A travelogue entry

Two Canadians sailed into port in Bahia del Sol, El Salvador. They describe their impressions of the country in an article published in the Halifax Chronicle Herald:

The Bahia del Sol, in El Salvador, is not really a bay, but an estuary called the Estero Jaltepeque, a place where the tide meets strong river currents.

On one side, a narrow spit of mainland lies between sea and estuary. Broad enough to hold hotels, restaurants and walled, gated luxury homes, this spit of land is bisected by a highway that leads to several small and quite impoverished settlements, and then the turn off to San Salvador.

Pigs, bulls, cows, roosters and dogs wander the road, eating whatever they can find -- fallen mangoes, cashew fruits, half-rotten cabbages, dry brush.

In the mornings, the road is jammed with human traffic as well: coconut vendors, cycling bread sellers with large round baskets filled with pan strapped to their handlebars, long lines of neatly dressed workers waiting for noisy smoke-belching buses to take them to the factories , women balancing tubs of tamales wrapped in towels on their heads, as well as taxis, bullet-proof late-model SUVs with tinted windows, and pickup trucks, beds crammed with men carrying machetes, heading to work cutting palm fronds. (more)