What does "authentic" mean? And pupusas!

I was still in love with El Cielito Lindo, but on my last day in Ataco I had to obey the part of my Traveler’s Creed that demands to try as many new things and places as possible, so when I found another pupuseria tucked into the porch/courtyard of a house on the other edge of town, I waited until their single table was free, then went in.

A typical pupuseria I went to in San
Salvador. The yellow bowl is curtido.

This place was a contrast to El Cielito. Instead of the solid wood furniture topped with a local burlap sack, they had the sort of one-piece plastic table-and-bench with a chipped yellow plastic top that you’d find in the bargain taqueria/burger/Chinese/kebab/noodle shop across from the bus station.

There was no menu, the large woman with the spatula just asked if I wanted cheese or pork, and the beverage options were coke or beer. She turned to the table opposite the grill, lifted a fly-speckled towel, and continued hacking apart a chicken for her family’s almuerzo. When she finished the bird, she reached down with shiny fingers and grabbed my coke.

An old dog slept under the grill, a toddler wandered around without pants on, and an older man was spreading grout with a trowel for the heavy paving stones stacked next to my table.

This place wouldn’t make it into the guidebooks.

But the people who’d been at the table before me were pure Salvadoreños, two men on their way home who leaned their well-worn machetes against the wall while they ate. Cielito had enough tables to accommodate an entire busload of visitors, while this place had one table next to the grill.

It was scrupulously clean (other than the salmonella) and without any detail or decoration that might smack of deliberate “Salvadoranness”. Suddenly the burlap tablecloths in El Cielito looked a tad contrived. Still local, still recycled/repurposed, and still aesthetically pleasing, but contrived.

“Authentic” is a problematic word. We all go looking for it, but what does it mean? The horchata I had at Cielito is a traditional drink of this area, specific to the region, and beloved of the populace...who normally drink coke.

So which drink is more “authentic”?

Hint: if the menu has "typical Salvadoran food" on it,
for $11 (when the table-groaning load of food in the
first pic was about $2.50) it's probably not authentic

Cielito’s ample menu of options was impressive, and spanned a variety of ingredients that are absolutely used every day by Salvadoran people...but most places offer the Big Three, only. Which is more authentic?

The good thing, the bad thing, the entertaining and eternally interesting thing, is that it’s up to every individual to decide, every individual time they do any individual act. One day, Cielito’s wide breadth of native ingredients might sing true, while the next, only a familiar three-option pupuseria will do.

Where would you like to eat tonight?

A beautiful little heaven. And pupusas!

A Beautiful Little Heaven… What could be better? How about when it has delicious food and drinks.

I spend a disturbingly large portion of my time abroad searching for my next meal. Maybe it’s a consequence of growing up in the bizarre food surplus of the Bay Area (quote from last night: “What, they’re closed? But it’s not even 10:30 yet, and I want gelato! Fine, let’s go to the 24-hour artisanal doughnut shop around the corner.”) or one too many dinners of squished granola bar dug out of the bottom of my bag, but when I find a good place to eat in a foreign town, it tends to anchor my mental map of the place.

So as far as I was concerned, El Cielito Lindo was the hub of Ataco, a small town of whitewash and vivid murals where women carried trays of fresh bread on their heads, in the highlands of El Salvador.

As in much of Latin America, much of the world really, lunch is the main meal in El Salvador, while breakfast and dinner are simpler and smaller. I know that’s healthier, and I know I need to adapt to the culture of the location, but...my day just doesn’t feel complete without a warm dinner. So when I walked the absurdly clean stone streets of Ataco and found the colorful pupuseria, I had to try it, even though it was a little late in the day, the sky already given over to violet and the last bars of birdsong.

The national food of El Salvador, pupusas are kind of a cornmeal pancake/tortilla filled with a variety of ingredients, the most common of which are cheese, refried beans, and shredded pork. They are similar to Colombia’s arepas, except while those use ordinary corn dough (and don’t always have filling), pupusas use nixtamal, which is cornmeal treated with an alkaline solution that helps peel the grains, accessing additional nutrients.

Not impressed yet? That process has been going on in this area for thousands of years. In Joya de Cerén, a village of the Pipil people that was buried by volcanic ash 2,000 years ago, they found the implements for making pupusas. Pompei didn’t have pupusas. I’m just saying.

No, it's not normal to have that many options.

I sat at a solid wood table covered with the burlap sack of a local coffee grower and looked up at Cielito’s menu. Cheese, beans, and pork may be the normal fillings, but Cielito doesn’t stop there. They had every permutation of the three classics, plus jalapeño, prawn, and three things I’d never heard of.

I ordered one each of the unknowns, plus an horchata.

I’ve been drinking horchata for over twenty years, and love the sweet flavor of vanilla and cinnamon, but that was not what arrived in a tall glass. Every horchata I’d ever seen was white, unsurprising since it was made from rice. But this? This was brown. And the flavor…

I am not good at identifying ingredients, comically bad in fact, but something in this drink’s ancestry made sweet love with brown sugar. There was none of the starchy smoothness of rice, instead a deeper, nuttier flavor, with a subtle current of something almost...fruity?

But just like (what I now think of as) “Mexican” horchata, this Salvadoran stuff hit the tongue with so much sweetness you thought you wouldn’t want more. But then a second later...gimme more!

Then the pupusas arrived. The matron of the place, Mauda, left her telenovela to bring me a plate of steaming nixtamal pupusas with queso de loroco, ayote, and papelío. I tried to wait until they wouldn’t burn my fingers, but couldn’t hold back.

Loroco is an edible flower, and the cheese made with it had a much stronger flavor than most of the savory white cheeses of Latin America. Kinda like a gamey feta? It made for an interesting change of pace.

Ayote is a type of squash similar to a pumpkin, and they use the whole plant: flowers, stems, and shoots in addition to the fruit. It was a fairly subtle flavor, which I prefered to the loroco.

My hands were full of food, not camera
 but this dude I met in Guatemala
could have been his brother.

Papelío. I had no idea what this was, and l’internet now informs me that it’s a type of butterfly. Odds I ate butterfly? Not good, I’m guessing it’s a more poetic naming, but I have no idea what it was. But it was, unsurprisingly, delicious.

The pupusas were, of course, served with curtido, the customary tangy cabbage slaw made with vinegar and chili peppers, that is lightly fermented. Pupusas steaming on the plate, horchata in hand, I was smiling when the youngster walked by, saw me, and stopped mid-sentence to stare at me, somehow shyly.

I wasn’t the first tourist he’d seen, not by a longshot, but there are still not so many of us there as to be boring, and he giggled when I made a face at him and winked.

Delicious pupusas burning my fingers, new drink cooling my tongue, telenovelas and animated conversations bouncing around my ears, beautiful Salvadoran town to explore, and now this little dude’s laughter to top it all off?

This is why I love travel.

The angel's a jerk, the dog is proud, and the plane landed backwards. Time to fly.

I'm no stranger to the jet-lagged delirium of a trans-oceanic red-eye flight.

I dropped a class in college because the professor's preposterously long, slow, erudite sentences were verbal valium.

And I've seen The Talented Mr. Ripley.

But I have never been quite so asleep on my feet as I was in Apaneca. Three consecutive nights of inadequate sleep, bracketing a day of endlessly pacing the pavement of voting centers, had left me rather tired. Add to that the sultry Salvadoran heat. And to that an almuerzo lunch special of chicken, rice, and thick french fries, carbohydrates with a side of starch, and my eyelids weighed 17 kilograms each.

(For my American brethren, 17 kg = entertaining hyperbole for an eyelid.)

But I had an appointment at 3:00 PM (I'll skip the 24-hour clock, in case y'all Americans are still touchy after the kilogram incident) with the zip-line people. My bleary eyes took a minute to focus on my cheap watch. 1:43.

These murals are getting weirder. They know...

I walked another block. Saw the same mural I'd seen the last time. The dog that barked at me before had given up on life and gone to sleep. My feet felt soaked in cement. Was I accidentally wearing two pairs of shoes? Looking down would be too much work. So sleeeepy .

Shuffled past the bus stop, where a past mayor claimed credit by plastering his name on the shelter. A few years of rough weather later, and it's not really something one would want to be associated with. This rusty piece of junk was brought to you by the administration of...

Silly politicians, no vision in those people. I looked at the watch again. 1:44.

The church! Churches are interesting. The entrance was locked, but I'd seen the other door open. Back around the block. Past the same mural, still weird, same dog, still sleeping. Inside the church:

nothing.

Renovation. 

One statue. An angel stomping on a grumpy devil's head. Made the angel look like kind of a dick.

Maybe...just...lie down...here.

No! I walked some more, searching for something to find. Said “buenas” at varying volumes when I passed people. I wonder if they think I'm drunk? Looked at the watch. 1:44. Is that possible?

To the market across the street, where three old women with bulging bellies and sagging cheeks didn't bother to chase the flies off the sticky table any more, but greeted me with smiles as I sat at a trestle table littered with mostly eaten pupusas.

Un cafecito, por favor. Coffee would keep me awake.

She placed the styrofoam cup in front of me. Who the hell invented that stuff? Their descendants should be punished. One of my earliest memories is of the horrible texture of those white bricks, rasping out of a cardboard box on the playground at my pre-school. Baby's first goosebumps.

The table where I drank my cafecito

I've been at this table forever. A scrappy little dog gets up and barks at three schoolboys walking past. I can barely lift my head to watch. It comes over afterwards and stares at me, tail wagging with pride. Too fast for my eyes to follow. Go fetch me a nap, Fido. Pick a fight with me and I'll kick your butt. Maybe. 

I try to write something down and eventually realize that I've made a scribble, and the last thing I remember was riding backwards in a plane that was landing on a highway somewhere in China, and wondering if that was normal behavior. 

Coffee: ineffective.

I pay my quarter for the coffee and concentrate on lifting my feet high enough for locomotion. Head towards the zip-line office.

Two experiental hours later, two clock minutes, and I verify that they are still closed. Wander to the intersection, out of sheer inertia. Oh. 

To my right I see something interesting. The entire town. All the people. Walking towards me in a wide front. Zombie movie? Como se dice Soylent Green?

 A hearse. It's a funeral. With the entire town in attendance. I stand to the side, trying to look respectful. No sleeping at the funeral. Three men see me, detach from the procession, and approach. Uh oh.

“Are you ready?” They ask me. I don't know. Have I made peace with myself? With my gods? Can I send a couple goodbye emails before you cook me?

Then I notice their shirts. Apaneca Canopy Tour. These are my zip-liners. 

“Si” I answer, looking forward to cable-assisted flight. My eyelids weigh only 14 kg now. With luck, I won't fall asleep while zipping...

(Read more about zip-lining with Apaneca Canopy Tour on my last El Salvador dispatch on the Ethical Traveler website here. And "like" it on facebook, just because you're nice.)

I don't believe you, but I love you anyway

They tell me this is one planet. All the same one. But I'm not sure I believe them.

Because I remember walking down a backstreet in San Salvador, where children stopped their futbol game (played with a clump of garbage) to watch me pass, grandmothers winked at me, everyone said hello, and laundry hung to dry on rusting barbed wire.

There was exhaust, and constant noise, and a large plate of food cost about $3. It was warm to hot, and I needed no vocabulary beyond T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. Violence was a very real possibility and twenty-dollar bills were too large to use most places, tens were pushing it.

But today I rode around in a car, since you can't really walk around Iceland at present, and the sky opened up with an array of things that were all irrefutably snow. People are all friendly, but there is a distance between strangers that even I can feel, I who seemed aloof to the Salvadoran sensibility of space. The cold has perhaps hardened cheeks into a habitual emotional reserve? Or something about long months of darkness, of light, or of the relentless need to work together?

The barbed wire here is clean, and serves only to remind the shaggy ponies that they shouldn't wander into the street. A small plate of food, elegantly arranged, three slices of lamb and some decorations around the perimeter was about $40.

$40? According to this site's data on minimum wages in El Salvador, that would be about a third of a month's salary for an agricultural worker. For a small meal. Ten long days' work, one tasty but unsatisfying plate.

They tell me this is one planet, but I'm not sure I believe them.

But I can tell Them, one planet of more, I love it all. I love the noise of San Salvador, and the silence of an Icelandic field at night. I love wandering a hill town past indigena women in colorful skirts, and bundling up with the armored layers against the cold. I love cheese and ham on toast, and pupusas.

I love the hearty belly laughs of latinos, and the hard-won smiles of pleased Nords. And I love, beyond love, the chance to come and see as much of it as I can.

And the craziest part? I'm saving the best Iceland photos
for later posts. This country is just...preposterous.

I love travel. I love this planet. Hell, I love you too.

Juan the Priest

My nearly-mother-in-law at the pupuseria

He made the pupusa girl smile. Her mother laughed, and I probably blushed. Their reactions were the most common, smiles and laughter, and I saw them again and again on face after face as he and I walked around San Salvador. Something in his easy manner put everyone at ease, whether he was talking about politics or making ribald insinuations with an impish grin.

Not your average priest.

As I mentioned in my Election Day dispatch on the Ethical Traveler site, here, my current Code says that I have to accept strange travel suggestions, and he was full of them, since he quickly grew bored with all the standing-around that our group was doing.

He handed me a hard green fruit with seeds like chips of concrete, nestled in a savory pulp that seemed somehow cactus-like. “These are from Israel, the Sinai” he told me. At the next stand he had the lady laughing even as she cracked the egg into the mostly-washed blender, and the doormen at the hotel greeted him like a favorite uncle.

I wish I had a picture of the señora,
but I didn't have his way of putting her
at east

Back home in Chicago, he presides over a church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, that is, the Virgin Mary. On one wander we passed another such church. The crowd was thick, people clustered around the altar, lighting candles and slipping coins into the donation box. I expected him to be pleased at the health of a sister congregation.

But as we walked past the church, he gestured down to an old woman, indigenous ancestry, who was begging for coins with an outstretched styrofoam cup, empty in her bone-thin hand. He gave her his change, then looked at me, a look of laughing incredulity on his face.

“They pray over there, but this, her, she is nuestra señora de Guadalupe, right here. They pray to a statue, but she's right here.”

Not your average priest. But a damn good one.

Joaquin Media Barba

The buses all had places to go, and gas to burn to get there. The expressionless faces of passengers (some things are universal) turned towards me through rattling window panes as I waited to cross one of San Salvador's many busy roads, looking for something to find.

A few blocks and a half dozen clusters of well-armed guards behind me, some of the people I'd met (and wrote about on the Ethical Traveler website) were meeting in an FMLN headquarters, but since I'm unaffiliated with the party, my presence was politely unwelcome. I've had people accuse me of being CIA before, and it's not a comfortable experience, so I went looking for something to find.

That makes sense to a traveler.

The stoplight went red, and the cadre of windshield washers went to work, on my side a leathery older man in a black apron, and a younger woman in a white shirt that stretched across her heavily pregnant belly. I wondered how much they earn per wash, and per day. I wondered what life awaits that child. I wondered at a world where some have luxury sedans, and some hope to clean their glass.

Both workers returned my “buenas tardes” with smiles, his wide and hers shy.

The sun was strong, but not abusive, and I was considering a mango-something jugo when I heard the clash of metal. Again, and a third time, rhythmic. Through the intersection, hazy with dust and exhaust, I could see a man in camouflage shorts and a black vest juggling before the stopped cars. His hands flicked behind him, the clash of metal, and the sun glinted off three machetes as they escaped and returned to his hands.

One should not distract a man who is juggling large knives, so I waited until he was between performances to talk to him. Joaquin Media-Barba (Half-beard) had an easy smile, though a weight never left his eyes. He started practicing with machetes a few months ago, and now spends several days a week moving between a few favorable intersections, no more than two hours at each.

We talked through the green and yellow, I watched another performance through a red, then we picked up where we'd left off for another green and yellow. The currents of conversation, the percussion of slapping steel, the implacability of a stoplight, the surges of traffic, the breathing of a city; everything was rhythm and cycles, and the sun watched it all with amused patience.

Twice through the cycle on a dry traffic island was enough for me. I went back to my wander, quickly lost in the sulky anger of bus engines and the expressive honks of Central American traffic, but for a couple blocks I would catch the clash of metal, flitting past me like birds in the canyons of street sound, as Joaquin went back to work.

Passion, danger, guns and roses in Soyapango

El Salvador uses the US dollar, and since going to the ATM is always a good opportunity for robbery (by thugs, or even worse: the banks) and/or excessive “I'm Jason Bourne” playtime, I decided to stock up on one, five, and ten dollar bills before heading down there.

The bank teller found this an odd request, but paused before giving in to irritation to ask why I wanted so many small bills. At my response, she had two immediate reactions: “I'm from there!” and “Be careful, it's dangerous! In particular, stay away from...” she listed several neighborhoods. Unconvinced by my polite nod, she flipped my receipt over and grabbed a pen. “These two are the worst, Ilopango and Soyapango, stay out of those.” She underlined the latter on the paper three times.

I remembered that interaction my first day in El Salvador, as we drove to: Soyapango.

Salvadoran law prohibits campaigning in the three days prior to voting, so this was the last day candidates could actively seek votes, and we were headed to the FMLN's closing rally, where the presidential candidate would make his final speech before the election.

I was a few yards behind him, and pictures of the back of someone's head are rarely interesting, so I pushed forward for a better spot. People were packed in like crayons crammed in the box by a toddler, but I gradually forced my way into the sea of red shirts, waving flags, and air horns blasting a steady percussion of support. I squeezed like toothpaste through the gap between the stage and the speakers, but that proximity threatened permanent hearing loss, so I kept going.

My skull finally stopped rattling when I got to the back of the VIP seats, in front of the barricades holding back the masses. I paced around back there for awhile, as the candidate delivered a long and varied monologue about...everything. It was distinct from a US speech. There were no concise talking points or crafted phrases, he was just up there, shouting and waving his arms, Latin American passion. A bit rambling.

The First Lady wasn't quite as enthusiastic as the crowd

The current First Lady sat behind him, looking more bored than any human I've ever seen. It made me respect the tireless performances of US First Ladies, who gaze in unfailing adoration as their heroic husbands deliver the same speech for the 628^th time. Granted, she's married to the current president, not the candidate, but did she really have to look at her watch that often?

Then he was done, and the lady with lungs like bagpipes was howling out the party's anthem. I wandered up onto the side of the stage for awhile until a self-important functionary objected to my presence and had the guards throw me out. Politely of course, since they had no idea if I'm important or not.

That was the best part.

Back at the entrance I found my host, who nearly fainted when she saw me. “There he is! Oh thank god! This is gangland central, you can't just walk around! You scared me to death!” Seeing the panic on her face, I felt bad, and could only offer a lame “Um...sorry.”

Reputation or not, I had felt safe at the rally, where everyone was focused on the stage in universal and monochromatic enthusiasm. It wasn't until we climbed back into the van, and our bodyguard drove off at his customary NASCAR speed that I felt unsafe. Maybe a desire to calm us informed his musical selections, because to me, Soyapango is a dangerous place of gangs, political rallies, and November Rain, Total Eclipse of the Heart, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, and Bon Jovi's Always.

Interesting places, imminent culture, and an inexplicable soundtrack.

I love traveling.

Why would you want to go there?

I told a Salvadoran friend of mine that I would be passing through his country, and asked what he thought I should do there. His response surprised me.

“You're going to El Salvador? Why do you want to go there? The capital in particular is horrible and dangerous. I guess you could go to the beach, and there are some old ruins...”

Why did I want to go to El Salvador? That's a fair question. For starters, it was one of the two countries on the continent that I hadn't visited yet, but I'd like to think I have loftier aims than a checklist to complete. (Though I won't deny there was a certain urge in that direction.)

But all those headlines over the years, when El Salvador was topping the charts for homicide rates, gangs were running the prisons, and narcotraffickers were blending into an international network of macro-criminals, those stories had made an impression. Basically: Don't go to El Salvador.

“It's too dangerous!” said They. The consensus of concerned advisers. And I was inclined to obey. After all, you don't see me booking flights to Afghanistan, either.

But there is something else too. They also told me it was too dangerous in Zambia, and I found nothing but wonderful people there. They said Northern Sri Lanka was still unsafe for tourists. “It hasn't been long enough since the Civil War, there are still Tamil Tigers and land mines up there!” But I found a welcome on the streets ofJaffna that gave me smiles and a sense of welcome that are still nestled within me, nearly a year later. And They said Eastern Turkey was a hotbed of extremists and revolutionaries, yet Diyarbakir, and even more so Mardin, quickly ranked among my favorite places on Earth.

Yes, a few months after I left Zambia, several people were murdered by a mob in the same town where we stayed. And yes, two days after I left Mardin, 5 kilometers from the border with Syria, a pair of car bombs killed at least 51 people and injured 140 others in a similar town not all that far away.

Those are awful things. The sort of headlines that push people away from a nation, and drive fear and incomprehension into the hearts and minds of foreigners. They make us say “Well, that's just the sort of thing that happens there. They're just...used to stuff like that over there.” The casual racism of distance.

They're just different over there,
nothing I could empathize with at all...

And what's the best cure for racism? Both overt and passive? Contact. It's a lot harder to feel dismissive of a people when you've actually stood, talked, and eaten with them. And that's a much better reason to go someplace than stamp-collecting in your passport.

Maybe I should book a ticket to Afghanistan after all...

(More info on El Salvador, probably far too much in fact, in the first of my posts on the Ethical Travelerwebsite.)