Mayan Heritage Tour: El Salvador Positive Tours

We booked today's full-day archaeological excursion through Viator last week before leaving Vancouver, eager to dig into more Central American Mayan history during our week in El Salvador. We stirred slightly earlier than usual, if rolling out of bed at 7:00 AM can truly be considered early for a pair of retirees. Missing the Barceló's lavish morning buffet was out of the question, particularly with our tour guide, Gabby, scheduled to collect us precisely at 8:30. As luck would have it, Jay and I were the sole passengers on the manifest today, turning our outing into an impromptu private tour with Gabby handling both driving and narration duties. Joining our small convoy was the tour company's social media specialist, riding along to capture video snippets and still frames for their digital marketing presence. We had the entire day mapped out to explore two primary Mayan landmarks, a circuit that would ultimately carry us deep into the western highlands and nearly up against the Guatemala border.

Joya de Cerén

Our first stop of the morning was Joya de Cerén, El Salvador’s sole UNESCO World Heritage site and widely billed as the "Pompeii of the Americas." Unlike the monumental stone pyramids and royal ceremonial complexes that dominate most Mayan circuits, this place offers something far rarer: an unvarnished snapshot of ordinary agrarian life. Around 600 AD, the nearby Loma Caldera volcano erupted violently, smothering this modest farming village beneath four to eight meters of dense, relatively cool volcanic ash. Because the catastrophe occurred so suddenly, the everyday physical infrastructure was remarkably flash-frozen in place. Protected beneath massive modern metal canopy roofs, the excavated wattle-and-daub dwellings, communal storehouses, kitchens, sleeping quarters, and even an intact circular sweat bath (temazcal) remain intact. Fortunately, unlike its Italian counterpart, an apparent warning earthquake gave the two hundred or so inhabitants enough time to flee, leaving no human casualties behind: only their abandoned agricultural tools, ceramic bean pots, sleeping mats, and furrowed garden plots preserved beneath centuries of compacted tephra.

Tazumal Ruins

From Joya de Cerén, our route led further west to Chalchuapa and the imposing ceremonial complex of Tazumal. If our morning stop celebrated the humble daily existence of the common farming class, Tazumal provided the towering counterpoint: monumental stone architecture, royal prestige, and sacred civic power. Anchoring the archaeological park is the formidable B1-1 main pyramid, an expansive multi-tiered acropolis rising roughly twenty-four meters above the surrounding residential streets. While archaeological purists often wince at Stanley Boggs’s heavy-handed mid-century restoration, which sealed large expanses of the ancient stone structures under a controversial skin of gray cement to halt erosion, the raw scale remains genuinely compelling. The complex witnessed continuous engagement spanning over a millennium before its sudden abandonment around 1200 AD, revealing intricate drain systems, wide ceremonial plazas, and unmistakable trade links to Teotihuacán and the Toltecs. The ceremonies stopped but people have now been living there non-stop for over 3000 years!  Walking among the shadowed balustrades and adjacent ball court under the afternoon sun, you feel the profound spatial weight of an empire that commanded the regional obsidian and jade trade long before the first Europeans ever drew breath in the Americas.

Lunch Overlooking Lago de Coatepeque

Before turning our wheels back toward San Salvador, our appetite finally caught up with us for a late lunch at 2:30 PM overlooking the breathtaking amphitheater of Lago de Coatepeque. Perched high along the rim of this colossal volcanic caldera, our table offered an unobstructed, sweeping panorama across sapphire-blue waters cupped tightly by verdant, sunlit mountain slopes. Far below, the forested contours of Isla Teopán seemed to float lazily on the glassy expanse, while gentle cloud shadows drifted across the brooding silhouette of the Santa Ana volcano in the distance. It was the quintessential Central American postcard: cool caldera breezes cutting the afternoon warmth while we lingered over plates of different chicken plates with rice, trading archaeological notes and soaking in the tranquil geometry of a volcano that collapsed tens of thousands of years ago just to provide us with an extraordinary dining backdrop.

The last hour of the trip was getting back to San Salvador.  We got here at around 4:40 pm.  It was a fantastic day thanks to Gabby who drove and explained so much about the ancient past of her country.

Acclimatization, Authentic Bazaars, and Tomorrow's Plans

Waking up in the Barceló San Salvador, we availed ourselves of an excellent hotel breakfast buffet, feeling surprisingly well-rested despite crossing an hour back from our usual Pacific time zone. Today was deliberately earmarked as a low-intensity buffer to recover from transit and acclimate to the capital before tomorrow’s full-day expedition through the regional Mayan ruins.

El Salvador operates fully on the US dollar, sparing us currency exchanges but inflicting the inevitable mental gymnastics of converting every menu and fare into Canadian funds: a reflex hardwired into any traveling Canuck. We bypassed a comprehensive sweep of the historic core for a targeted first taste. Transportation proved remarkably painless: an Uber from the gleaming towers and diplomatic calm of the Zona Rosa down into the Centro Histórico set us back between $4.15 and $5.50 CAD ($3 to $4 USD) for a twenty-minute crawl.

Our primary destination was the sprawling Mercado Central. Both Jay and I possess an enduring weakness for the dense, chaotic, unvarnished markets of the developing world. Had we closed our eyes to the Spanish chatter, the sensory barrage of pungent aromatics, maze-like corridors, and strict demarcations between raw butchery, towering produce, and household sundries could easily have dropped us into urban pocket bazaars in Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Suva, or Mumbai. It was authentic, vibrant, and delightfully unfiltered.

A subsequent Uber ride carried us a similar distance to Metrocentro. The contrast was immediate and glaring: swapping sensory bazaar life for the air-conditioned, familiar banality of international fast-food brands vying for attention.

Returning to the hotel, any smug morning confidence regarding total jetlag recovery evaporated into a protracted, heavy afternoon nap. With our step count lingering at a modest 4.6 kilometers, the evening agenda calls for a low-key dinner reconnaissance on foot around the Zona Rosa, keeping in mind that the morning buffet must be thoroughly settled well before our 08:30 departure tomorrow.

Transit to El Salvador: Thunder, Lightning, and Late-Night Arches

The day began unsparingly early with a 5:20 AM wake-up call. By 6:50 AM, an Uber had us on our way to Vancouver International, lining up smoothly for the first leg of our journey aboard Air Canada to Houston. The connection could not have been better timed; we had an easy, unhurried layover before boarding Avianca for the southbound run.

Leaving Houston, which sat two hours ahead of Vancouver, we tracked south and slightly east toward Central America, touching down in San Salvador at 8:50 PM local time. Sorting out the pickup point for an Uber took a few minutes of airport navigation, but our ride materialized just as an enormous tropical thunderstorm broke overhead.

The 48-minute drive into the city was completely dark, yet illuminated by a relentless and spectacular lightning show. The torrential downpour left plenty of standing water across the roadways, but our driver navigated through without trouble.

We checked into the Barceló tired and somewhat hollow, having eaten sparingly across both flights. At that hour, options were scarce, leaving a massive, brightly illuminated McDonald's sign as the glaringly obvious beacon. It was an uncharacteristic culinary detour for us, but sustenance was required. By 12:05 AM, with bellies full of fast food and rain drumming outside, deep sleep was the only item left on the itinerary.

Passport Stamps Instead of Candles

The agenda today was intentionally lean, largely because tomorrow morning kicks off our transit to Central America. Our opening leg to Houston departs at a civilized 9:15 AM, where we will make our connection down to El Salvador. Base camp for the next seven nights is the Barcelo Hotel in San Salvador. The final full day of the trip conveniently coincides with Jay's birthday. We have never been ones for wrapped packages, but travel is always the perfect gift! 

 

For quite a while now, marking our birthdays has meant packing a bag and heading elsewhere. I spent some time scouring the eJournal archives to see exactly where Jay's birthday, on September 8th, placed us each autumn. 

Looking back through the logs, I realized we remained firmly parked at home during two of the past nine September runs. Naturally, those static years lined up neatly with global pandemic lockdowns. The trail runs back through the seasons following our early retirement in 2014. It turns out Jay's heart surgery was the real catalyst for the whole tradition. We marked that particular milestone that year with a grand cruise, setting a very high benchmark for the celebrations that followed.

 

• 2025 - Last year, we flew to Barcelona for a one week Mediterranean cruise on the MSC Orchestra. 

• 2024 - Jay and I did a quick, 4-night stay in Las Vegas at the Excalibur. We packed in a few shows and had our first visit inside the Sphere.  

• 2023 - This was our first return to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in years. We stayed full-board at Playa Los Archos Hotel in the Romantic Zone 

• 2022 - We had a trip up the Inside Passage on the MS Zuiderdam and revisited our familiar Alaskan ports. 

• 2021 - On Jay's birthday, this eJournal has a picture of a COVID-19 BC Vaccination card on a mobile phone.  

• 2020 - The eJournal shows we were home having some wainscoting installed.

• 2019 - On a one-week cruise from Boston, MA to Montreal, QC.  It took place without eJournal documentation. Jay's birthday writings never made it online.

• 2018 - We left for Cuba a few day's after Jay's birthday. We stayed at classic 'Hotel Altantico' just a half hour outside of Havana. 

• 2017 - Our first big trip after Jay's bypass operation! It was a 24-night Mediterranean and Adriatic cruise aboard the ms Westerdam.
  

 

Admiring a Bentwood Eagle

A visit to the thrift shop produced an unexpected encounter on the shelves: a small oval container fashioned from thin wood veneer, its lid carrying a crisp, hand-painted First Nations eagle in traditional black, red, and white formline. It had an unmistakable presence that commanded attention. I picked it up and carried it through the store, though the price tag was so negligible that bringing only the box to the cash register felt almost improper. To appease the retail ledger and justify the transaction, I circled the aisles until I finally settled on a shirt to buy alongside it. The clothing was mere camouflage; the little box was the real acquisition.

I discovered it is called a bentwood box and is named for the woodworking technique used to create the container itself.  Rather than carving a hollow from a solid log or fastening multiple flat pieces together at sharp angles, thin strips of wood are steamed or soaked until pliable, then bent around a mould into smooth, curved shapes to form the oval rim and walls.  On the West Coast, bentwood boxes are a celebrated Indigenous tradition, masterfully crafted from a single cedar plank that is grooved, steamed, bent into four sides, and pegged together. For smaller market crafts and shaker-style oval boxes like this one, thin veneer is steamed and overlapped to make a lightweight, seamless container.

Tucked inside was an original cardstock slip identifying the artist as Una-Ann of the Tahltan First Nation, noting the Eagle as a representation of wisdom, strength, and foresight. Beneath the text was a local 604 telephone number and an old Hotmail address.

A search online filled in the wider biographical canvas. Una-Ann spent twenty-five years working as an Indigenous support worker in the Langley School District, dedicating a major chapter of her career to secondary students before retiring in 2019. Rather than slowing down, at age sixty-six she enrolled in the Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art in Terrace to further advance her carving and traditional formline practice.

The physical ephemera dates this container back roughly twenty years, hailing from the Lower Mainland artisan market circuits of the early 2000s. Twenty years is barely a footnote in historical time, but in an individual human life, it is a substantial expanse. It represents the arc of an entire teaching career, generations of students passing through classrooms, and the gradual obsolescence of early digital tools. Yet through all that accumulated living, the painted veneer remained unchanged, patiently preserving a single afternoon's work until it was rescued from a crowded shelf.

I love it. I plan to send a message out to that vintage Hotmail address. Whether the note reaches an active inbox or bounces silently into the digital ether, it feels right to offer a simple word of thanks to the artist whose handiwork now decorates our coffee table.

Reserving Some Time at Ruins

With Wednesday's departure fast approaching, Jay hopped onto Viator this morning and locked down our day tour into El Salvador's Mayan past. 

Our last glimpse of the country was back in 2011 on an ambitious, self-navigated bus haul through Central America. Tikal in Guatemala was the undisputed heavyweight champion of that trek, with its towering limestone temples practically daring you to climb them. This go-around is a bit different. We are trading grand royal propaganda for Joya de Cerén, the UNESCO-listed village famously flash-frozen under volcanic ash while everyday life was still in mid-stride, along with stops at San Andrés and Tazumal.

   

We are far more accustomed to rambling multi-week itineraries, but a seven-night outpost in San Salvador for Jay's birthday week leaves plenty of room for ambition. The beauty of a country this compact is the complete lack of wasted motion. When you can pivot from cloud-draped volcanoes to high-altitude coffee fincas and Pacific surf within a couple of hours, a single week suddenly feels like plenty of runway.

A Free Plastic Chassis Will Come With My Toner Refill

It would cost more to buy an original Brother OEM drum and a fresh high-yield toner cartridge than to simply purchase a brand-new monochrome laser multifunction printer. My apparent decision to participate in modern electronic wastefulness was not self-imposed. It was forced upon me by the bizarre arithmetic of printer manufacturers. The bargain-basement, third-party drum and toner replacements I have been using over nine years were finally catching up with me, turning out increasingly fuzzy, degraded prints that looked more like faint charcoal rubbings than sharp text.

We do not print in massive volumes these days. Even so, I cannot imagine living without a reliable Wi-fi printer in the apartment. Having that immediate utility on the home network is essential. Furthermore, while I never scan multi-page documents in bulk, retaining the flatbed capability to quickly photocopy an official form or digitize a passport spread into a clean PDF remains a genuine necessity. Giving up the scanner glass altogether was out of the question.

I was mildly surprised to find that desktop laser printers have shed virtually none of their bulk over the past decade. Mechanical physics is an unforgiving taskmaster. Unlike silicon chips that shrink with every manufacturing cycle, a laser engine is a miniature thermodynamic paper factory. It requires a physical tray capable of holding standard letter sheets, a C-shaped mechanical paper path with pickup rollers, a full-width electrostatic drum, and a ceramic fuser unit operating at 200°C that demands physical clearance and thermal shielding so the plastic housing does not warp. Once engineers figured out how to tuck a 250-sheet cassette beneath the print engine and top it with a flatbed scanner glass, geometric optimization hit a solid brick wall.

The replacement heading our way is the Brother HL-L2465DW. In order to get a fresh OEM drum and toner cartridge, I essentially had to purchase a free upgrade to the entire plastic box surrounding them. An Amazon driver will be dropping it off tomorrow during Sunday delivery. It will be plugged into the smart outlet and put straight to work.

Go Big or Go Home!

We headed out this morning for the sold-out 11:00 AM screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, armed with tickets secured three weeks in advance. The drive out to Langley was remarkably smooth, taking an easy half hour each way.

The entire motivation for making the trek was the rare technological indulgence of 70mm film projection. Langley hosts one of only nine venues in all of Canada capable of running physical 70mm celluloid. And it's one of a mere 41 in the whole world that is screening it.  For the inner statistics geek, the mechanical scale alone is impressive: at 5-perf standard projection speed, film whips through the gate at roughly 112.5 feet per minute. Over a nearly three-hour running time, that translates to approximately 18,000 to 20,000 feet of heavy ribbon, an astonishing three linear miles of physical polyester rattling past the lamp.

The immense scale and uncompressed audio certainly dominated the room, though being accustomed to our 55-inch OLED panel at home spoils conventional projection. Throughout the darker scenes, one could not help wishing for absolute, self-lit black levels rather than the typical hazy grey inherent to massive xenon bulbs. Cranked to that cinematic volume, our home Onkyo setup would undoubtedly incite an immediate strata revolt on Carnarvon Street.

As for the film itself, Nolan delivered his signature revisionist brand of mythmaking. Homer's ancient epic was stripped of whimsical divine intervention, turning the gods into psychological fractures and transforming Odysseus from a favored hero into a shell-shocked veteran rationalizing two decades of disastrous avoidance. Penelope’s court became a tense, claustrophobic political thriller rather than a portrait of passive virtue.

A few peculiar artistic liberties stood out. Polyphemus was gifted a horizontal ocular slit, an anatomical trait belonging strictly to grazing prey animals, making the legendary brute resemble an oversized, irritated goat scanning the Mediterranean coast. On the other hand, staging the final bow-stringing contest as an agonizing physical struggle of aging, failing muscle, rather than an effortless demigod triumph, added genuine dramatic weight.

While modern digital contrast has fundamentally altered our visual expectations, experiencing three miles of roaring celluloid in a packed cinema remains an exceptional mechanical spectacle. I am very glad we made the trip to see it in true 70mm.

A Parade's Not a Parade without Elephants!

When Jay expresses a lifelong fondness for parades, it helps to understand his benchmark. He was raised on the gold standard of pageantry. The Kandy Esala Perahera is a centuries-old, ten-day sensory marathon that tends to ruin ordinary civic street parades for anyone who has ever witnessed it.

The History and Sacred Weight 

The tradition traces back to the 4th century CE, when the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha was smuggled into Sri Lanka hidden within the hair of Princess Hemamala. In ancient Ceylon, physical custody of the Tooth Relic conferred the divine right to govern the realm.

Originally an exclusive royal rite interwoven with ancient agricultural rituals to invoke the monsoon rains, the modern festival took form during the mid-18th century under King Kirthi Sri Rajasinghe. He decreed that the sacred casket leave the palace sanctuary to be paraded alongside the pageants of Kandy’s four guardian deities (Natha, Vishnu, Kataragama, and Pattini), bringing the blessings directly to the public.

The Ten-Night Lunar Progression 

The festival follows the lunar calendar, building in scale each evening to culminate under the Esala / Nikini Full Moon (Poya):

• Kap Situveema: The quiet prologue during which sanctified saplings are planted at each devale to inaugurate and consecrate the proceedings.

• Kumbal Perahera (Nights 1 to 5): The opening processions. The streets fill with temple dignitaries in traditional regalia, whip-crackers clearing the route, fire-dancers spinning blazing coconut husks, and Kandyan drummers setting the rhythm with the Geta Beraya.

• Randoli Perahera (Nights 6 to 10): Named after the golden palanquins of the royal queens, the pageant expands substantially in scale. Dozens of caparisoned tuskers parade in elaborate vestments illuminated with intricate lights, accompanied by legions of acrobats and traditional Ves dancers.

• The Grand Randoli: The peak procession coinciding with the full moon. The chief Maligawa Tusker elephant strides down white linen carpets laid along the street, carrying the golden Karanduwa (the sacred casket enclosing the relic) upon its back.

• Diya Kepeema (The Water-Cutting Ceremony): At dawn following the final night, chief priests travel to the Mahaweli River at Getambe to strike and part the water with a consecrated sword. This ancient fertility ritual petitions for ample rainfall and prosperous harvests before the concluding daytime procession.

When your childhood reference point for a street parade involves fire twirlers, massed drum corps, and illuminated tuskers under a full moon, a standard holiday float never quite measures up.

      

Because Sri Lanka is on the other side of the world from British Columbia, the evening there was just getting started when we were getting up.  The YouTube video stays online.  So, if you have an extra five hours, you won't miss a thing!

Tuesday Night's Duck Swap Dinner

The Duck Group convened in the West End last night for a rare weekday summit. Full-time leisure affords certain scheduling liberties, meaning Tuesday is the new Saturday. Our journey from New Westminster involved some minor SkyTrain friction heading into Vancouver, but the delay barely impacted our 4:00 PM arrival at Tim and Jiwan's residence.

Conversation flowed easily with a little wine, though we collectively realized our discussion topics have decisively shifted to reflect a senior status. The gathering also functioned as a logistical crossroad. Tim recently returned from a motorcycle camping trip in the British Columbia wilderness, and the calendar ahead is suddenly crowded with departures. Jay and I are preparing for an upcoming birthday expedition, while Ed and Shinji are embarking on a cruise alongside Ed's mother as she celebrates her ninetieth birthday. Due to these conflicting itineraries, our next dinner is officially deferred until mid-October. As we have now gained control of the ducks, the responsibility for hosting that subsequent dinner falls to us in New Westminster.

We ate a bit early to allow for a stroll down to Sunset Beach. There is a distinct joy in having a proper beach right in the middle of a city's downtown. It is remarkable that residents have access to such excellent public facilities within a short walk from their front doors. A lingering tinge of wildfire smoke in the atmosphere provided the requisite particulate matter for a rather spectacular sunset over the water.

It was a thoroughly fun evening, and we are already looking forward to gathering the Duck Group here. We headed home at a reasonable hour, surprised only by the completely packed SkyTrain. Whatever the general public was doing near 10:00 PM on a Tuesday, TransLink clearly no longer needs to beg for customers.

The Highly Exaggerated Decay of 2026

I grabbed a bus uptown yesterday as it seemed simpler than either walking up the hill or driving and parking. My goal was a 10:30 appointment for a free hearing test at Connect Hearing! on Belmont Street, right near the new park area. One must appreciate the efficiency of a quick transit ride when the alternative involves an unnecessary physical struggle with gravity.

The results from the clinic are exactly what one expects at this stage of the journey. I have a slight hearing loss in my left ear. This diagnosis comes merely a week after seeing the eye doctor to complain about visual floaters. It appears my biological hardware is slowly failing its routine warranty checks.

I am clearly starting to fall apart in 2026. The sheer friction of maintaining a human frame is exhausting. It is a good thing I have an extensive archive of photographs, as I may soon need them to remember what the world actually looks and sounds like.

An Unsolicited Technology Grant to Certain Unnamed Parties

Deep inside one of my spare tech drawers sits an arsenal of basics for home automation: glowing colour bulbs, voice assistants, and smart plugs that obey a spoken whisper or the tap of an app. To me, it is everyday convenience. To our circle of close friends, it is alien magic best left quarantined in cardboard.

I have contemplated distributing this surplus out of sheer benevolence. Leaving lamps and appliances without dedicated IP addresses while capable routers sit idle is a domestic travesty. Civilized adults should not be trudging across rooms to flick manual plastic toggles, like cavemen before the wheel's invention, when they could dim the lights without leaving their chairs.

Yet my digital collaborator, Ajith, warns that gifting connected gadgets to the happily analogue is not charity; it is a binding contract for unpaid IT support. The moment a household network hiccups, our relaxed social dinners will instantly devolve into troubleshooting radio channels over appetizers and resetting bulbs between courses.  The process would add unnecessary friction, he says.

To the uninitiated, the ultimate luxury remains a dumb wall switch that has performed with complete reliability since 1978 without requiring a single password or Wi-Fi handshake.

Still, my generous heart aches for those stumbling around in manual darkness. The surplus silicon awaits. If anyone in our circle wishes to be dragged into the modern era, your resident administrator is open for business. Just remember that emergency troubleshooting after nine in the evening will be billed at the rate of one very good glass of wine per question.

Lit from a Fraser River Barge

New Westminster’s modest footprint, barely fifteen square kilometers tucked along the Fraser, remains its greatest civic asset. While sprawling municipalities across Metro Vancouver scatter their populations across endless subdivisions, our compact geography enforces a genuine, walkable sense of community. Everyone navigates the same hills, shares the same river breeze, and marks the same seasonal milestones.

Last night brought the annual Hyack Fireworks, the long-standing Fraser River ritual that effectively folds up the season. Organized for decades by the Hyack Festival Association, the display serves as our official signal that the bulk of the summer has slipped past. It brings a brief, inevitable twinge of autumn reality, but the gathering remains an essential local routine.

The riverfront drew crowds from the late afternoon onward. For the first time, the newly completed public plaza adjacent to the Pier West high-rise towers was open and fully operational, providing fresh boardwalk space to settle in while a DJ spun tunes into the evening air.

Jay and I headed out at 8:45 PM, taking the direct walk down Sixth Street for straightforward water access before the scheduled 9:30 PM launch. The show ran for a sharp, tightly paced twenty minutes over the river. The sequencing was crisp, the concussions carried genuine weight, and the overall visual density sat comfortably above the standard baseline of previous years. A solid, well-timed punctuation mark on the season.