She had a bucket full of toasted maize kernels, blackened on the comal/griddle, and was grinding away.  Her arm was getting tired, so Cristian jumped in and started winding the grinder like it was a kid’s toy – he did it like a pro.  Take a look at the results:   doesn’t it look like coffee?   I had to sample it, of course  – didn’t taste much like coffee, or anything I’d want to drink, but then, coffee is an acquired taste.

Café de maize tostado is a traditional drink in El Salvador, and other parts of Latin America.   It was consumed much more in the ‘old days’, but as we see by this example, still consumed by some to this day.   Looking into the history of this beverage, I cannot yet determine if it was a traditional indigenous drink before the America’s were colonized or not, but it has been an economic surrogate for coffee.   According to this 2001 article in the Diario de Hoy (translation, with original text, following),

“At one time, don Lito, the price of coffee was so high, that the poor, not having the resources to drink good coffee, would instead drink coffee of toasted maize, which they sometimes mixed with avocado seed and coffee casings [the shells containing the grains] to give it some flavor.   Nowadays, 100 pounds of maize is worth more than 100 pounds of coffee, even though it only takes four months to produce that 100 pounds of maize, and four years for the same amount of coffee!”

“-En un tiempo, don Lito, el precio del café era tan alto, que los pobres, para variar, no tenían capacidad de tomar buen café y tomaban café de maíz tostado, que a veces lo revolvían con semilla de aguacate y algunas cascaritas de café cereza, para darle sabor. Ahora, un quintal de maíz en plaza vale más que un quintal de café, aunque para producir un quintal de maíz sólo se tarda cuatro meses, igualito que el café, sólo que ¡cuatro años! “  – link to article by Lito Moltalvo, in Diario de Hoy

I looked up to see where all the chirping was coming from, and wouldn’t you know it?  Right there in the tree in front of our office – a house in a fairly urban neighborhood off Boulevard [Bulevar] Los Proceres – was a group of 6 PARAKEETS.  All hanging out, getting ready for nighttime to come, before sunset.

WHERE in the WORLD do you get to see a group of 6 PARAKEETS, sitting in a TREE IN FRONT OF YOUR OFFICE?   People can say all they want about “El Salvador dangerous this“, and “Are you sure you want to live there, that“, but this BEATS THE PANTS off most of your office experiences, wouldn’t you say?

Yellow Oriole

Every day, in the hour before the sun sets, it turns into “bird time” in our yard in El Salvador.  At times I feel as though we are inside of a bird sanctuary.  We are blessed with a nice backyard, and wrap-around patio to boot, so have a good panorama of Salvadoran nature-side.  As I write a flurry of activity is taking place, from the Yellow-Backed Oriole, who don’t sit still long enough for me to shoot him, to the clarineras (sp?), making their various noises, along with some small yellow-green birds about half the size of your hand, jumping around, and Salvadoran style pigeons/palomas (they are much smaller than the big fat guys on city streets up north), flitting from tree to tree.

hard to get a shot of this guy

The elusive Torogoz even got into the action, gracefully flying to a perch very near our patio,  flying away again in time for me NOT to get a good picture of him.

Speaking of birds, on one of my last visits to Chalatenango, while walking around the neighborhood, a pack of loud, almost obnoxious birds were flying and singing in a high pitch above me, and as I looked up, I saw a pack of (wild) parakeets, a good 5 or 6, swoon over me and land high up in a tree just 15 feet ahead of me, where they continued their discussion, screeching and chirping along.  My husband and guys in the neighborhood know how to find their nests and snatch them when they are young, before they grow feathers, and then they become household pets.

The same day I saw the parakeets, at my suegro’s (in laws) house, someone pointed out an exotic looking bird high up in a tree across the street.  After a short moment, we realized they were Toucans!

from http://animal-wildlife.blogspot.com/2011/08/toucan.html

They were of the more simple colored variety, black and white with an orange beak.   My suegra (mother in law) said this is very unusual in “these modern days” to see them where they live.  They were very high up in the trees, and we saw at least 2 of them darting around, if not 3.   As I finish writing this, the sun is almost setting, and the symphony of chirping has quieted down to an occasional chirp or peep.  The excited activity lasts for maybe 45 minutes, like a “Happy Hour” for the birds, and then its time to find a perch or return to the nest for the night.  Good Night, all.

Did a saldo (phone credit) check. Had $3.67 credit.  Then made two phone calls:
1) 6 min 56 seconds to my husband
2) An 8 minute, 16 second call to a friend a couple hours later.
- – A total of 7 minutes and 12 seconds of talk time —

Saldo check after call two:  I had 78 cents. That’s about 19 cents a minute.

Sure, I could get a plan, for as cheap as $10 a month, and they go from there.  I went to their web pages, and see per minute tariffs you pay above your monthly rate, but don’t find plans where TALK time is included with a monthly fee.   I can get anywhere from 2-5 “favorite numbers”, and up to 150 free text messages.

I’ve asked people here, and no one seems to know about cell phone plans with voice minutes included.  Everyone says they don’t bother with a plan (unless their job pays for it), they all buy “Saldo” which is pay as you go credit.  Here is a web page from the Claro website, which has a plan for $15 a month, where calls to other Claro customers are .08 a minute, and calls to non-Claro, .14 a minute.   The per minute rate drops to .07 for $20 a month, .06 for $40 a month, and its only (only, ha ha!) .05 a minute if you pay $75 a month for the “plan”.  For all plans, out of network calls are ALWAYS .14 a minute.  You call that a plan?  I call it a sham, stan!  People who make $700-$1000 have a “good” job here.  Would you sign up for one of these cell plans if you made that a month?

But there is some justice, after all.  Proof that a number of them were price fixing, and some were fined for it, based on a January 22 article.  My provider, Tigo, is not in this list, but I bet they collude with the others – the $500 in taxes they paid last year is indicative of their  standards.

Article, in Spanish, on La Pagina, about the ruling.    Translation:

Million Dollar fine imposed for agreeing to fix telephone rates.

The Board of Directors of the Superintendent of Competition (SC) fined Telemovil, Telefonica, Digicel, and Intelfon for violating the competition Act by agreeing to set a fee, despite knowing the law prohibits such agreements.

The Superintendent of Competition, through its board, sanctioned the Telemovil, Telefonica, Digicel and Intelfon phone companies, for violation of the Competition Ac

Digicel and Intelfón received an economic sanction for a total of US$ 1, 215,497.94, after having agreed to fix the rate of $.21 plus VAT per minute for a call originating on a land line and terminating on their mobile networks.

Specifically, the phone companies violated Article 25 of the Law of Competition, which prohibits agreements between competitors.  The article literally says that “anticompetitive practices made between competitors are prohibited, which, among them, adopt the following forms:  a) Establishing agreements to fix prices o other conditions of purchase or sale under whatever form,” describes the Superintendent of Competition.

In this way each company is fined: $ 658,050.00 for Telemovil; Telefónica $260,672.03, $233,909.76 for Intelfon, and Digicel $ 62,866.15.

The fines differentiated based on criteria of reasonableness and proportionality considered by the SC, which, in addition to the criteria in Article 37 of the law, took into account the economic capacity of the companies being sanctioned.

* marero – a local name for a gang member, a member of a ‘mara’.  The ‘ero’ ending is used to denote a person who does or is associated with something.    Pelo is hair.  A peluquero (you have to change the c to a q for it to sound correctly) is a barber/stylist.  Here’s a fun one:   Mujer is a woman.  And a mujerero is a “womanizer.”

So while in her front yard that day, I looked down at this spikey looking plant, and had to do a double-take.  I saw this little thing growing out of it, and wouldn’t you know, if it wasn’t the tiniest little pineapple you’ve ever seen?

There you have it folks, this is where pineapples come from.  You learn something new every day.  And if you’re lucky enough to live there, you get to see it up close and in person.

The Pineapple of El Salvador.   Grows out of a spikey plant that looks like an aloe, before it ripens and gets cut, then transported thousands of miles, far far away to a Supermarket near you.

On one of my first trips to El Salvador, my husband pulled over on the road and showed me these fruits.  “See these?,” he asked me “These have nuts inside them.  Semilla de marañon.”    I looked at this tree with all these yellow fruits, and at the bottom of each one was a funny looking thing, kind of grayish green, that appeared to be growing out of it.  Strangely enough, it was in the shape of something very familiar.   It was one of those naive gringa “wow” moments the natives here like to giggle at us for.    Each marañon, as they are called in Spanish, will grow a seed, not on the inside of its fruit, like most fruits do*, but as a funny bud on the end, in an extremely hard shell, with the seed inside.  And that seed, my friends, is the cashew.    You cannot bite the seed open, it has to be roasted, and be sure to have a lot of fresh air when doing so, if you ever try, as the smoke can be toxic.

Here they are, hanging on the tree. You can see the hard-shell off the end of the sweet fruit part, which has the cashew in it.

A red variety of cashew fruit here in El Salvador

Fresco de Marañón I made the other day. I think you're supposed to peel them first. I'll be sure to next time.

coffee tree, Los Planes de Renderos, El Salvador

So I’m talking with my neighbor Sabas over the fence the other day.  He’s the same guy with the cool birds and plants I’ve mentioned before.   He had a couple soup bowls from meals I’ve passed over, and we were chatting about water bills or taxes, or something affecting the general populace here, when a small tree behind him caught my eye.

It’s fruit has small reddish brown berries.   “Hey, that looks like coffee over there.”  “Oh that, yeah, that IS coffee,” he tells me.   What!!??   “Sabas, I say, why don’t you pick the beans to make coffee?”  “Oh no,” he tells me, “that would be a lot of trouble, for the small amount of beans, then you gotta dry ‘em – and I’ve only got shade over here – then shuck em, then take ‘em to the molino (person with a grinder), wouldn’t be worth it..”   I offered my sunny yard for drying them if he’d like.  Might be fun to pick and make a small batch just for experience sake, then sit and have a cup with Sabas when we’re all through.  I think Sabas and I are gonna do some coffee pickin’ this coming weekend.

We went down to the creek to explore.   First thing we saw, which fascinated me the most, the Salvadoran bug lover that I’ve become, was a swam of dragonflies, presumably mating, based on how they’ve positioned themselves.  The bugs on top have different coloring than the ones on the bottom.  There were upwards of 20 at one point all buzzing around together.  << Click to Enlarge to see for yourself >>

Then we walked around the bend of the creek and Doris went and pulled something out of a tree.   These are COYOLES, a type of fruit thing, that resembles a coconut in flavor.  Doris explained that you can eat them at various stages, and when they get older and riper, they grow harder, and people often just eat the sweet nectar around them.  These were earlier stage coyoles, so the flesh was still soft enough for us to eat them.

It’s as easy as one, two, three.  Take the coyoles out of the palm tree, crack one open with a rock, and eat.   Here’s Doris and Edwin at the creek while we snacked on coyoles.

Not only is my niece one of the most well mannered in my family, she’s also a tough tomboy, able to manage her little brother and heave him up and down over fallen trees on a steep walkway, and cut down coyoles and all sorts of fruits in the forest nearby.

Here she is, hauling coyoles out of the tree.

Yanking Coyoles down from the tree

Now examining the loot

All of 12 years old, Doris is a pretty tough girl.  And now for the best photo – check out that machete she’s cutting the Mamey with!

You’ll see for yourself, which one is the real “pomme de terre”.    They are bland in flavor with a slightly sweet taste, and a texture similar to crunchy apple.   Brought to you by El Salvador.  It’s Jicama season.   Buy one, try one, enjoy yourself.

I had no idea how to prepare this thing, but ate it once in a salad at a restaurant.  No cooking needed.  Just peel and eat.   I squeezed lime, and dashed hot sauce into a bowl to “marinate” them a bit.  Then took them out and sprinkled “alguashte” over them.    Pretty good.