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Writer's pictureMiriam Schmitz

Eat, Dance, Love 🌮💃💛

Updated: Apr 21, 2023

"Is this now your Julia Roberts moment, Miriam?"asked me Brian from New Jersey and laughed at me.

We were shaking for laugh.

"Hahaha - you mean like in Eat, Pray, Love?" I ask him.


"Yeah, exactly - you are in your mid twenties and single - traveling to many countries, on the way to find yourself - don't you?" he asked me with a smile on his face.


"Haha - well In my case It would be called Eat, Dance, Love!" I am laughing while answering.


Sitting in a Bar in el Tunco, el Salvador having this conversation with my fellow travel buddies Brian and Amber from the US and UK - reflecting on the last intensive day.


What happened two days before?

Well I only had two days left before leaving to Medellin, Columbia. So my actual plan was to do nothing.


Really nothing guys - just one time :-D


Just enjoying the beach, eating and relaxing. I was really in the need to spend some lazy days. But as usual if you think that way everything comes differently.


The days before were super intense. I spent amazing days with Andres from Santa Tecla, El Salvador.

He became a real friend and we had lots of fun, driving around El Salvador listening to music and singing in his car. We watched the sunset over Nicaragua and Honduras. We danced on Conchagua - which is a volcano.


Andres is a real gentlemen. So he made sure that I was safe and took care that I entered the Airbnb before he went back to Santa Tecla. My Airbnb in El Tunco was super basic. El tunic is a place where you can easily spent 100 EUR per night for a basic accomodation. But I found a Airbnb "probably" the cheapest available for 12 EUR a night. I arrived at night so everything looked a bit more "shabby". As I was super tired I just felt asleep.


Next day I woke up early, at 7AM and went to the beach. I enjoyed an early morning yoga session. Afterwards I went back to the place and ate some papaya with yoghurt for breakfast.

After having breakfast I wanted to do some groceries so I went to the center and walked through some stores. It was fun! But the weather is intense in El Tunco. I was melting without doing anything. Also I felt some kind of unusual stomach pain. So I made my way back to the Airbnb. I started cooking some broccoli with frijoles and Tortilla for lunch.


I saw one guy laying in the hammock. As I felt some stomach pain, I was not in the mood to say "Hi".

So I kind of ignored him.


After cooking, I sat in the community area and finally we ended up in a conversation as a friend of him joined us. "Hi! how are you doing?" "Good thanks!" and the usual question/answer game started "Where are you from/How long are travelling for?"


I found out that those two guys were from Ireland and Colorado, US. They invited me, to have dinner with them - which was amazing.


In the evening we went to a restaurant nearby. Already on the way to the Restaurant the Irish guy was kind of sticking to me. Which was not bad. I enjoyed his company. But that day, I really, really were not expecting to meet new people.


In the restaurant we sat next to each other and the conversation continued.

The beauty of traveling is: the casualty of unexpected moments. Like this. Or call it Serendipity "Finding sth. without looking for it" Probably its always the best way to meet people. Unexpected. The Irish guy, is called "Colm" by the way.

At the beginning I instantly forgot his name. Never heard this name before. I was thinking about a column in excel :-D. Yeah, really never heard this name! How the hell do they write it. But later I found out its a quite common Irish name.

So what I want to say Colm and I had an interesting conversation. Because he works as Outdoor Adventure Guide Around the world. Which is super interesting to me because I also fancied often to do an education in this field. Before deciding to do UX Design I actually thought about doing an adventure guide program from GMTI close to Galway, Ireland.

One of the reason I haven't decided to do this program was the long relationship I was in during that time.


But never mind. What Im trying to say, that Colm and me had some similar interests and loads of things to start talking about. Cycling around Ireland is one thing on my bucket list. As soon as I told him about that- his eyes were truly sparkling.


He couldn't stop to inform me about areas and places I needed to visit on that trip. I loved his enthusiasm.


I told him several times, that I do not have the capacity in my brain to store all this information. But he kept telling me about all those places I need to visit in Ireland.


Another thing is his strong Irish accent which made my life really hard. Half of the time, I was not really sure what he was telling me. It just left me often speechless and I needed to question him "What did you say?"


Moreover he made a lot of sarcastic jokes throughout this evening. Which confused me even more. I'm always the person who already does not understand sarcasm in german. So dealing with it in english, with an Irish accent - was probably the toughest challenge on that evening. But i really wanted to understand what he was saying.


After having some food we were thinking to grab a beer close to the beach. As we arrived to the beach we found out that all common locations were either closed or desertet.


On the corner of the street we saw some people playing some music. "Lets join them!" I said to Colm.


"Yeah, why actually not?" He responded.

Finally we grabbed some beers in the supermarket and joined the group on the street corner.

They changed the music to Salsa and we started dancing on the street. Which was amazing. Yeah it was not a huge thing, but it was spontaneous and we made some local - contacts so it was great.


I first danced a bit Salsa with a latino guy but then suddenly Colm asked "Miriam, I would love to dance with you - even I am not that crazy experienced" I really acknowledge his courage. Salsa dancing is not so common in our culture.


I definitely could feel that he was a bit nervous in that moment. Which was cute.

So of course we danced. But unfortunately the battery of the music box turned off, so we were dancing only to the music of a phone. Which made the situation even cuter. Anyway I enjoyed dancing with Colm. It was fun, and it is more the way he reacted to the situation. It shows that he is a pretty spontaneaus and interested to try new stuff.


But that's not the end.

After listening to that salsa song, I introduced some german music. Actually as you probably know - "showing off my disco fix skills" became kind of a thing during my trip. For me it is somehow a part of my personality so I love to show it.


I grabbed the hand of Colm and showed him the steps. I guess that was a nice signal from my side, that I took his hand and not one of the other guys. I can't really remember what the reaction of Colm was towards this dance - but we had lots of fun.


"What about you guys? Do you have some dances to show off, from your countries?" I started laughing.

The girl from Bristol and Colm friend from Colorado were not reacting to my question. But Colm did.


It really surprised me.

"Yeah, I can show you some Irish dance" he answered.


He really did!


I was really surprised by his reaction. I did not expect to meet someone interesting that night, but he seemed more and more to be.


So someone put some Irish folk on the phone and we started to dance. It was incredible. I had so much fun. We laughed a lot. We looked incredible stupid but that was part of this wonderful moment.




At one point we left the corner party and walked to the beach. Our group of eight got smaller. There was just me Colm the American and the British girl left.

At the beach it was already clear that Colm and me sat next to each other. Actually I can't really remember what we were talking about.


Oh one thing! I definitely remember. What compliments do you guess did Colm make me?


Any assumptions? Like you are cute, brave or whatever 😆


Almost:

He said "Miriam, you are the most friendliest german person I ever met!"


While writing I'm still laughing about this comment. It's a super nice compliment. But it's also really funny though. 😂


While writing this situation is already few weeks gone. But never mind it was a nice situation. At one point Colm asked me "Well I need to go to a toilet" "Me the same!"


This was the truth!

but yeah I know how this sounds.


So we left the other ones and searched for a public toilet close to the center of el tunco. Unfortunately the public toilet was closed but happily we saw one pub filled with a bunch of people.


"Lets check this place" I said to Colm.

Loud music was buzzing down the steps. "Could we use the toilet?" I asked the woman of the bar. "Yeah, if you pay sth." I watched Colm and watched back to the bar woman "Well we will drink something"


After returning from the bathroom. I watched Colm


"So we should drink sth. then its okay" i said.


"What do you think they play some karaoke - should we check it upstairs?" Colm asked.


"Yes, sure, why not!" I responded to him.


We walked to the karaoke stage upstairs.

I guess now while writing this afterwards, that was probably pretty impressive to him. Later on I found out he is really into karaoke. Which again surprised me - never met a guy who likes karaoke 😁.


We sang two songs together. The last one was incredible. All the people in the pub were singing, dancing and celebrating with us. It was such an awesome vibe!

As his friend Justin already waited at the airbnb that we should returned, we walked back.

Colm quickly gave Justin the room keys and then we walked together to the beach and he kissed me.


Next day: Colm and his friend moved on to Santa Ana. Which was great! Having a sweet last memory.


"Miriam, at one point you have to come over to Ireland" he said.


"Anytime you are in the mood to explore a new place, I would be delighted to show you around" Colm said and left.



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