Slippery Escarpment

Excerpt from Slippery Escarpment...

Pupusas all around…

El Salvador, 2005

   “Why on earth would you possibly want to go there?”

   Of course by now…Anyone that knows me understands why…In this particular case the conversation concerned El Salvador. The tiny Central American morsel with the unfortunate reputation for violence and upheaval. Now I’m not going to deny that I had concerns, but I tend to think that most people blow things out of proportion…Tend to err upon the solid ground of caution, which isn’t bad…Just a tad shortsighted and boring.

   To be honest, my salvo for El Sal stemmed from the movie Salvador. So I guess I have Oliver Stone to blame for my yearnings. Ever since that night in the Bearded Monkey, rain punishing the streets of Granada, Nicaragua, I had wanted to visit El Salvador. Of course in the movie; James Woods just wanted to get the hell out…Yet I had to see the place for myself. Besides the war had been over for more than a decade. Surely the country had recovered somewhat…Right?

   As you can imagine I had very few friends (sadly…I have very few to begin with) interested in taking a trip down to El Salvador. Dusty was interested, but had just returned from a month-long jaunt to Russia. Christian was busy with hunting, kayaking and his first baby on the way. Jav Sours was out on maneuvers. I believe at this point my search was exhausted…I was going to have to go solo or not at all…

   I made reservations and poured over every scrap of information I could. Just about every reputable travel rag stated that the people were friendly as hell; just get your ass off the street before darkness settles in. Apparently after half the population fled the country during the revolution and moved elsewhere, the United States of course included, Salvadoran youth had taken a fancy to hanging out with gangsters on the streets of L.A. and New York. After the smoke had cleared and people came straggling back to El Salvador, the newfound obsession with gang life came swaggering back with them. So now El Salvador enjoys an imported version of the East L.A. culture. The trend is backed by a bustling gun industry…As there are gun stores everywhere you look.

   In my opinion this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m merely stating the facts. There are over one million illegal firearms in a country containing just over six million people. Of course a third of the population is under the age of fifteen and will need to be trained to use the arsenal correctly.

   Thus the well-heeded advice to get your ass off the street by sunset. To be honest I didn’t come into contact with many gangsters, but then again I wasn’t walking around looking for them either. I’ve seen enough of them in my own backyard in Phoenix.

   As the day approached to leave, I became increasingly more anxious. Although I had traveled solo before, I was a bit apprehensive. Through a good friend at work, Randy Camacho, I had managed to make a solid contact the week prior to departure. Randy said he knew a woman named Liza Ramon, whom he had met through his congressional campaign. He said she had fled El Salvador during the revolution in the early 1980s, but returned frequently to visit and had family still living in the area.   Randy made a few phone calls and the next thing I knew we were meeting Liza at a Salvadoran restaurant.

   As usual, I was the first one there. I’m habitually early. Call it a healthy neurosis. My stress level climbs if I’m running late, so therefore I tend to always be early. Sometimes too early. I sat in my truck in the strip mall parking lot which housed the restaurant and watched a guy take a sponge to a dilapidated sedan which was parked haphazardly in front of the Salvadoran restaurant. I found that sort of odd. What was this guy doing scrubbin’ up his car right in front of the restaurant? That’s just plain inhospitable…Then I noticed the CERRADO sign on the door. Perhaps it had been awhile since Liza had eaten pupusas?

   Eventually Randy showed up and we ambled over to investigate. Sure enough the place was closed. We found out later that they were always closed on Mondays. We spoke briefly to the African-American guy buffing his ride, but it was evident he knew nothing about pupusas nor El Salvador. I generally tend to cringe when I hear the label African-American. It sounds so damned hokey to me. But in this case the label fit. The guy was definitely African, and he was after all in America. He possessed a strong central African accent, possibly Nigerian?

   He asked us if we had any money for gas. We didn’t. He then braved rush hour traffic, crossing a busy street; tiny gas can in hand to points unknown. He returned ten minutes later with a toothy grin on his face. He carefully dumped a half-gallon of fuel and jumped into his large, 1980s era boat. He proceeded to execute a shaky right turn out of the parking lot, covered about thirty feet, and then decided he needed to go left instead. Deftly demonstrating a sloppy, half-assed U-turn, he abruptly pummeled the innocent curb on the opposite side of the street. Unfettered and seemingly undeterred, he rode half on the street, half on the sidewalk for forty feet or so before crashing down onto Northern Avenue proper once more. Damn good thing no one was waiting for the bus.

   When Liza and her boyfriend Sylverio arrived we told them about the cerrado sign and then I coaxed them into an authentic alternative at the other end of the strip mall. I explained that I had noticed a Bosnian joint named Sarajevo when I pulled in. Perhaps we could discuss El Salvador while eating kebaps? They all agreed and we had a great meal amongst members of the Bosnian mafia, who chain-smoked cigarettes and roared loudly in Slavic symmetry. It was actually a lot of fun. Liza said she’d call some contacts and let me know…

   As dawn lightened the skies and the coastline of El Salvador came into a fuzzy sort of surreal focus, I silently wished the ride would last awhile longer. It was 5:45 a.m. and I was groggy. I was glad to be arriving early, but groggy nonetheless. As we rolled slowly along the tarmac I witnessed my first taste of El Salvador. Who needs conveyor belts and such when you can hire twelve guys to pass the luggage from man to man and hand to hand onto a cart? Like fireman of old. I pondered whether or not it was some sort of technological foreshadowing?

   I figured I would just take my time and figure things out as I went along. Liza had given me addresses and phone numbers, but to be truthful, I didn’t know what to expect, or that I would actually call anyone. I never claimed to be very sociable. I thought maybe I would just go with the flow and see where the journey took me. Catch a cab and head straight to the parque central. Always a good place to start any journey…I flew through customs without any problems. I can’t imagine what I might want to smuggle in anyhow? Certainly not firearms, as they were widely available. As I traipsed through the glass exit doors and began to make my way past the noisy throng assembled behind nylon ropes, I noticed a large yellow sign bearing my name. I laughed like hell…It was the last thing I expected to see.

   Behind the big yellow sign stood a big woman with an even bigger smile. Liza’s sister Raquel and her husband Jose had taken a cab from their home and had been awaiting my arrival. It was a stroke of luck, a karmic moment. Neither the cabbie nor Raquel or Jose spoke any English. And my Spanish is lacking at best. But we managed just fine. All those games of Guestures must have really paid off for me. We pulled off at a row of corrugated shanties which serve as eateries along the highway for some pupusas, the national treat of El Salvador. Pupusas are devoured at any hour…6 a.m. (as we were doing) or noon, or 6 p.m., or midnight. I observed the national custom myself by partaking at every possible hour............