Chapter 2
The Volcano.
By noon we arrived in San Salvador, only to find out that the Mayan ruins were closed (only on Monday). Our guide made another suggestion that we go to the Volcano of San Salvador. The road to the volcano was in really bad condition skirted with squalid little shanties. We had to stop and ask for directions about three times in order to find the right 4-wheel--drive--necessary road to the top.
Top of the Volcano (It was kind of chilly.)
The volcano is a classic cartoon-type volcano with a very steep crater that we didn't climb into - since then we would have to climb back out. We were there long enough to take two pictures when a guy came up and told us that there were thieves on the way down that would try to steal things out of the car. So we started walking back to the car, then a guy with a shotgun (it seems like everyone has a shotgun in El Salvador) stopped us saying the same thing. He said that the thieves had an "arma larga", which means shotgun in Hillbilly Spanish.
So we over-tipped the kid that was watching our car, who then told us about the thieves. (And no, the irony wasn't lost on us -- nobody told us about the thieves when we asked for directions on the way up the mountain.)
Boqueron, the big mouth crater.
Our guide's name was Ernesto Vladimir something. "Ernesto," he told us, "for Ernesto 'Che' Guevara - do you know him?"
We both nodded.
"Vladimir," he continued, "for Vladimir Lenin."
That should have been our wake-up call.
(On a historical note -- the U.S.-backed-government and the government-backed death-squads fought against Marxist guerillas during El Salvador's recent Civil War.)
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