More Hurricane Damage

Fairways at the Corinto golf club covered in mud and debris

after Hurricane Ida's rain storm

Hurricane Ida has taken around 140 lives with 60 still missing and damaged or destroyed 1,600 homes leaving about 14,000 homeless. Many of these people don’t have insurance but hopefully the socialist government will help to rebuild their homes.

Our Good Smoke Bad Smoke campaign has raised $700! Thanks to everyone who contributed and I hope we’ll be smoking a Cuban cigar soon. I am debating if I should take half the money and buy 10 stoves (with valves, hoses and clamps) to donate to a local charity collecting for disaster relief. Certainly there is a need for them but it may be as or more important to get these stoves into homes cooking with wood - you have to be pretty poor to be using wood.

I just received photos of the Club Salvadorena Corinto Golf Club. The place is in Illopango and has a few holes alongside the big volcanic lake. Not a tragedy like demolished villages but a huge amount of damages with some heavy flooding and numerous fairways being covered by tons of boulders and mud. Luckily no loss of life amongst the staff. I’ve included some pictures on the power of flash floods. I heard it may take a year to fix the course and will cost an enormous amount of money.

With all of this news, I forgot to mention some big news. Lonely Planet has picked El Salvador as one of the top ten destinations for 2010! What, don’t believe me? Go to http://www.lonelyplanet.com/el-salvador/travel-tips-and-articles/42/15809

Ironically, LP just dropped El Salvador from their guidebook series but my friend, Paige Penland, is just finishing up one for Norton’s Great Destinations so stay tuned on that.

El Salvador will recover from this and I hope this winter is a great season for tourism. I personally am hosting 10 visitors and hope to get another 15 or so. My son is coming down on Thursday and we are hoping to do a little surfing and some golfing and lots of good eating and drinking. Maybe some zip lining or canyon jumping. Will let you know.