We ran away from our farm to go spend time on someone else's. Definition of paradoxical.
Quickly, I click with the manager, Ever. I'm on him like glue.
He gives us a tour of the plantation from above of the high altitude, shade grown coffee farm, but I want to see the operation up close. The property roughly measures 2000' x 2000', but so much is packed into this sliver of land.
He finally agrees to take me where my scooter cannot go. I use a stick and hop my way down the mountain, grabbing anything and anyone I can to balance myself, resorting to crawling on my knees when it's too steep. Worth it?
I'm smiling from ear to ear, even when I realize those 5 terraces we descended must be ascended! From talking to Ever, I learn that the main house, the cabana, the restaurant, everything here was built by his hands. And he runs all the farm operations, the tiny restaurant and cares for the occasional guests in the cabana.
He shoves all sorts of unknown tropical fruit at me and I scarf them down. I even eat the fruit of coffee plants. My life is complete now.
We get the rock star treatment. Doted on by Ever and the cook, Daysi.
Everything is open air, including the kitchen.
I sit on a mountain terrace, sipping coffee hand picked by Ever the week before. Pinch me.
The plantation owner is Brazilian and so themed is the little restaurant. Daysi serves us the most delicious meals.
Fried plantains, fresh cheeses, mole, frijoles, and a host of mystery foods. Shove it in front of me-- I'll eat it. All delicious and nothing is spicy in El Salvador. I'm in heaven, Flynn is suffering Tabasco withdrawals!!!
Recuperated from the harried first day of travel, we gingerly begin to stray further from the safety of our 10x10 cabana and take in the meticulous gardens around us.
Flowers abound.
Little nooks of gardens everywhere.
A dinner table under a canopy of orchids.
Looks like a Bird of Paradise but is it?
Repurposed soda jugs hang everywhere, filled with little plants. How long does it take to water all these? I ascertain that a lawn mower doesn't exist on the property, all grass cutting is done with hand shears. Oh dear God, the work to keep this place looking so manicured!
Every morning around 7, we can hear Ever raking and sweeping.
I try to find a single weed to pull out of his flower beds, to say that I helped...I fail, none to be found.
The restaurant's his and her bathrooms. We've already gotten the notion that building permits around here don't exist. Build what you want, where you want, with whatever bits of material you can scrounge.
Mystery flower #56.
The resident budgies under a canopy of Bougainvillea.
The view from the door of the cabana.
The narrow two tile wide strip I negotiate back and forth from the cabana to the kitchen.
Maria Luiza and Jose, the plantation owners return midday with her daughter and boyfriend. Such warm and kind people. I interrogate them for ways to explore the famous volcano and waterfalls. They shoot me down. No way I can navigate my scooter on the mountain trails. Horses, I say. Where can I rent a horse? Negative, Ghost Rider. I try to ship Flynn off with a guide, but he refuses to leave me. Funny how he knows me so well-- I would've found my own way up to the volcano...I was already eyeballing Ever's wheelbarrow and wondering how many Salvadoreans it would take to haul me up the mountain. Instead, we opt to tag along with Ever as he went grocery shopping in the town of Juayua.
There is a festival marking the founding of the town... in true Latin fashion, the party will last 20 days.
And they told me I wouldn't find any horses!!!
Who knew there was a terminal flower at the end of a banana stalk!
We explore the Iglesia Santa Lucia dating back to 16th century. Featured is the black Christ statue, or Christo Negro.
I'm overzealous when it comes to exploring ancient churches, abbey ruins and basilicas, my fervor is not contagious, apparently.
In El Salvador, I notice that all the pharmacies are named after saints, no Walgreens here!
This was the only one named for the big guy himself! On a later occasion, Flynn went to a pharmacy by himself, armed with my handwritten Spanish note, asking for tablets for a head ache. He came back with industrial strength migraine medicine, only available in the US with a scrip! I quietly pondered what would've happened if I'd written "I have a boil on my buttocks" or "my breasts are tender".
The variety of fresh produce is astounding. on street corners, women sell hot food made with a small fire and a frying pan. We return to, as Flynn calls it, our compound for the evening.
Daysi serves us a traditional yucca and pork dish. Flynn is beside himself, unable to even find a pepper shaker to spice up his dish! We watch the sun slip over the side of the volcano.
25 yard scooter ride back to our abode.
I'm excited to have figured out how to get hot water in our outdoor facilities.
Leaving the farm for 4 days took a couple weeks to plan and orchestrate.
The BIGGEST shout out to Adjanie who took the reins and became Farm Boss.
Not only taking responsibility for the horses, but also the dogs.
She and her husband, Cristian, took turns camping at my house with the Peter, Garrett, Micah and the pest Dax.
These two are neurotic enough to begin with, hard to imagine what 4 nights at a kennel might do to their fragile psyches (and mine).
Big thanks to my adopted son, Todd, who used his vacation time to work 4 days on the farm doing trail maintenance.
A former Marine who served Bush and Obama on Marine One, he's the kind of man you want patrolling your property when you're not there.
Dr. Simmons made sure Peter had two healthy doses of physiotherapy.
Times like make your heart swell with gratitude to be surrounded by genuinely good people.
For me, the most relaxing part of the trip was the knowledge that the farm and all its creatures were receiving an uninterrupted flow of love. That's a vacation in itself. Then there was the actual vacay with this guy:
Exiting the farm at 5 AM... being whisked through security thanks to this:
Wheeling around at 100 mph, until the Salvadorean crew temporarily lost my scooter. Grounded:
Almost an hour spent trying to relocate it and then more time to get rental car, complete with ridiculously stained upholstery, a bulging knot in the back tire where the belt had broken, and what we soon discovered were failing brakes.
Stopping at the first road side stand to get fresh coconut water to attempt rehydration. By then, we were a couple hours off schedule. Our Airbnb accommodations were still over 2 hours away. No worries, I had printed maps and had prior confirmation with Verizon that my phone would work in El Salvador, easy, right?
Firstly, there's the issue of traffic and the fact that main thoroughfares bottleneck through residential areas. This wasn't a one way road, this is an example of 2 way traffic. What happens is the bigger guy honks until another backs up and then yells "tu madre" as they drive past.
Next, this country, the size of New Jersey, with over 6 million inhabitants, is one of the most densely populated in the world. People everywhere, flooding the streets, cutting you off on bicycles, crammed like sardines into these popular open air convoys which stop without warning for disembarkment.
So full at times, that people hang off the sides of them. It was trial by fire for my chauffeur! Horns blaring, complete disregard for stop signs or general driving rules, cows on the road, the converted school buses that are a staple of mass transit appear out of nowhere on narrow roads and bully you into backing out of their way.
Yeah, that's what Flynn was dealing with. I, chief navigator, was stressing on my inop phone GPS for Mapquest and the lack of signage everywhere. I had contingency plans if my phone failed, but paper maps only work if you can locate street signs. And guess what? They don't address properties either. The only coordinate for the Airbnb are that it is located at kilometer marker 89.5. And good luck finding a mile marker that hasn't been run over on a road that isn't posted. 5 hours later, we were still lost, finally in the right town, but no one I asked seemed to know the coffee plantation we needed to find. Every business is guarded by private security guards or off duty policemen carrying pistol grip shotguns or submachine guns. The last guard I asked for directions phoned the police for us. I heard them say in Spanish that 'these Americans have no business out here after dark'. I completely agreed. I had chosen to disregard the US State Department's warning about avoiding travel to El Salvador because its violent crime ranked it in the top 10 most dangerous countries in the world. And now I was beginning to wonder what I had dragged Flynn into. My usual good luck prevailed and we ended up with 2 police escorts: 2 trucks with about 4-5 men apiece, some masked, all with machine guns. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Flynn, not so much.
They pulled us over in the middle of nowhere. For a moment, I thought, this is where we get kidnapped, but then a gate opened and we were home free. Flynn needed a moment to regroup.
The plantation manager and the cook had all but given up hope on us and were about to leave, instead, they rattled some pans and made us supper!
I was feeling quite smug at this point.
We did it! We had found our way up the flank of a volcano, to a small coffee plantation guarded by 3 Rottweilers, left to ourselves (as the plantation owners were away and the place was ours after the two employees left). Our little $40 per night cabana.
