Two Months In

Aloha! My partner and I have now been on our journey for two months. Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala are already behind us, and we're about to continue on to Nicaragua.

El Salvador was a real surprise. Similar to Guatemala, the country is safe for tourists to travel through. We traversed it by public bus and had better experiences than in Belize – although the buses there were in similar condition, I felt I had to watch my luggage more carefully in Belize.

Right from the start, we discovered pupusas – THE Salvadoran dish par excellence, for both breakfast and dinner. Perfect for my partner, as pupusas are offered in many vegetarian varieties and cost only $1. Our diet therefore consisted largely of pupusas until we eventually got sick of them.

In Santa Ana, we spoke with a guide about the current situation in the country. He defended the regime and repeatedly emphasized the improved security situation after the gangs were crushed. Everything was much safer, everyone was now much freer.

A completely different perspective was offered by a tour guide on a tour near Cinquera – a real reality check for me. He made it clear that El Salvador has been regressing toward pre-civil war conditions: most of the land belongs to a few families, there is no freedom of speech. Many guerrilla veterans are imprisoned under Bukele's regime. Even the veteran we had the chance to speak with made it clear he didn't want to talk about current politics.

Yes, we feel safe on the streets – but with our online presence, we're careful not to criticize the regime until we've left the country. For those who want to learn about the civil war: check out the documentary "In the Name of the People – El Salvador."

After the civil war ended, into which the US had invested over a trillion dollars, the gangs, coming fro the US, took over El Salvador. So the suffering continued. Today the streets are safe again – but only if you pledge loyalty to the regime.

On the streets we see few people our age. Many are in jail and face similar oppression. The older people in the country are noticeably tired from the struggle, and it seems the population doesn't want to resist the current exploitation.

With this impression, we're now traveling to Nicaragua – also not a land of freedoms. Our route leads through Nicaragua to Costa Rica, from where we want to fly to northern Chile.

Along the way, I've started writing down helpful points that I'd like to publish somehow. Due to our fast-paced travel, however, it's difficult for me to pull out the laptop and start typing. For Nicaragua, we're now taking a month. We plan to stay somewhere in Nicaragua for a bit longer, and I hope to finally be able to publish the first posts about our journey then.

📚🎧 What I'm Reading

The Inquisition War

I've finally finished this book. I thought I'd delete the e-book from my Tolino before I could finish reading it. The book wears you down – but not necessarily in a good way. The story is incredibly convoluted. Sometimes it seemed to me as if the author actually wanted to write a few short stories that he then hastily patched together. The ending was surprisingly anticlimactic and left me unsatisfied. It's not often you read a book and wonder at the end why you actually read it. The hero of the story sacrificed everything, lost every person who mattered to him, and achieved – nothing. Absolutely nothing was accomplished by the main character. Every person who helped the main character suffered a blow of fate or was murdered by their own people. However, the book does offer deep insights into the cruel Warhammer universe and the human fates within it – and that's its real strength. As one of the first books in the Warhammer 40k universe, it was the first glimpse into the IP at the time. The author makes it more than clear: the Imperium of Man is an over-bureaucratic death machine that brings only suffering and destruction to its inhabitants. The book demonstrated the boundless extent of this universe's madness again and again. There's a scene that describes how pilgrims travel to a city similar to Jerusalem on a desert planet to view the Emperor's fingernails or an imprint in a cloth. This is celebrated annually on a grand scale, and when mass panic breaks out because the pilgrims get FOMO and absolutely want to see the fingernails, the local police simply open fire. Thousands die in the hail of bullets in front of the church, just to catch a glimpse of fingernails. If you want to know how cruel and absurd the Warhammer 40k universe is, this book provides impressive answers. Want a coherent story with a satisfying ending? Better leave this book alone.

🎮 Video Games

The King is Watching

There really wasn't much time to fire up the Steam Deck in the last two months. I've played Grim Fandango here and there, but the puzzles are too difficult for me to want to spend that much time on them. That's where the roguelike genre comes to my rescue. The King is Watching has been released as version 1.0 in the meantime and has tons of content to be discovered. I've only beaten the first two difficulty levels so far and still want more. Which buildings synergize more or less? What do the bosses do and how do I build a good economy? For the 30-40 minutes I sometimes have, it's just right.

Happy new year everyone :)