El Salvador 2009- La Palma

On the Thanksgiving holiday, I went to El Salvador with Lindsey and Brian Young, and their kids, Emma and Liam. Our first stop was La Palma, just over the border from Honduras.

La Palma was a lovely little town. Once we got settled in our hotel, we went out to check out the town. All over the town are murals and paintings. On all the buildings, in the park, on lamp posts, walls, everywhere. Fernando Llort, who is probably Central America’s most famous and influential artist, lived here. He invented a particularly colorful style of folk art, and then opened a workshop to teach the people how to do it. Today everything in town is in his honor, even though he now lives in San Salvador. We walked around looking at the wall art, and went to an artisan market, which had all kinds of neat things for sale. We also went through the Central Park. The park had mosaics on its benches and areas of the ground, and it had other artwork throughout. The mosaic benches really reminded me of Park Guell in Barcelona, designed by Antonio Gaudi. It was a great little park. We went to the Fernando Llort museum, which had one room and about 6 pieces of art, but had lots of information about him and what he did.

That afternoon, wandering around, we happened upon a parade. It was a parade for children, really. There was a great little band marching at the front. There was a mime, people walking on stilts, jugglers, and people in costumes. There was a kids’ band, made up of kids with toy instruments. At the very end was an ambulance. It was great to sit and watch a parade go by! It turns out that weekend they were celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Children’s Declaration of Rights.

When it was dinner time, we went back to the Hotel La Palma, where we weren’t staying, and checked out their menu, but decided it was a little expensive and didn’t have anything the kids would like to eat. There was a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from our hotel, so we went there. It was amazing! They served us enormous burritos and quesadillas, that were cheap and so delicious. We talked about that restaurant for the rest of our trip.

The next day, Friday, we found a café for breakfast, and visited the church, which was the first place that guerrillas and the government met for peace talks during the civil war. It was a quite modern church, but very pretty. We visited the tourist office, where friendliest man in El Salvador gave us bus information and called hotels for us. Then we went back to the art market to look around some more. We had lunch at our favorite hole-in-the-wall, and then got on a bus for Las Aguilares, where we were going to change buses and head to Suchitoto.