want to raise awareness of what happened and hope that poeple who visit will spread the stories to other people. It feels a bit wrong to write about it on here, so we can tell you about it when we get home if you are interested.

Sunday we crossed the border into Honduras and then again into Nicaragua in the comfort of Ticabus. Air con, films, comfort, lovely. The day was a stroll untill a little before we were getting chucked the bus did we realise that we´d lost our guidebook. It is much easier to talk about this incident now, we have had time to recover but at the time it was hugely traumatic. For hours we hadnt a clue what to do with ourselves. Fortunatly we picked up another and could sleep easy that night. 

The next day was a bit of a write off because Scott had was is affectionately known as the squits

What remains of a village house

. it was just a 24-hour thing, luckily, so Tuesday we were back on the game. Claire took the opportunity on Monday to have her first ever pedicure. It was advertised as a pedicure and cocktail but when it came down to it, she decided to go for a beer instead. She thinks both Hannah and her Dad will be very proud of this decision. So now Claire has pink toes with butterflies and feels a little more feminine than she has for the past 6 months.

On Tuesday we explored Leon, the original capital city of Central America (back before they were all separate countries). Its quite a raw place, not bothered with aesthetics but very proud of its heritage and in fierce competition with Granada a little further south which is referred to round here as a ´theme park for tourists´. We took a tour on history and culture of Leon yesterday afternoon, provided by a Dutch guy who has been living here for a few years. We learnt about the history of the place spanning back as far as the 1600s right up until the Sandinista revolution that took place here in 1979, ultimately bringing down the Samoza dictatorship and putting in place a new leftwing government in the space of about 16 days. The guy who was the president back then (Daniel Ortega) has was actually re-elected in 2006 after a 15 year break, but popular opinion is not very favourable of him right now.

Today is the day of the Patron Saint of Leon so there´s been a 2 day drinking ban (dont worry, we managed to find the one bar that was still serving litre bottles of Toña last night, albeit behind locked doors) and this morning there were processions through the city. We stumbled upon the parade by accident when we were looking for a museum and all of a sudden we turn a corner and there are marching bands and flags and all sorts. The marching bands were very xylophone happy and they were followed by a huge statue of their patron saint and half the towns population clustered around her parading along too. 


Its bloody hot and muggy here. We´re heading up to the highlands (coffee country!!) to Matagalpa this weekend to get a bit of a break. Leon has 18 churches, we´ve seen probably half of them so we´re going to go try find the rest now. Speak to you later xxxxxxx 




 

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