Saw the sunrise this morning. Really nothing special, but I will post a picture or two. Today we arrived in Acajutla, El Salvador. Joan and I were on an excursion wait list, but only one seat came available, so we decided to just go on the shuttle bus to town. Walked for about one hour through the market area. As it is a Saturday, we are not sure if it is usually this busy, but a lot of locals and us tourists walking through the streets. Also, visited a Catholic Church on the town square. Found several Chinese stores which were similar to the ones we experienced in Aruba last year. They are like old fashioned 5 & 10 stores we had in the States a few decades ago. Although tourism is becoming a larger part of the economy, we really did not encounter the usual souvenir shops we found in many of our prior ports.
On the way to the town square, a tour guide gave some El Salvador information. The country only has a population of a little over 6 million. There have been a lot of changes and the country is much safer since the 12 year Salvadoran Civil War from 1979- 1992. The President a few years ago built some new prisons and they arrest over 72,000 gang members. These gangs members are still in prisons under very harsh conditions. The entire country is very small, covering only 8,124 square miles and is bordered by Honduras on the NE, Guatemala on the NW, and the Pacific Ocean to the South. There are 3 major volcanoes (see picture) with the last eruption in 2005. We are in the major port of the country, and they mainly export coffee, sugar, and balsam, used for cosmetics. Apparently they also export a lot of textiles and garments. Not sure about the history of this, but we saw several folks on the streets selling what looked like scratch off lottery tickets.
We will be leaving El Salvador later this afternoon, and we still have no official information about our planned stops in Mexico this next week. Time will tell, but so far it seems like our stops in Mexico are still going to happen.
As we were sitting on the balcony, a group of men in sharp white uniforms gathered on the dock and played several musical numbers as they pulled in the gangway and the ship moved away from the dock. Got a couple of pictures. We are not sure if they were a military or perhaps a police band, as there were several police in uniform also on the dock.
No comments:
Post a Comment