Wrestling Rocinante

Two weeks ago, we pulled into Santa Ana, the second-largest city in El Salvador. It was late afternoon, and Rocinante was coughing, gasping and stalling as we came into town, looking for a hostel. The first place we tried was full up, but the proprietor was very friendly and helpful, and gave us good directions to the second choice. We stalled only two or three times more before pulling into the secure parking area of the Casa Verde hostel.

The hostel was great: spotlessly clean, containing nice rooms with good beds, hot water and WiFi. Two kitchens for guest use. A TV room stocked with many DVDs. There was even a small pool, for crying out loud. Reasonably priced to boot. Good thing, as we’d pulled in without any real alternative at that point. As it happened, the hostel was first rate, and we spend a lovely night there.

Santa Ana itself, however, was no great shakes. The city is filthy. Trash is piled up everywhere. The streets and sidewalks are in poor repair. There are gaping holes and missing manhole covers all over town. This is bad enough, but made all the worse by comparing it to the many clean and lovely small towns we’ve visited in El Salvador, both before and since. We wondered if it was common to the country’s large cities, or just some aspect of Santa Ana itself. Suspecting the former, we grew leery of visiting San Salvador, the capital and largest city.

We’d come to Santa Ana for two purposes beyond the usual exploration and sight–seeing: to find a mechanic to investigate the van’s increasingly problematic tendency to stall when hot, and to get my hair cut. After we’d settled in for a bit, I asked the hostel’s proprietor about both of these goals. He said he’d call the family mechanic in the morning—one who makes house calls—and told me about the hair–cutting shop across the street, also open in the morning. Well, that was easy.

The mechanic showed up in the morning, discussed the problem with us, and took the van back to his shop for diagnosis. We wandered about the city, enjoyed the markets and got disgusted by the trash. In the afternoon, the mechanic told us that the ’scope and other diagnostic aids had shown no detectable problems, but that the fuel pump was very noisy. He recommended replacing it, but the part itself would cost over $400. We decided to see if we could just be very nice to the old one, and make it last the rest of the trip. And in the mean time, I’d gone across the street and received a very good haircut for one whole dollar. No lie.

Fast–forward almost two weeks. Coming out of Armenia, we decided to risk it, and set out for the museums, culture, and possible other mechanics of San Salvador. When we arrived, Rocinante was limping a bit, but soldiering on for the most part. We rejected one possible lodgings, failed to find another, then embraced the Hotel Ataco, a lovely and reasonably–priced little hotel in the higher–end section of town. We settled in and found a fine Taiwanese restaurant just a few blocks away.

The next morning we took a cab to visit a couple of museums mentioned in the guide book. The first, El Museo de Arte del El Salvador (MARTE), was devoted to depicting the history of Salvadoran art, with extra exhibits featuring a few contemporary practitioners thereof. It was quite possibly the best art museum we’ve ever visited: highly focussed, very well–curated and laid out, and every piece in it was interesting and engaging. Not a clunker in the place. The second museum, Museo Nacional de Antropología David J Guzmán, had some interesting exhibits and artifacts, but was not nearly so well-done. It would have been fine, but for comparison to the first. Then we walked around this section of town, noticed how clean and pretty everything was, stopped in several places for street food, found a gluten-free bakery, and gradually wound our way back to the hotel.

At this point I was still on the fence about trying to find another mechanic. But in the end, I realized that the stress of worrying about the fuel pump every day was preventing me from enjoying our travels as much as I might. So we asked the hotel’s proprietor if she knew a good mechanic. I was immediately heartened was she asked, “mechanical or electrical?” She made a phone call, and a couple of hours later, the mechanic arrived. We talked a bit, I popped the hood and started the engine. He opened the radiator cap and looked inside. Sitting in the van with the hood up, I couldn’t see his face, but Elizabeth later told me a look of great surprise had crossed his features. What I could see was him dipping two fingers into the open radiator throat, and pulling out a huge wad of red–brown mud. The radiator was full of it.

We speculated on how this might have happened, and he gave a price for flushing out the radiator. It was quite reasonable, we readily agreed, and thought that, just maybe, we’d solved the hot–weather stalling problem. The work took most of the day, and by late afternoon the mechanic and I took the van for a test drive. Everything was fine, so we talked about changing the oil and the air filter. We arranged for him to return at eight the next morning and finish the work in time for us to be on our way.

Since this was Friday, and we were in the big city, Elizabeth checked around and found a synagogue where we might attend Shabbat services. She talked with some one at the temple, and got general directions, but was unable to learn a lot more. We didn’t even know if the congregation was reform, conservative or orthodox. But we got dressed about as nicely as we possibly could (not so great after three months on the road, but not bad), and went knocking on their door. We were welcomed into a small, nicely appointed synagogue, and met a bunch of nice people, many of whom spoke English. We met the rabbi and discovered that he is originally from Argentina.

This was very interesting, as six years ago Elizabeth and I went with Kol HaLev—the Temple Beth Emeth adult choir, with which I sing—on a performance tour of Argentina. We visited several cities, including Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba, and a small town called Moisesville, which had been founded by Jewish immigrants in the mid nineteenth century. When we told the rabbi here of Kol HaLev’s Argentinian adventure, and where we had gone, he told us that was born and raised in Rosario, and had sung in the choir at the big temple there, where we had also sung, for fifteen years.

Services were very interesting. They were almost completely sung, mostly in Hebrew with just a little Spanish thrown in. The rabbi occasionally mentioned page numbers in the prayer book, translating them into English for our benefit. Almost all of the prayers/songs were familiar. Some were nearly identical to how they’re done at Temple Beth Emeth, others were different but recognizable, and some had the same words with completely different melodies. It was actually a lot of fun. About forty people attended, many of them wandering in and out as services progressed. Rather casual.

During services, Joe looked around and noticed that one of the elderly ladies there had been at the art museum when we visited. She was unmistakeable, as she’d been about the only other visitor at the time, and we had exchanged greetings then.

After services, the rabbi introduced us to his wife, also from Argentina, and we continued our discussion of Kol HaLev’s trip there. It turned out that she was born and raised in Moisesville, and also sang in the choir in Rosario, where the two of them had met. We swapped notes about Argentina, met more of the congregation, including the woman from the museum, shared bread and wine, and went back to our hotel feeling quite refreshed and invigorated. It had been an unexpectedly pleasurable event.

The next morning, I woke up with a miserable cold. The mechanic showed up, and got to work, and I went back to bed. He finished a couple hours later, but while under the engine he’d noticed the front brake pads worn down to their limit. So we asked him to replace those as well, and I went back to bed, again. He finished about mid–afternoon, and we all relaxed, knowing that the van would be in excellent shape when next we took it out.

Unfortunately, that would not be that day, nor the next. My cold was no better in the morning, and Elizabeth had started feeling lousy as well. We took solace from the fact that we were in a very nice place, where the people liked us and took good care of us. Although we were anxious to be on the road, it was much better to be miserable in a comfortable bed in a nice hotel, than in uncertainty on the road.

Mañana.