25. Puerto Libertad

25.

Puerto Libertad, El Salvador:

I’m staying in a little green room over a grocery shop. There’s a cafe about a hundred yards away where I buy fried fish and beer. Lots of Americans come to Puerto Libertad to ride the big waves in March according to Oscar, a teenager who tries to sell me some marijuana. I can see why the surfers come. This is a beautiful place in a sort of cheap and dilapidated way.

The beach is peculiar. Millions of multicolored hard plastic packing “peas” mixed with the sand give the beach an odd, unnatural luster, which is kind of pretty.

Too bad the water stinks so disgustingly.

There are a number of faded but expensive hotels on the outskirts of town and a row of wooden one-table beachside cafes serving the local specialty, steamed shellfish. They do a good business by romantic candlelight every evening.

A noisy railway engine pushes freight up and down a pier across from my hotel and when I go out walking the local whores, thinking I am a Greek sailor off the ship anchored offshore make their pitch in Greek. Such accomplished linguists, these ladies!

Well, there’s partying and moaning and showering all night long in the hotel where I am staying and I don’t get much sleep or writing done. Early one morning a sad little girl, maybe six years old, and an old man, maybe eighty, come to my door for a handout. The old guy strums a guitar and the child shakes a rattle and sings. Their whole act depresses me so much I give them a dollar and leave town.

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