Eleven Things I Learned in Central America

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Central America. Eventually, I'll write a longer blog about it. For now, some things I learned about the area:

1. Parts of it are very cold. The highland areas feature alpine forests and demand blankets at night. The lowland areas are sweltering. The hotter the area, the poorer it seems. When people warn you against visiting Central America, they’re probably thinking of these parts: trash runs on the streets, music blares from every storefront, and mosquitoes bite you. Up high, volcanoes rim the sky and people have fewer skin problems.

2. El Salvador is lucky to have a delicious staple food: the pupusa. Pupusas are circles of stuffed dough, fried in lard and filled with beans and cheese or various meats and other vegetables. The two most unusual pupusas I tried contained shrimp and, on the Guatemalan border, unidentifiable dark leaves. One very good pupusa vendor asked me to take her back to the United States to open up a pupuseria. “Seramos socios,” she said. (“We’ll be partners.”) It seemed like a good idea, minus the visa issues. Pupusas really ought to be as popular as tacos.

3. When travel guides say the city of Antigua is very colonial, they mean everyone there is a European tourist. (Americans are strangely absent.)

4. It is possible to fit 36 people in a van with 18 seats. The word “in” is deceiving, however, as some of these people may hang out the door. The passenger count can surpass 50 if you include chickens and machetes.

5. You know a country has had a hard time of it when there are more signs at restaurants prohibiting guns than there are prohibiting smoking.

6. It’s not hard to fall asleep near a night market, provided you wait to go to bed around 1 am. It’s hard, however, to stay asleep, since the music starts again around 4 am.

7. Korean immigrants have settled in their own sections of Guatemala City, reportedly even introducing their own schools and supermarkets. In other words, they have recreated Granada Hills.

8. Always check hotel sheets for hair and bread crumbs—preferably before you move in.

9. Retired school buses can run indefinitely if exported to Central America and repainted with sufficient references to Jesus.

10. The town of Chiquimula has only one thing going for it: good, cheap food. (That, and it's sort of named for my puppy.) It’s neither good nor cheap enough. And it's also named for a mule.

11. Central American governments must design their roads to make any two cities seem as far apart as possible. For example, one 30 km stretch in northern El Salvador, to the town of Metapan, took three hours. This technique probably helps people believe their countries are larger.