The family of a friend invited me to come to San Salvador and thus again i had a reason to go to a central american capital, which i though i would skip altogether. We agreed to meet at the “Parque de Antiguo Cuscatlan”, a small town on the south end of the city. From the time i met them, there was hardly any minute of spare time. They took such good care of me and i felt i saw within three days more than i do usually in a week.
Even on the evening that i arrived, we found time to drive to a lookout and later went for some “pupusas”, which i have to admit are a tastier affair here in El Salvador.
The next day we visited two museums. First the museo nacional, where one can obtain a good overview about the country. Starting from the early migrations to the rather recent history of the civil war, which was ignited after the assasination of Oscar Romero. A lot of these events found its way into this mural in the yard of the museum.
The second one was the museum of art which showed besides el salvadorian art, a really good colombian guest exhibition. Here: el ciclista by Nirma Zarate.
The botanical gardens with some nice flowers and this massive bamboo trees were the next destination in the afternoon. And one can see the old volcanic rim from a huge volvano, which stood where now the city is located.
The house was mostly filled with music and in the evening we had a proper sitdown with our guitars which lasted until late in the night. The next morning i went with Carlos to the University of Central America, which also played a role during the civil war when the army encircled the area to assasinate six jesuit priests living on the campus. The students offer free tours of the museum and the former quaters of the priests. The tour ended just in time to see a play about Oscar Romero. A theatrical company of mexican students were visiting San Salvador and showed their take on the story of the former archbishop of the city.
We had lunch together with some other students where some projects were discussed. For example as how to use the coming air time on the student radio and a water filter system to help a community, on one of the islands off the coast of El Salvador, to get access to clean fresh water.
The next day saw us visiting the Boquerón National Park with its volcano. It was a bit misty but the vegetation around the volcano made up for the obscured views. In the evening we had a pupusa dinner once more and discussed the best way to exit the city by bicycle which turned out to be the Calle vieja a Zacatecoluca.