I Survived a Near-Death Encounter in El Salvador

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Fruit-based incidents are not the kind of near-death escapes people hope for when you tell them you just spent time in El Salvador.

“Yeah, I was taking a dip in the hotel pool when a coconut fell off a tree and missed my head by, oh, a few feet. It scared the willies out of me.” You can sense the disappointment immediately.

“No kidnapping story? No gunpoint muggings? Not even a little casual pickpocketing?”

Well…no, actually. El Salvador is—in my experience at least—just not that sort of place.

People who turn away from their own journey to walk you to the bus stop, and then wait with you to be sure you get the right one; people who invite you to their table at a palapa bar because they can’t stand to see you sitting alone; people who cross the street to mention that a 50-dollar bill just fell out of your pocket when you were rummaging for change…they’re not prime candidates for a life of violent crime. But these are the people I met in El Salvador.

The jungle-clad hillsides, the butterflies, the perfect waves, the ochre sunsets, the home-grown coffee, the laser-tight live salsa, the black-rock coastline that could be a tropical Scotland…I may find those somewhere else, one day.

But the exuberant (and hard-won) joy, genuine curiosity, and wry humor of El Salvador’s people will be harder to encounter elsewhere.

I’ve put some video together from the trip, so you can get a better feel of the place. You can view that—and more exclusive online content—at IntLiving.com/Magazine.

It might help explain my answer to the question that always comes up when I come home from a trip: Would I go back there?

Reader, I’m counting the days.