We arrived in El Salvador roughly four days after leaving Mexico, skipping Guatemala due to ridiculous port fees, reportedly made-up on the spot by the officials when you arrive.
Arriving into the Gulf of Fonseca, we dropped the anchor behind the point at a beach named Playa El Tamarindo. Google Maps had indicated there was a gas station there.
I went ashore with my folding cart and two empty jerry cans for diesel. A local, an old man, was walking down the beach for his exercise, and seeing me, walked over, introduced himself as Jose Elario. I said the map showed a gas station and he said he’d show me where it was. We walked through a neighborhood, mostly built from scraps of tin sheeting and tree limbs, some with cinder blocks, people stopping what they were doing to stare at me as if I’d just landed from another planet. Most had various farm animals in their yard, from chickens to lanky cows.
The old man led me through a maze of sand alleys strewn with plastic trash, wood smoke hanging in the air. Women cooking, kids playing or lazily swaying in hammocks, a couple men banging on an outboard engine.
We came out onto a roughly paved street, right at a gas station.
Someone next door saw my jerry cans and said the station was closed “until later”, and that it was cash only. The currency is the US dollar, and I had exactly $1. No bueno.
The old man said that they used to see more sailboats, but it was before the war. El Salvador had a bloody civil war in the 1980s, with the US backing the wealthy elite, and the Cubans and Russians backing the rebels. I asked if it was now peaceful, and he said, “oh yes, very peaceful. Safe, very safe now.”
We left the anchorage and motored a few hours further into the Gulf to drop anchor in from of La Unión.
The Bay of La Unión is very shallow and the tide ranges up and down 10 feet, so we had to drop anchor fairly far from the municipal pier.
We saw another sailboat nearby that looked like a derelict at first, but met a single-hander who’d come down from Alaska and was at the end of his 180-day visa in El Salvador, though he’d spent the majority of his time in another bay we’d passed up.
Once we’d settled in, we flew the drone to get a look at the shore, figuring out where to land a dinghy. Since sailboat cruisers rarely stop here, the information we found was sparse and outdated. We knew that the tidal range left huge mud-flats in front of the town, and didn’t want to find ourselves stuck.
In the photo above, those boats are sitting on mud when the tide goes out.
We walked to the town square, going wherever our feet led us. I made the mistake of wearing a Mazatlán T-shirt, and vendors were aggressive, but friendly, in telling me I had to buy an El Salvador T-shirt. I eventually did. Vendors were in a block-sized market, as well as along all the streets. The streets were not blocked off, so cars would just slowly plow their way through.
In search of fresh fruit and veggies, we found this little bird, a pet of the vendor, sitting on a pile of bananas.
When we finally checked in with Immigration and the Port Officials, we were treated like rockstars. As we were having our paperwork filled out, the Immigration official said he needed our picture. I said something akin to, “whatever you need to do” and he said, “no, this is for me!” He handed his camera to another official and came alongside us to pose. He was simply dumbfounded that we’d sailed here. He knew sailors sometimes go to Bahía del Sol, but couldn’t remember seeing a visiting sailboat.
On the previous afternoon, a fisherman with a little boy came near us, turned off his engine, and was smiling, pointing us out to his son. I hollered out to him, asking him where we could land the dinghy. He was surprised I spoke Spanish (not well, but passable), and I encouraged him to come closer. The little boy was very curious but shy.
I had him tie up alongside us and put fenders out between our boats. Luís, the old fisherman, was all smiles, proud to tell us how safe his country has recently become. The president, a self-proclaimed “friendly dictator” has incarcerated 60,000 criminals or suspected criminals, without trials as far as we know, but suddenly the country is safe again for everyone. Luís said that up to a few years ago, everybody was afraid to go out at night, people kept their kids indoors, and left the house only as needed. Now, it’s safer than ever, and everyone is breathing freely.
He asked if he could bring his wife out the next day, and we agreed. He returned with his wife and four children, along with a gift of fish, shrimp, and crabs. They were delighted to see that our sailboat is actually a miniature little house, with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc. The men all commented on how stable our boat was.
At the same time, another couple young fishermen we’d met, Roberto (18) and Enrique (12) came by in their boat, too, so we had a lot of company. We fed the kids snacks, handed out water, and enjoyed the visit. We’ve never had so many people aboard.
After a few nights anchored there, we sailed to Isla Meanguera, an island in the Gulf of Fonseca with a small town, Meanguera del Golfo. The winds required us to anchor away from the town, in a small bay on the other side of some rugged hills.
There, we had protection from wind-waves, but a saddle in the terrain funneled the wind right at us. Still, we were comfortable.
We dinghied to shore to walk the beach. If I thought Mexicans were litterbugs, the Salvadorans take littering to new levels. The beaches are covered in discarded plastic, which we also saw floating, anywhere we looked, each time we transited the Gulf.
From this anchorage, we found a rugged hike across the steep terrain that took us into the colorful village, which you’ll see on our YouTube channel soon.
Strange story that wasn’t caught on camera: as we walked the single road into town, I saw a building labeled Cultural Center. Poking my head in, I saw a spacious empty room, and a man beckoning us in. He showed us a glass display case with a handful of pre-Columbian pottery artifacts from the island’s indigenous people, said they were over 500 years old.
As we were leaving, two women dressed in scrubs were waiting for us, who’d been listening at a polite distance. One of them asked if I spoke English, then if I was American. Yes and….yes. You never know, sometimes it’s safer to say you’re Canadian.
She said they were nurses, and that there was an American they needed help with. They led me across the street to the island’s medical building where she led us to an examination room. A doctor there introduced himself, and seated on the exam bed was the American.
The American was male, mid-30s, reeked of booze and sweat, was covered in scabs and sores, and sunburned brown. I said I’d been brought in to translate. The American said he’d been robbed some time ago, elsewhere in El Salvador, and left with nothing but what he was wearing. He looked like any homeless addict you’d see in the US, kept calling me “brother”, and gathered he’d come to El Salvador to surf and party. The party never stopped, even as he found himself living on the streets with severe alcoholism and penniless. He said he was sleeping in front of the bar and the island’s town drunks were scrounging food for him, keeping him company.
The doctor said that the patient had been beaten up, but not on this island, and as he was about to lift the American’s shirt, Shawn left the exam room. The scene was ugly and she smartly decided she didn’t want to see more.
The American grimaced as his deeply bruised chest was exposed. I looked at the doctor and asked, “broken ribs?”. The doctor said, “I think so, but he needs radiographs (x-rays), and he needs to go to La Union to get them, this is just a clinic.”
I translated into English, though I could tell the American was following along the conversation.
The American said he’d been drinking heavily because of the pain in his ribs, and he named a drug he wanted so that he could avoid seizures from alcohol withdrawal.
The doctor’s eyebrows shot up at the name of the drug (which I’ve since forgotten), then interrupted, saying to me, “he’s asking for an antipsychotic drug! I don’t have that, nor could I give him that! Only a psychiatrist can prescribe that, and they usually don’t because it can be abused.”
I translate again, asked why he wanted that specific drug. The American said, “but that’s what works, brother.”
The doctor brought out a syringe with a long needle, explaining that the American’s sores were infected and he was going to treat them. With the side of the long needle, the doctor opened scabs on the American’s face, causing him great pain.
After a couple scabs were opened, the American asked the doctor to stop, it hurt too much. He looked at me and said, “he’s not going to give me anything for the pain?” I said it was unlikely.
“Brother, I just need five dollars to get off this island. I was dumped here by some German dudes and have no way back to the mainland.”
I translated for the doctor, whose eyebrows shot up again. He put the syringe down, took off his latex gloves, and asked me to come with him. He led me into a different room and said, “don’t give him money. He is just going to use it to get drunk. He needs to get off this island. Can you take him off this island?”
I explained that my wife and I arrived on our small sailboat, anchored a couple kilometers away on the other side of the mountains, that we’d only hiked-in to see their pretty town, and that I had no room for passengers.
He sighed, thanked me for translating, and wished me a good day.
The next day we sailed back to the city and got our exit paperwork (called a “zarpe”, from the word “zarpar”, to leave port) to leave the country.
Roberto and Enrique saw us at anchor later and came by to hang out, along with their older cousin Daniel, and someone’s little brother, Omar. Omar and Enrique crawled all over our boat, playing captain at the helm, and then goofing around in our dinghy.
Shawn kept an eye on the boys while I talked to Roberto and Daniel. I explained the we were leaving the country and continuing on towards Costa Rica. They had lots of questions about our lifestyle, commenting how they could barely imagine a life like that, or being able to do it. An hour later, they excused themselves, wishing us safe travels and waving as they motored away.
We were getting ready to leave the country in the morning and later made one more expedition to shore at dusk, just to stretch our legs and see a “family park”. On the way, a lancha sped right at us and I started changing course. Suddenly it slowed down, the bow dropped down so we could see that it was Luís and his wife, grinning and waving at us. I said we were leaving for Costa Rica in the morning. They wished us a safe trip, and kept smiling as they motored away.
We’ll fondly remember the people we met in El Salvador, grateful for their hospitality and abundant friendliness.