El Salvador Diaries - Part 3

**April 21 – My First Day of Volunteering, Chalatenango, and Trying Pupusas

**

Today, my volunteer work finally officially began, something I had been looking forward to for a while, since Ranulfo had told me about all sorts of interesting projects he wanted to start in the near future.

Since I had told him about my previous experience – not only from volunteering but also from working on various projects with my dad – Ranulfo immediately knew which project would be a good fit for Hagen and me.

To protect the terraced area next to the pool, he had planned to build a stone wall along the hillside, preventing heavy rains from causing landslides. He wanted the wall to be roughly waist-high so that in the future, guests using the pool would also be able to put their belongings on top of it. The area next to the wall would then be paved with stones.

At the far end of the garden there was a large pile of stones, and our first task that day was to carry enough of them over to the construction site for the wall.

Luckily, both Hagen and I were in pretty good shape, because some of the stones weighed between five and ten kilograms. In order to carry as many as possible at once, we loaded the stones onto a small, ladder-like metal frame, which allowed us to transport several smaller pieces at a time.

In the intense heat, sweat was dripping from us, but we kept working for hours until we had managed to collect enough stones.

In the afternoon, I went with Ranulfo and Hagen by car to the nearby larger town of Chalatenango, because Ranulfo needed to pick up a few things. First, we stopped at a restaurant to eat, then we took care of the shopping.

We drove back to the farm, and later, as evening approached, we went into the village to eat pupusas.

A pupusa is a traditional Salvadoran dish that is essentially a hand-shaped, filled corn flatbread. The dough is filled in the middle, then closed up again before being cooked.

The most common fillings are:

Queso: cheese, such as Salvadoran quesillo, which is similar to mozzarella
Chicharrón: crispy fried, ground pork
Revueltas: a mixture of cheese and chicharrón
Frijoles refritos: mashed, refried beans
Loroco: an edible Central American flower, often combined with cheese.

We only managed to find one place selling pupusas, and according to Ranulfo, they didn't even come close to the real thing.

For me, though, it was still really interesting to try one for the first time. It reminded me a little of a Mexican quesadilla.

April 22 – Stones at Dawn, Doña Reina’s Breakfast, Ruben Arrives, and an Unexpected Loss

We still had a huge amount of stones to carry over to the roughly seven-meter-long wall.

Since Hagen and I already knew what our task would be that day, we got up before six in the morning to avoid the worst of the heat and started working immediately. By around eleven, we had managed to transport enough stones.

Although Hagen's Spanish was fairly limited compared to mine, it didn't cause any problems at all. We could talk about all kinds of things.

Hagen was twenty years old and came from the Cologne area in Germany. After finishing high school, he decided, like many of his fellow Germans, to take a year off before starting university – what is known as a gap year – and set off travelling.

He had already been on the road since October of the previous year, although so far he had only visited a few countries in Central America. He had spent a significant part of his trip in El Salvador because, like me, he had been drawn to the country by Bitcoin.

He had already had his own Bitcoin “awakening” around 2020, when he realized the future potential of this revolutionary technology. He had also read several books about Bitcoin, including the classic The Bitcoin Standard.

He had previously spent time in various Bitcoin communities, such as El Zonte and Berlin – the latter being a small mountain town in the heart of El Salvador. He had also attended Bitcoin meetups both there and in Germany, so he had plenty of experiences and stories to share about the subject.

I, on the other hand, was still a “new” Bitcoin maximalist. I had reached my own realization about a year earlier, although by then I had already managed to invest a significant amount of money. Before this trip, however, I had hardly ever been part of any Bitcoin circles.

Apart from my brother and my own circle of friends, I practically didn't know any other Bitcoin holders.

That was why it felt particularly good to finally share everything I had learned with someone who was genuinely knowledgeable about the subject.

By that point, Hagen had already spent more than five months with Ranulfo. He was attracted by being close to nature, as well as by the opportunity to learn as much as possible from Ranulfo about plants and agriculture.

Although I had only been at Esquinita del Bambú for my first week, I had already fallen deeply in love with this idyllic environment and with the way we lived here in harmony with nature – with the plants and animals.

Every morning, when I stepped out of my little cabin, I was greeted by birdsong. The incredible variety of plants and trees provided a habitat for countless different bird species.

One of Ranulfo's projects, which was also intended to become a tourist attraction, was a birdwatching tower. Near it, he planned to stretch ropes between the trees and hang different kinds of bird food from them, attracting the birds closer and making them easier to observe.

There was also a multi-level lookout tower built around a tree. From there, we had a beautiful view of the mountains stretching out in the distance.

The whole place had completely captivated me emotionally.

Every Tuesday, a local woman came to Esquinita to help with cooking and cleaning.

We called her Doña Reina, and to me she was a true angel. She was raising four children on her own and came to help us every Tuesday – of course, in exchange for payment.

She always prepared a typical Salvadoran breakfast for us with a cheerful attitude and great humility, and by lunchtime she could easily have several different meat dishes ready as well.

After lunch, the long-awaited long-term volunteer, Ruben, finally arrived. Before coming here, he had spent a month at another volunteer project in Colombia.

He was half Spanish and half Scottish, although his accent was completely Spanish.

A week earlier – before I arrived – a duck had also spontaneously joined the farm. It had probably escaped from somewhere nearby and simply wandered into the garden.

It was swimming in the water tank next to my cabin and, much to my annoyance, it would loudly quack at night, making it difficult for me to fall asleep.

That day, however, I didn't hear anything.

When I went over to the water tank, I saw it floating motionless on the surface.

As I got closer, it became obvious what had happened: unfortunately, it had died.

I told the others, and Ranulfo said that it had probably died in a rather unusual way. Perhaps it had been bitten by a water snake.

The first thing Ruben did was bury the duck.

Although I felt sorry for it, I couldn't deny that I wasn't going to miss its early-morning quacking.

Now that Ruben had joined us and our little team was complete, Ranulfo decided that we should visit his friend Henry and his family.

We walked over to their house, where they welcomed us very warmly. The two boys offered to show us around their garden and introduce us to the plants and trees growing there.

It was amazing to think that the forest we walked around in roughly half an hour belonged entirely to this family.

It was full of mango, banana, guava, sapote, tamarind and countless other Central American fruit trees, many of which I had never even heard of before.

Henry, who was around the same age as Ranulfo, told us not only about the plants but also about the dangers of the Salvadoran wilderness.

Fortunately, there are far fewer venomous snakes here than in other Central American countries, but it is still useful to know which species you need to watch out for.

Coral snakes are the only truly deadly species, and if someone is bitten, they need to immediately seek out someone who has antivenom.

It was scary to hear about this, but at least it was reassuring to know that in most communities there is someone who has access to antivenom, making it possible to save lives.

The stories about snakes were still running through my head on the way home. To make matters worse, it also started raining, so we quickened our pace to get back to Bambú as soon as possible.