This is my last post about my trip to El Salvador this year. As you have been reading it was a very interesting and exciting place to visit and I can’t wait to go back and spend more time in such a beautiful country.

The last night that I was there, some of the local kids came by to say goodbye and we had our final supper together. Not that it was much. Just hot dogs, pop and some cake for desert. What impressed me was that they took the time to get together and come as a group to thank me for the basketball net and taking them to places that they would have never been able to go such as the Chalate Country Club and teaching them the finer points of gourmet marshmellow roasting.

If you ever get the chance to visit El Salvador, do it! The country is amazing. Tons of scenic places to visit, great beaches, very friendly people and, if nothing else, you will come away with a new appreciation of how wonderful this part of the world really is.

One of the things that I try to do when I leave from my trips to either Nicaragua or El Salvador is to leave something that will help the residents after I am gone.

On previous trips to Nicaragua, it has been 40,000 children’s vitamins or sports equipment for one the school programs. This trip to El Salvador was a bit different as I had no direct contact with any NGO or other support organization. After a bit of thinking I decided that a basketball net and some balls for the local school would be a good choice.

The difficult decision was to either buy a basketball net locally (i.e. in San Salvador – a 2 hour drive) or try and find a local person to make one for me. The easiest thing would have been to by it in one of large department stores in San Salvador and haul it up to the school in the back of the pick up. Not much benefit to the local economy with that method, so I decided to hire a local builder to make one. It was more expensive to do so but the benefits were more far-reaching. The local builder got a job, all of the materials were bought locally, so local business benefited, the school got a solid piece of equipment that I think is much studier than what could have been bought and the local kids got a piece of sports equipment that they can use year round. The balls were also bought form a local merchant (who gave me a discount when he learned why I needed 5 basketballs).

If you happen to be traveling somewhere think about what you can do to better the local community. Sure you may only be a tourist but what better way to remember a trip than with a donation to help improve the lives of those whose country you visited.

Before I left and during my trip I would watch CNN or BBC News and the most important news story other than the US elections seemed to be the rising costs of gasoline (or petrol for my UK readers).

Well, in Central America, the cost was about the same as in Canada (about $1.30 per litre) except for Honduras. The cost worked out to be about $5 per US gallon or cost to $1.40 a litre and that was in larger cities. In the smaller towns and villages it was closer to $1.50 per litre. Diesel was more expensive than that.

This is a picture of the the gas pump at an Esso station in the capital city of Honduras, Tegucigalpa and the price is shown in lempira. With the conversion the price turns out to be about $4.98 Canadian dollars per gallon. Good and cheap.

I have been a supporter of the Foster Parents Plan (now known as ‘The Plan’) for many years. I had always been impressed by their advertisements and the fact that I would get a letter every few months from the kid that I was sponsoring.

Well this trip has changed my viewpoint a little bit.

On their website they state “For as little as $1 a day, you can help provide a child with access to life’s basic necessities including safe water, schooling, and medical care. Make a lasting difference.” I have no doubt that this is correct. What they don’t state on their website or anywhere else that I could find was that the $1 per day buys new vehicles every couple of years and allows for the staff to eat at restaurants every day.

OK, maybe that is a bit harsh but I have never seen a Plan vehicle (all 4×4 pickup trucks) that was more than 2 years old and the only place I have seen one is either driving around town or parked at the one of the local Pollo Compero restaurants. Now I understand that people have to eat but why there? The majority of the population takes a bag lunch to work and they don’t drive around town in brand new vehicles. Most take the bus or walk or ride with 10 other people in the back of a local farmers truck.

Now this was not an isolated incident. Over the six weeks that I was in Central America I saw this about twelve times and not just in one town. I saw it in many different towns with many different vehicles and staff. I even saw one time where The Plan vehicle was illegally parked (too close to a corner) and because of this the bus couldn’t make the corner. It blocked traffic for 30 minutes until someone showed up to move it. (Oh yes, they were having lunch at Pollo Compero).

This trip has made me rethink my association with this organization and I am planning to cancel my sponsorship next week.

As some of you know I have been traveling the Central America for several years but always during the Canadian winters. This means of course, that it is the dry season in Central America and rain is basically non-existant from Oct to March.

Well this is my first trip during the rainy season and as you know from my first post it can bucket down rain here. I haven’t really written much about the rain but I have had a few questions emailed to me about it so I figured I should try to explain.

The rainy season just means that it can (and will) rain. The rain is not constant but there is usually rain five days out of the week (2 days a week with no rain). Now normally this rain will come in the late afternoon or early evening and last a couple of hours. There have been occasions on this trip when it rained early in the afternoon (such as the day of my arrival) and there have been times when it rained from the afternoon until the following morning but that is unusual.

The rain doesn’t really interfere with one’s activities. You just have plan for it. For example, you get all of the stuff done that you can in the mornings and early afternoon and make no plans for the late afternoon. This is usually not a problem as siesta time is about 2 PM and, for me, catching a few winks during a rain storm is great.

The other advantage is that the rain will drop the temperature as well. So not only does the rain keep everything nice a green but helps moderate the temperature as well.

Well OK, maybe not exactly gourmet cooking but it was fun. I introduced some of the local kids to the joys of roasting marshmallows over a small fire.

Most of the cooking here is done over open fires but the kids never get the chance to do any of it. One day when I was in the local grocery store I found packages of marshmallows and thought why not. I haven’t met a kid yet that doesn’t like roasting them.

I did get quite a few long looks when I was setting up the fire in the open space next to the cooking area. What a strange Gringo they must have been thinking but who cares.

I did several of these during the trip and by the end we would have five or six of local kids getting involved and having a great time. I doubt that it will continue after I left due to the unnecessary costs involved in something so trivial but they learned something new and hopefully have pleasant memories of the experience.

I have been very busy this week hence the lack of blog posts. I have been to Nicaragua and Honduras for the week. Three days in Nicaragua and seven days in Honduras.

It was great to be back in Nicaragua. It seems like home away from home for me. Honduras was very interesting – beautiful country (lots of mountains) and I visited a coffee plantation and learned all about how coffee is grown and processed. I also visited the Mayan ruins at Copan. What an amazing experience!

I will posting in more detail about the trip when I have some time to sit down and put my thoughts to pixels.

A couple of highlights include very helpful Honduran National Police, corrupt Honduran Police, very slow immigration officials in Nicaragua and how to drive safely in Honduras, hotel reviews for the Crowne Plaza Managua and several others in Honduras including the Marriott Hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras .

Hopefully that will keep you interested enough to come back

This past weekend I took a trip to San Miguel El Salvador. The trip took about 4 hours and was uneventful. Just for comparison, we had to stop for gas and paid $4.67 a US gallon which works out to about $1.30 per liter in Canadian funds. This was quite cheap gas. I have seen ‘normal’ gas at up to $4.78 a gallon and diesel at $4.99 a gallon. The smaller towns and villages have higher prices while in San Salavador itself it is quite cheap.

My impressions of San Miguel are quite good. It is a large city probably about 300,000 people and provides goods and services to a quite a large area, i.e. anything you want you can find here. Being more to the south of the country is was much warmer. I think both days we were there it easily was in the mid-40s with brilliant sunshine.

The hotel that we stayed at was the Tropico Inn. The hotel is located on the main street through town and looks quite impressive on the outside. They are adding a rather 5 story extension which seems to be a future convention type centre. I didn’t take any photos but you can see some pictures of the hotel here.

Anyway, based on this trip I would never stay there again. It is apparently the best hotel in the city but I certainly hope not. The smell in one hallway was enough to cause a gagging reflex, the rooms are best described as minimal. A bed, a small desk and a TV. If all you want to do is sleep in the room then it might pass but barely. The Lonely Planet review is much kinder.

The service in the restaurant could be described as non-existant. It took 15 minutes to get a coffee or pop when we finally got asked what we wanted. Meals took up to an hour to arrive and the breakfast buffet was usually cold and very uninviting. Not worth the $50 a night charge.

On the bright side, the town was interesting and we even saw elephants, camels, tigers and llamas on the street. Ok well not exactly on the street. They were being driven around in big open flatbed trucks to advertise the circus had arrived in town. There are photos in the photo album located here.

Scotia Bank has a very large presence in El Salvador and one can be found in most towns and cities.

Off to Nicaragua tomorrow so I am not too sure when the next post will be.

Today I traveled for nearly 4 hours in the back of Isabel’s pick up truck to a town called San Miguel near the border with Honduras. This is not the subject of this post but maybe a later one if there is anything to write about. Today’s topic is the Chalate Country Club.

The Chalate Country Club is about 45 minutes by car from the house where I am staying and it is quite a nice place. For those from Sarnia think of the Sarnia Riding Club but tropical and with much much more activities and facilities.

There are 7 different pools of various sizes and functions. A couple of basically kiddie pools, there are a couple that are more family orientated, and two that are designed just for swimming laps. Add in a volleyball, basketball, football (soccer) and BBQ areas and to round things out there is a banquet hall, bar with pool table, hotel and the option to rent quad-bikes to explore the grounds even further.

Membership is $500 USD per year which entitles you to 2 nights at the hotel per year.

Anyway, I have been 3 times now since my arrival and I have had a great experience each time. Non-membership entry costs $12 per adult and $7 per child (under 12). That includes full use of the facilities and lunch.

I decided to post this to show people that El Salvador is not entirely a poor and backwards country. There is money here but most people here live day to day with very little.

I found a YouTube clip that seems to be a promotion video from the club itself. Here is the link as I can’t get the video to be embedded in this post.

Well I experienced my first real tropical rain storm Wednesday (as I am writing this). I am currently sitting at the main dining table with a candle on either side of me as there is no power, the cell phone doesn’t work and, of course, there is no TV either.

The skies opened up about 2 hours ago and it hasn’t stopped. While I will say that I have seen rain of the same intensity never for this duration. The guess right now is that it will last most, if not all, of the night. It will be an early night – I just hope that I can sleep thru the night and not wake up at 4 AM or some other insane time.

I was able to get a couple of photos and a video while it was still daylight. I will post the photos to the photo album and I am still working on a way to get the videos up. The problem is that the connection speeds are so slow in the cafes here that it is impossible to upload anything of any size. The photos themselves took hours. They will have to wait until I either get to a hotel with a good connection or wait until I get home. I hope to find a solution here as it would be a shame to have to wait for another month to upload them.

We are hoping to go to San Salvador tomorrow to buy an electric stove and go to the Canadian Embassy to arrange for a visa for Isabel’s mum. I will blog about this at a later date.