As you drive from San Salvador to Suchitoto, you pass gnarled trees twisted into startling shapes, burnt swatches of field, bunkers set into the hillside, and entire churches blown apart save for the arched entrance, leaving a path of sky where the congregants once sat in prayer. But you will also pass high groves of fruit trees and untouched fields of lush grass swept sideways by the wind. Once again, the stark contrast between beauty and the ravages left by a brutal civil war is in evidence everywhere. Back home in New York, I was waiting for a friend of mine at a local restaurant. Out of the blue, a woman sitting alone, nursing a tropical drink in a shade of blue I’ve never before seen in liquid form, struck up a conversation with me. She spoke of a renowned scientist who has built a renewable energy plant in Nicaragua and wants to do the same in… guess where? El Salvador.