A Trip to Berlin

Today Basilia and I went to Berlin. Interestingly, everyone there speaks Spanish. Oh, that's because it's Berlin, Usulután, here in El Salvador. It's home to one of El Salvador's two large geothermal power plants, which together generate about 25% of El Salvador's electricity. We donned hard hats and got a great personal tour of almost two hours' duration from Guido Molina, one of the facility's chief engineers. He's been working at geothermal plants since 1992 and was a real wealth of knowledge on a renewable energy technology I'm just starting to learn about. We had a good look inside the building that houses the two largest turbine/generators and made an excursion out to see some production and re-injection wells. The whole plant looks very well maintained and includes all the safety equipment you would expect/hope to see in such a facility anywhere. A fascinating visit -- I´m hopeful we can make this a field trip destination for the class.

(left) Guido Molina and a spare turbine rotor



After the plant tour, Basilia and I headed on into the town of Berlin and from there caught a bus up to Alegría, said to be the highest elevation town in El Salvador (about 1600 m). We had lunch at Cartagena Restaurant, which has outdoor tables on a deck with stunning views of the Lempa River valley and surrounding mountains. We had to leave to catch a pickup truck ride down the mountain in time for the last bus back to San Salvador, so seeing the sulfur lake in the volcano crater will have to wait for next time.

On the way home, the long distance inter-city bus that picked us up had to come to a screeching halt along the Pan-American Highway because a herd of cattle was galumphing leisurely across the pavement. You gotta love the random meetings of the ancient and modern that are everywhere in Central America.

Speaking of volcanoes, I chose the name for this blog because in El Salvador it really does seem like you have a volcano looming over you just about everywhere you go. This is especially striking to me because I have spent lots of time in neighboring Honduras over the past 15 years, and that country, despite many geographic and cultural similarities with El Salvador, is almost devoid of volcanoes (islands in the Gulf of Fonseca being the only exceptions).

(left) View of the Lempa River valley from Alegría