Sometimes I don't want to be bothered with titles

The more agreeable temperatures in Alegria's altitude allowed me to retain fluids, quickly shifting my urine's color from desert sunset orange to clear. With that healthy boost I returned to running, resuming the calf-and-quad killing hill training that has characterized my every run in El Salvador. And when I say hill training, I mean that in the most literal sense. Hill training. A single hill. As in I'm way up in the mountains, so running means flying down then climbing back up. Like 22 minutes straight up. By the end casual observers think I'm running in place. Jabba the Hut slithered by yesterday and looked like a comet in comparison. (What he's doing in El Salvador I'm not sure. I was too out of breath to inquire. Or care.)

From Alegría it was time to investigate Perquin, an old FMLN stronghold near the Honduran border, an area afflicted by ghastly military attrocities during the civil war. It's another tiny blip on the map, nestled high up in the mountains...blah, blah...but with an interesting Museo de la Revolución. (I didn't make the hike to El Mozote, a nearby village that was the site of a wartime massacre, but I plan to trek it with an ex-guerilla guide when I return.)

Perquin is notable for a few other things. We hung out with Peace Corps. volunteers gathered to translate for a group of kindly geriatrics working for Eyecare, enjoying free pie, beer, and wine for our whiteness, thus the assumed association with people affecting the lives of more people than pupusa vendors. We also discovered that not a single person in Perquin -- not even the tourist police or tourist information office -- understands the bus schedule. After waiting for two hours for a bus that, quite simply, never came, someone casually advised, "A veces, cuando el bus esta corriendo tarde, lo no viene aquí.."

Oh.

So we ended up stuck in Perquin for another night, which was far from a tragedy; rather, another "last chance" for pupusas, a circumstance, I'm convinced, was willed by Lord Pupusa so I could stumble and gorge myself upon pupusas de res. With at least four other pupusa variations rumored to be smacked out nightly in remote corners of the country, I'll be back to hunt before long. But first I have to zip to Costa Rica for a few hours to reset my CA-4 (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras) Visa for another 90 days.

Yesterday morning the bus to Marcala, Honduras decided to show, so we endured what I imagine feels like a four hour earthquake while crammed inside a tight metal closet as we traversed the 50km stretch from Perquin, El Salvador to Marcala, Honduras on a fully-packed chicken bus. The unpaved mountain pass cost a bit more than usual, perhaps, but I attribute that to the fact that the bus driver has to buy a new bus after every trip. The border crossing was the only interruption in the trip, a stampless excuse for border officials to extract an unofficial cash sum from any passing foreigners. Technically, all CA-4 border crossings are free. But on Friday the 13th it cost $3. Hardly worth disputing and feeding the Central American legacy of disappeareds.

In Marcala lunch was devoured and another country's tasteless Pilsener was chugged for a pocket change $2.75. Then I connected to La Paz, told Emma I'd terrorize her cute, single friends in Chile, and ended up in Comayagua. Fresh of the bus and girl-travel-partner free, I was basking in the well-kempt beauty of Honduran city babes. Trying to find a hotel I fell into conversation with a mango-vending 30-year-old with a litter of kids, whose husband has bounced sometime in the last year, and she insisted I take her number within a few sentences of revealing that information. If the kids call me "Dad" the next time we cross paths I might have to cut short my stay in Comayagua, which, regardless, is but a short stopover for baleadas and enchiladas hondureñas on the sprint to reset my Visa.

Show me your pupusa

Chasin' the pupusa again like every gooey bite holds the potential to elucidate secrets of the universe, all I want is a solution to Suchitoto's paralyzing heat. Even standing in the shade my sweatfalls feed the puddle spreading at my feet faster than I can replenish essential fluids. But even dehydration-induced deliria can't distract from the sole purpose in making Suchitoto a late addition to the El Salvador travel itinerary: pupusas de arroz. The rice flavor and more durable construction, how they tend to fragment instead of fold, make these whitish-brown, meat-, bean- and/or cheese-filled discs entirely distinct from their maíz-made cousins.

And how are they? Well, I spent three days in Suchitoto's hellish heat, where sweating is as much excitement and the most vigorous activity you'll see during the sunlight hours. (Though the mix of guys and girls gyrating in partner with their own images in the mirror-walled discoteca makes for amusing nightlife.) As the sun retires, carts and comals and jugs of curtidos, squeeze bottles of salsas and short benches around little wooden tables dot the streets and central square, firing up $0.25 pupusas for all passerbys.

Suchitoto is a silent town of culinary highlights on the beautiful Lago de Suchitlán. Besides being a pupusa-fiend's must-visit, the paletas artesanales (handmade popsicles) are a revelation, especially in the desert heat: the paletas are thick, creamy treats made from everything from sapote to oreo to moraqueso (blackberry cheesecake) to canela. Simply the finest, most refreshing treats I've ever licked.

With Emma, my rum-powered Irish partner in hangover lazyness and food-tourism -- which means our between-meal gaps consist of hours of conversation concerning the next meal, or recollections of other foods we've eaten around the world (and Emma is quite well traveled) -- I've accomplished little during the handful of blissful days since we departed Juayúa. (I remain alone, however, in my passion for "sex tourism," Emma having quickly deduced that strolling, curve-flaunting Central American women are just as responsible for the drool dribblets discoloring the front of my t-shirts as any pupusa mamá.)

Yesterday we finally mustered the energy to mount a bus toward cooler mountainous climes, settling for a few nights in quaint Alegría. It's yet another charming Salvadorean town where the citizens remain unjaded by tourists -- but where we were taken advantage of for the first time in El Salvador, being charged $7.25 each for the type of plato del día (plus licuado) you can find in any Salvadorean market stand or bus terminal for less than $2.50 per plate. Needless to say, I wasn't served the entire cow, plus pound of rice, wagon of tortillas, and garden of vegetables I'd paid for. The only way such a meager meal would cost $7.25 in any comedor is if a $5 bill was served on the side (maybe substituted for a single tortilla).