Friday 5th September
My journey into San Salvador was wet, very wet! Rivers spilt out across the road and the traffic crawled along throwing up spray making it impossible to ride with my visor down. The forty minute journey took over an hour, made worse by a tree that had been uprooted in the winds and lay across one of the lanes. I was 15mins late getting into the centre of the city and sort of finding the place where I had arranged to meet Gaby.
Gaby was in her early twenites, a passionate, intelligent, socially minded musician, born and raised in the notoriously dangerous capital city. It was purely by chance that I had the opportunity to meet her.
Two months before leaving the UK I had been to Specsavers to get myself some contact lenses for my trip, on my first appointment I was put in the care of a pretty young lady of latin descent. Adriana, checked my eyes and entered my details onto the system, I asked where she was from and she replied El Salvador, funny coincidence I said, I'm going there in a few months. Just then a geeky English guy comes to the door and takes me into another room for more tests. A month went by and I was in and out of Speckies four or five times trying to get the right type of eye goggles, it wasn't until the last visit when I asked one of the desk staff if Adriana was working, she was and we had a quick five minute chat where she very kindly offered to give me a guide book, her sister and friends contact details and set me up with a guy she knew who did Volcano tours. Over the next month we met a couple of times and I took her for an orange juice and she inundated me with info and places to go whilst telling me I was crazy. I love it when you meet super friendly strangers, thanks Adri!
So anyway when I got to El Salvador I sent Adri a message on whattsapp and she said to give her friend Gaby a call. I did just that and Gaby invited me up to stay her house and take me out to see some live music.
So when I was running late I stopped and called Gaby to let her know, then when I thought I had arrived I called again to find I was in the wrong place and couldn't find the museum. The next hour we spent looking for each other in completely different parts of the city until we finally settled on me staying put at Wendy's while she came to get me. 15mins passed, it was still raining and now the sun had gone down and I was getting anxious. Everyone says don't ride at night, don't go into the city alone and that San Salvador with it's infamous gangs is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Bonzer!
I ring Gaby again and we ask the same question, "where are you? I'm at Wendy's"... We were at different stores! Another 20mins later Gaby is dropped off in the car park and a massive sense of relief washed over me. The fun wasn't quite over... we had to wait for her boyfriend to come collect her and then I had to ride the bike another 20mins across the city in the dark and rain back to her house... having arranged to meet at 5pm we didn't get to Gaby's till 8:30pm. She is a saint for being so patient.
Gaby had a band meeting at her house at 9pm, I met all the gang and listened in trying to understand the heated debate about raising funds for their album release. Gaby ordered Papusas and we feasted, and searched for one of the kittens which had crawled up under the skin of the sofa and was stuck! At 10:30pm we jumped in Gaby's friends car and he drove us to Santa Tecla, a small suburb to the West of the main city. In the quiet streets we pulled up in front of a totally non descript bar called Yemao. Walking in everyone said hello as we passed straight through the bar and round a corner into a second arty looking bar/venue room and out to the backyard where there was a classy bar, table service, a very cool jazz band playing and obviously a massive half pipe!
The place was fairly quiet because of the weather but the atmosphere was friendly and the music, a modern jazz group called La Bruja (I think), were going for it and were damn good. Gaby and her band mate knew the guys from the band who came over and had a good chat at the interval, I wish I spoke better Spanish but instead smiled and nodded.
A group of guys where clearly hitting the Peruvian marching powder pretty hard and were getting quite lively in the corner, one of their crew came and joined us, he happened to have been to college in the states and spoke very good English. He also turned out to be the son of a very wealthy Salvadorean family and at the end of the night he insisted we went back to his place to scope it out for a venue for the band. Complete with a huge 8ft fountain inside and other very ornate statues the pad was plush and had a balcony the size of a tennis court with an incredible view overlooking the city lights. Much drunken chat went down and as far as I could tell absolutely nothing was agreed but it was amusing. At 3am Gaby's friend drove us back to her's and we crashed.
Gaby had to get on the road at 6am that morning to go to Guatemala city for a friends birthday. She let me sleep in and I handed the key to the security guard at the gates to the community where she lived. I cannot thank her enough, it was amazingly generous to put me up and to add to her already hectic schedule and to randomly select such a perfect place to take me out. Thanks Gaby and Adri, I would never have seen that side of El Salvador without your generosity.
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