Two things struck us quite sharply upon entering El Salvador. One was the shock of using American dollars again. The other one was a jagged pothole.
Following economic collapse, El Salvador renounced fiscal sovereignty and adopted the dollar as their official currency. The value of this change has been debated by economists since then. The only thing that Jordan and I could say about El Salvador’s financial decisions in those first few moments in the country is that no dollars found their way to road repair.
Both the Panamerican and the Littoral highways are scarred disasters challenging a driver’s attention and reflexes. In effect, there is nothing particularly special about these samples of Central American road.
The Pilsener
Happily, our destination was worth the effort. Playa el Tunco is a narrow strip of sand nestled amongst surf breaks. The town itself appears to be steadily ceding ground to the neighboring jungle, but the beachfront gleams (in a manner of speaking) with bars and restaurants.
In need of refreshment, we stopped at one.
What would you like? The waiter asked.
I see the brands of all the beers on your list except for the pilsner, I replied. Which pilsner do you offer?
Yes, it is pilsner.
Right, but which one? Which brand?
It’s Pilsner! You want a pilsner? It’s very good!
Screw it, yeah, I’ll try the pilsner.
We drank in the dying light of the sun with a couple of cold Pilsener brand lagers.
No Chicken
Confusion regarding purchases was not limited to beer.
Being a seaside town, I went looking for fish and was told that it wasn’t sold in el Tunco.Several people, some of whom stood in front of fishing boats, advised me to go to the fish market in La Libertad.
I went in search of chicken.
Several failed inquiries later, I entered the last bodega in El Tunco.
Do you have chicken, I asked the sleepy-eyed old woman behind the counter.
No, she said. I’m all out. There might be a delivery tomorrow. I only have one pound of chicken.
I tried to digest the conflicting information coming at me.
Will you sell me the pound of chicken?
Sí.
Single-Burner Thanksgiving
Chicken in hand, the next order of business was fuel for our stove. This had been a problem ever since leaving Mexico. Our camp stove runs on propane, which can come in either the 1lb single-use canisters or larger, refillable ones. As we lack a lot of free space in the car, we’ve been using the single-use canisters.
This wasn’t a problem in Mexico, which is pretty well set up for camping. Once across the southern border, however, we stopped seeing both these canisters and the 2.2kg refillable ones that are the largest possible size that we could find space for in the car.
Right before leaving Mexico, our friend Mark had offered us his 2.2kg tank. No thanks, I remember saying, that’ll just take up too much space. This decision has haunted me ever since.
Fortunately for us, the caretaker of the parking lot we were camping in offered us the use of his propane stove. A few hours and a bit of wine later, we had a highly traditional chicken curry prepared and a few bottles of wine to go with it.
Our little Thanksgiving dinner party consisted of Jordan and I, plus the caretaker and Kate, a young English woman biking solo through Central America and camping out in the abandoned building next to the parking lot.
As abandoned buildings go, this one was quite a gem. Intended to have been a bar, the money ran out partway through the building process and it now exists as an empty two-story palapa-roofed lookout. From the flat wooden floor of the second story, we had unobstructed views along the beach and across the Pacific. We ate, drank and chatted into the darkness.
Moving On
Our stay in El Tunco was brief. Jordan tested out the waves while I caught up on some writing, my ankle still weak and painful from my inglorious climbing wall accident in Antigua, Guatemala. After a few brief but glorious sunsets and feeling the increasing pressure to make it to Costa Rica in time to meet Jordan’s mom, we set rubber to road, bound for surf breaks further south.
