El Salvador, Cerro El Pital and the Kindness of Strangers

Wednesday February 10, afternoon. The border crossing into El Salvador was very low key and pleasant, but time consuming. About two hours and a dozen pages of photocopies of all our

documents. The aduana agreed to give us a 24 hour transit permit with no entrance fee for the car, but we were warned three times that if we overstayed our permit there would be a large fine--$1500 one official said.

The pavement in El Salvador was better than Guatemala but the signage was worse: no signage at all. At every road junction if there was any doubt which way to go, we had to ask. As in Guatemala, there was garbage everywhere along the roadside.

We made it to Santa Ana before dark, stopped at a Puma gas station and went in to the comedor to ask for a road map, directions, and suggestions where to park overnight. We were told that there is no road map and the clerk had no idea about parking. But a patron eating at the table overheard us and offered, in English, to let us camp in his driveway. Anibal and his wife Patti are Mormon and know several Norte Americanos through their church. He had to return to work, but came back to fetch us at 8:15pm to show us the way. While we were talking and showing him the van, another guy, Freddy, came up and was dying to speak English with us. He had lived in Los Angeles for six years and showed us his California ID to prove it. He also served in the US Marine Corps. After a gracefully long conversation with Fred, we excused ourselves and followed Anibal to his house, where we visited with his wife and watched TV. He drew us an elaborate map, across four pages taped together,

Anibal's map

to show us how to get to the north bound highway in the morning.

Thursday February 11. Left before 6. Had no trouble following Anibal’s map to the highway. And we had no trouble staying on course for the four-hour drive despite zero signage until we were within 40km of the tourist town La Palma. That is the turnoff for the steep road up Cerro El Pital, El

This is as close as we got to the summit of Cerro El Pital

Salvador’s highest point. We thought the roads in Guatemala were steep and curvy, but this one takes the cake: the steep hairpin turns were like nothing we’ve ever seen before! 13.5km to the top. But our car started making a horrible racket and vibration at about 9km, so we stopped at a mirador. It wouldn’t turn off, though Mike was able to kill it. He looked under the hood but didn’t see anything obvious. After about 20 minutes a truck with four locals stopped to help us. One guy must have been a mechanic because he went right to work, seemed to know what he was doing, and soon diagnosed the problem: the secondary fan for cooling the engine had broken and the asymmetric rotation caused vibration and noise. To make it drivable he cut the circuit so it didn’t turn at all. We thanked them profusely and offered them our half bottle of Irish whiskey, which they accepted enthusiastically. We skipped the summit and proceeded down to the border and the next city on the Honduras side. (Remember the big multa if we didn’t cross by 5:17pm?)

Exiting El Salvador was easy, but the Honduran side had a line at immigration, and at customs, and at the bank. We had to go to the bank to pay the entry fee for the car. The bank was closed for lunch and late opening. Then they wouldn’t take a credit card so we had to get cash out of our secret compartment. Then they wouldn’t take US dollars so we had to go to one of the money changers. Each time we went to the bank we waited, and each prior customer seemed to have some major banking difficulty that took a long time. Two hours and forty minutes later we were on our way down the road to Santa Rosa de Copan.

We stopped at the first auto parts store looking for a replacement fan. A fellow customer overheard us and in perfect American English proceeded to help us. Rafael lived in Talahassee, FL, for 16 years,

Raphael and Andrea

and his mother lives there yet. His daughter was born in the US but his son was not. His wife died suddenly post-surgery from a medical malpractice complication, so he is raising his kids alone, in the town he is from; his father, a retired lawyer, lives nearby. Rafael has a degree in agricultural engineering and also certification as an auto mechanic: it is easier to get work as a mechanic. His son Rafael III (“Tercero”) studies at a bilingual school. His daughter Andrea is just two and a half. 

The mechanics at the shop spent two hours removing our broken fan, looking to see if they had a part that would fit—which they didn’t—then modifying our broken one so that it was balanced and did not vibrate badly. They charged us US$20. Rafael stood by the whole time. We offered to take him and his kids out to dinner. We all went to his mother’s favorite steak house. He offered us a bed at his house for the night.