El Cuco

2 July

We left San Miguel after a night in the Mall Centro parking lot.  We drove 30 miles to the coast to El Cuco, which took about an hour.  El Cuco’s claim to El Salvador fame is that it is the longest, flattest beach in the country, about 12 miles long.  The sand is fine volcanic sand.  After swimming in the ocean I had sand more places than I thought possible and no shower to get rid of it.  We’re dry camping at an old hotel.  This is the view outside the compound wall.  It appears that walls make good neighbors, sort of like fences.  Although the hotel’s wall is just made up of cinder block, which is a common building material, it lacks the extra fortification of razor wire on top, which means that there really isn’t anything important inside.  

This picture was taken once we passed the row of  metal houses(?), with my back to the Pacific, showing the rental beach shelters that were attacked to the metal shacks.  It's hard to compare lifestyles, because I was told that they people are happy living this way.

In Central America, you can rent hotel rooms in four hour blocks.  So, if you only need to take a nap, then a four hour room will do you just fine in an auto hotel.  It is very odd seeing these establishments along the carratera (highway). 

We’ll be here tomorrow as well.  Hopefully the water guy will show up as advertised for today.  Dry camping means there is no hook up of any kind.  Therefore, getting water delivered is something near and dear to me.  Also, I haven’t mentioned how we are dumping our waste.  There’s this thing called “jungle dumping”.  Environmentally so unfriendly, but all our waste is biodegradable and not left near any water source.  So I keep telling myself it’s no worse than cows pooping in a field.   It’s so hard being green.  I have seizures putting aluminum cans, glass, and plastic bottles in the garbage.  In some of the towns we have seen recyclers going though the trash bins in search of aluminum cans, but they also make a mess out of properly bagged garbage.  Such is life in Central America.

Today we met Emerson.  He’s 10 going on 11, which he proudly told us.  Emerson is small when we think of the size of a 10 year old.  He didn’t like school, so his family doesn’t make him go.  He’s an errand boy for the older women in his family:  mother, grandmother, and aunts.  His grandmother sells coconuts on the beach.  She takes her trusty machete and whacks a flat bottom of the coconut, hull and all.  Then she turns it around and whacks the top off.  When she’s done, she uses the tip of her machete to poke a hole in the top for your straw to drink the coconut water.  Once you’ve consumed the coconut water, she’ll quarter the coconut and scoop out the meat and put it in a plastic bag, which she blows into to open up.  I skipped the coconut meat, because she told me if I wanted juice then the meat would be green tasting.  Emerson made a couple of trips bringing more coconuts for her to sell.

At 4 pm, Roger and I were walking the beach and noticed lots of fishing boats headed out.  I asked one guy why everybody was leaving and he said to night fish.  None of the boats had running lights, so hopefully by night fishing he meant they will be back before night fall.

I’ll try to get a picture of Emerson tomorrow, since we’re staying another day in El Cuco, El Salvador.