Mayo brothers embark on ambitious tourism project in El Salvador

One wouldn't suspect it, but El Salvador and Ireland are similar enough.

“We are surrounded by dairy farmers, we do buy milk off our neighbour here down the road,” quipps Rob Comer.

Rob and his brother Ed are currently building a backpacker's hostel in the small Central American country. And the two Mayo boys from Ballyvary are honourable ambassadors for their culture. Occasional hurling practice with the locals spreads the gospel of Gaelic sports in El Salvador.

The Comers are building everything from scratch, every square metre of civilisation is being wrestled from the forest, to create a little backpacker's paradise. Buildings need to be raised, foundations and footpaths laid. Electricity wiring, it all has to be done.

“We've accidentally turned into property developers, because no matter if you're not thinking ahead with plumbing and electrical stuff and sewage and all sorts of stormwater, you're just going to get yourself into problems.”

Some of those will sound familiar to the Irish ear. For example, when Ed and Rob were doing some renovations to the entrance so that they can let trucks up, they never got around to fixing the gate:

“And then suddenly there were cows cruising in every day. We planted mango, papaya and lemon trees. And if the cows get in too far into the site, they'll go straight for them. So we had to fix the gate quickly.”

Vibrant community

But the Comers aren't living in the sticks. There's existing tourism just a 30 minute walk away. The place has got a pretty vibrant nightlife, particularly on the weekends.

“It's funny, because when you get here, you really do feel like you're away from the hustle and bustle. But it is just two kilometers away, so you can walk it,” Rob states.

The idea to build a backpacker's place in El Salvador didn't come out of the blue. Rob finished a finance degree and afterwards he went traveling, went to Barcelona, Austria and backpacked around Columbia. That's where he got the inspiration for the current project.

“I was lucky enough to spend a couple of years in Australia, aswell, traveling and working there and managed to save up some money. I worked in construction and in the mines. And then, with those savings, I moved together with some friends and Ed.”

They bought the piece of land in El Salvador at the end of 2023, with no real plan laid out. Just the idea, build from nothing, basically. It's definitely been a challenge, staying on top of things.

The Comers have spent the last year integrating with the community.

“We're friends here with like some of our neighbors. We are in the middle of a vibrant community,” Rob explains.

“I've been learning Spanish for six years. I'm at a level where I can have basic conversations. But the easy part was actually just how sound all the neighbors were.”

The first week in, they were still only sleeping in a hammock, one of the neighbors, an elderly mother, she was 96 years old, had just been sick and she passed away. There was no way around it, they had to go to the funeral.

“I was at the actual, the church part, because that's where I was invited to. It was a Catholic funeral. So I was familiar with all the formalities,” Rob remembers. “And when I was actually walking out, I was behind the hearse. I was trying to make sure that I was towards the back. I'm not a chief mourner, the only gringo in town, really.”

But then as the procession moved forward, more people would join and then, to Rob's dismay: “At one point when I looked out, when we were getting to the cemetery gate, I was actually right up at the front relative to the people that were joining at the back.”

Quite an experience for the new arrivals, and quite Irish in itself, the cultural experience of a funeral. And they've had a few more of those community events since.

Rainy challenge

“The rainy season here is about four or five months of good, solid rain every day, from April to September,” Ed points out.

“We weren't really prepared for the torrential downpours of rain. There was one time June last year. We're close enough to a river here. There's a road that goes over the river. But in the high rainy season, this road gets flooded. But it's actually still needs to be used as a road because people on the other side of the community live across it.”

So the Comers helped the locals out by fetching stones and rocks from the river to go and rebuild the road after a storm.

Describing the end goal, the Comers reveal, their backpacker hostel will have common areas, for people to hang out, and then accommodation. For now there are tipis to stay in, but that might change.

The long-term vision would be to serve food three times a day. So guests would be provided with food and drinks at a reasonable price.

The project is completely independently financed. The Comers don't do all the work on the three-acre site by themselves. There are two other lads working with them: Joe Hayes, from Kerry and Galway man Charlie Stevens. And volunteers are coming and going to help along the process.

“El Salvador went through a serious reform where the president locked up all of the gang members that used to pillage the country in a miraculous turn of events. He managed to clean the streets. There has always been tourism here for surfing, but it's a lot more common now for backpackers to come here.”

The Comers are trying to catch the wave in El Salvador. Rob says they're trying to make the place more backpacker friendly with an international, multicultural atmosphere, and that sort of Irish hospitality.

Unfortunately, Rob and Ed couldn't watch the Ballyvary hurling team bag their first piece of silverware. The senior team recently won a Division 2 league final, but the Comers couldn't find a stream. But the spirit of the sport lives on, even in El Salvador.

“We have two hurls here, and the local soccer pitch is close by, so we've been showing the local kids some hurling.”