And here we go, in El Salvador again! The last time that I was in El Salvador was in 2003, when I was facilitating an AIESEC regional congress (AXLDS 2003 indeed) when I was part of the national committee of AIESEC in Colombia. My first experience as facilitator of an international conference, so memories were quite special. Also professionally for me arriving to El Salvador promised to be a challenge since these guys for sure have been fighting for several years to become stable as AIESEC country, so here I was! Talking about the country itself, I found a much more modern El Salvador than 3 years ago. It can posiby be that 3 years ago I did not observe the country so well, but now I perceived a San Salvador (capital of El Salavdor) much more dymanic, commercial and funky. We did not do much tourism in El Salvador, however if I would have to present something very Salvadorian, I for sure will present you the famous PUPUSAS!

Pupusas are kind of flat jummy cakes or tortillas, done of sometimes rice, sometimes corn flower. In El Salvador there are many pupuserías (a place where pupusas are sold) and well, you can go there fore breakfast, lunch, dinner or whenever you want, specially because pupusas are extremey cheap, each pupusa can cost you like 30 UDS cents. Pupusas are usually served with curtido (a pickled cabbage relish) and tomato sauce or salsa. For people that have never eaten pupusas, in pictures they might look as 'arepas' - which is another very very typical latin meal - but they are very different. Pupusas are definitively softer, the consistency of the flower is different.

In the following pictures, you can see more and less a typical 'pupusa experience' : you go to the pupuseria, they do the pupusas in front of you actually, they make small balls with the 'masa' (the uncooked flower), the put the filling in each pupusa (normally beans, pork or meet), they flatten the pupusa and they finally put it on a kind of grill. Once done, you eat it as said with the curtido and the sauce.

Me at the entrance of the pupuseria

Coming back to the AIESEC related experience in El Salvador, the salvadorian guys made me learn a lot, I was stretching like crazy to try to accomodate the global solutions to their particular reality and to try to accomodate my working style to theirs. I was asking myself so often, my God Oriana are you a good director? Think, think what are the priority things that you need to lead them to put in place in these 8 days!? How to keep it simple but still complete? The most important thing is that even if there is a long way to go, the guys got the message that the AIESEC 2010 era in El Salvador needs to start, as soon as possible and that this requieres a complete reingeneering of the way they do AIESEC there. One afternoon was particulary very nice for me, and it was when some of their members came to a meeting where I presented an abstract of the global direction and I enjoyed seeing them amazed by all the things that the platform has to offer. We did "flash visits" to the dean of the university, another one in the afternoon (thanks to a phone call done by this dean in the morning!!) to a center for CSR promotion - too many good opportunities to grasp and, this was just a minimal bite of all the potential that AIESEC can have there.

The salvadorian MC members were very hospitable people and I thank you so much for that. Again, very familiar people, I had very good opportunities to eat "mama home cooked food" and see how much parents care of what they children are doing - this I felt specially in the house of Christian, one vicepresident.

Following the line of hospitality I need to name of course other two people that supported me A LOT during my stay in El Salvador.


Ethel and me

One was Ethel, former MC member of AIESEC El Salvador that not only invited me for a very nice seafood one night to go for 100% FAT (fucking AIESEC talk), but that also saved my life borrowing me for almost 2 weeks a DELL lap top power cord since I was so stupid and forgot mine in the last country - so she gave me one until mine was sent from the country I left it, by the way, also with a friend of her. She works in Dell.

The other person was Silvia. I stayed in Silvia's house for all my stay and I have no words to thanks. She is a romanian trainee in love with Latin America working in the marketing area of a salvadorian IT company. She was local vice president of one of the most sucessful committees in Romania in the outgoing exchange area and well, you can imagine how enjoyable was to talk to her on her views of Latin America, and of El Salvador. Something very cool was to make part of a celebration that Silvia did at her house to show to people the way Eastern is celebrated in Romania. I think she gave and is giving still a strong message of diversity and committment to AIESEC in El Salvador and I am very pleased to see the place that Silvia has earned in the heart of the the Salvadorian members.

I liked a lot the way she tought us how they cook, paint and eat eggs in Romania for Eastern. They have this tradition that two people take an egg each and they hit both eggs towards each other. Before doing this each person made a wish and the person whose egg gets broken after they hit the eggs, will get the wish become true. (Or is it the one whose egg does not get broken? uhmmm I eally do not remember!)

Eastern celebration at Silvia's house

TOP SALVADORIAN EXPRESSIONS!

1. "Que Chivo!" or "chivisimo!!" which means "cool". It is quite funny for me since in Colombia, well in spanish -chivo- means "goat" (the animal).

2. "Que ondas!?" which means "What's up"

3. "Vaya!" - it's like "well..." , I really can't explain how cool it sounds.

Would be cool to go to El Salvador again at some point and see how this small, yet fast growing country will be doing in some years. Ah forgot to tell before, as other Central American countries, volcanos are also everywhere. In the picture above, even taken from a car, you can see the San Salvador Vocano.

Me and some CAS members: Wanda, Coyote and Magaly

The first impressions of Costa Rica in the airport were pretty contrasting: tones of posters and images displaying the awesome ecotourism opportunities of the country versus tones of posters promoting awareness towards child sex tourism in the country. No matter what the message was clear: Costa Rica keeps being one of the favourite destinities for foreigners for tourism and travel. Even me, as Latin American from a country where we also have tones of cool beaches, until this moment in the airport, Costa Rica was synonim of colorful macaws (in spanish 'Guacamayas'), beach and many, many palm trees.

As you can imagine, looking at the date I was in Costa Rica, I arrived there in the middle of 'Semana Santa' - Eastern or Holly Week. Bid deal for catholic latin countries, nobody works, pure holidays, everythig closes, you even struggle to get open places to eat and shop. My mother back home could not understand how the hell I was working on these dates, as AIESEC in CAS (Costa Rica and Panama, aka Central America South) members could not understand howcome I planed a visit in these days. I guess they hated me for this, but at the same time they understood the need of maximizing time and well, we managed.

The fact of being there for Eastern was however a cool experience, specially in Cartago, the neighbour city of San Jose (costa rican capital), where I was staying. I joined one procession and even if for sure that was not the first time that I was in one (since processions are a pretty standard component of Eastern in all latin countries), this one was particulary funky and crowded. Ok, for those who do not know what processions are, they are kind of 'parades' organized by the different churches where a group of people march and carry normaly on their shoulders a big figure of a saint, a virgen, or the image of Jesus himself (depends on whose honor the procession is) and all the rest of people (inhabitants of the city) walk along or simply watch. Now the deal with this Cartago procession was that people were using very fancy costumes


Procession in Cartago

Procession in Cartago

Costa Rica, as majority of central american countries hosts a big number of volcanos and mountains. We had to take every morning the bus from Cartago to San Jose (aprox. 30 minutes trip) and while walking from the house to the bus station, you could see every morning the mountains and at some stages, the Irazu Volcano. Irazu is the highest volcano in Costa Rica. There have been at least 23 eruptions since 1723. The most recent was from 1963 to 1965. Cartago was kind of cold in the mornings and nights specially - in difference to San Jose, that is much warmer.

Views of Cartago - you can see the Irazu Volcano in the back.

But no matter if the mountain landscape was explendid, for sure my peak costa rican experience had to be in the beach, and let me tell you, in a very distant and randoooom one. Wanda, National Vice-president of AIESEC in CAS, who is actually from Panama and happened to also be "familyless" in Costa Rica, invited me to the beach for the weekend. I was indeed pretty exited and on saturday, 7 a.m. I was meeting her in the San Jose city center to take a bus to a beach called JUNQUILLAL, in the state of Guanacaste, in Costa Rica, where she had a french friend that was doing voluntary service. Let me make the story shorther: the truth is that Wanda (panamenian, I repeat) had never been there before, she did not know exactly how much time would it take us to get there but still, we were on the way. We took a bus from San Jose to Santa Cruz, capital of Guanacaste. This took us 5 hours. Around 12 p.m. we were in Santa Cruz, figuring out in this small and very very very random bus station which bus to take to Junquillal. We ended taking a bus at 3 p.m. - of course we waited 3 hours doing nothing in the bus station. For some reason even if I hate to wait, I was not mad at Wanda and was sort of enjoying the adventure ...

Guys, again to make the story shorter, we arrived after a terrible (full of dust and no paving or road surface) 2,5 hours bus ride from Santa Cruz to Junquillal. I felt like in Survivor, Costa Rican edition, hehehe.

Me in Santa Cruz - the bus station where I have waited the most in my whole life

We spend the night in Junquillal, believe it or not I was so dead that I went to bed like at 10 p.m. (literally I did not sleep on a bed this night, but on a tend that randomly we managed to borrow and we set up in the kind of garden of a house) after eating two delicious plates of seafood. If we were tired and sun was already gone, at least we shall have good food. Quite funny, we went to the only bar in the town, it was a reggae bar with 'hamacas' everywhere and people (mainly foreigners) chilling out and imagining they were in Jamaica. THE SUNSETFROM THERE WAS WONDERFUL and this image was fore sure, the Costa Rica that you see in the promotional posters ... I am actually quite proud that my crappy digital camera managed to capture all the colors of the horizon line, as you can see below ...


Sunset from the reggae bar in Junquillal Beach


Reggae Bar in Junquillal

Let's keep making the story shorter. The same 10 hours including waiting time in the Santa Cruz bus station, that on saturday we spent reaching Junquillal, we spend on sunday (right the next day!!!) travelling back to San Jose. What a good business, we were on a bus or waiting 20 hours and just spent hardly 5 hours on the beach. In terms of touristic infrastructure, again Junquillal was not really advanced, specially when you have your image, as I said in the beginning of the Costa Rica of macaws, palm trees, resorts, it was a very simple and rustic town; but I guess this is was has called so many tourists, cause they were everywhere. Many surfers that find in the Pacific Ocean their passion.

On Monday when we came back to San Jose, we were the heroes, people that really now the 'zone' could not believe we reached Junquillal by bus and were making fu of us. Nice ...I thank you Wanda for the trip, and this time I am really not sarcastic. It was pretty out of the box and I guess this is what you need during country visits. Thanks!


Wanda and myself having brakfast in the beach

We worked a lot in Costa Rica majority of the time, but still out of the few days here I go with my TOP 5 Costa Rican memories:

1. Pura Vida! (means something like 'So much Life!') is the most typical expression to say Hi! or Bye! or Ok!

2. Costa Ricans call themselves "TICOS". Don't ask me why, I really forgot to ask the "story behind" but as they call themselved TICOS, there are all kind of TICO-named businesses: TICO-BURGER, TICO-PIZZA, TICA-BUS and son on ...

3. MAE! This is a classic... they use the expression 'mae' as for saying 'man' or 'dude'.

4. Ticos have a very funny accent, seriously. They roll the R in a very particular way. That was quite new for me, but it sounds somehow very sweet.

5. As all central american countries, ticos love beans, tortillas and let me tell you, they make very good ones. However DO NOT GET CONFUSED, it's NOT like mexican food, since it is not spicy!

Even if short and hectic I really liked my time in Costa Rica and I thank all people for their support! Costa Ricans value a lot family and traditions, and they are very strict towards them, and this I enjoyed a lot. The country is for sure passing for a interesting socio-economical situtation, where everybody comments and makes decisions dependent of the US Free Trade Agreement (in spanish TLC, from Tratado de Libre Comercio) approval and other government regulations.

Well, and sure to finalize the random photo of the visit: For Tico's sake, the crazy Coyote is not costa rican!

Coyote and me. "Se vende" (for sale)

10:00am, June 1st, 2005
Boardroom, Teilingerstraat 126, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

10:00am, June 1st, 2006
Boardroom, Teilingerstraat 126, Rotterdam, The Netherlands