After Guatemala, we took a shuttle across the border into El Salvador. It was the easiest crossing yet - we didn’t even need to get out of the minivan! We spent 11 days in El Salvador in total, we hadn’t planned to pass through so quickly, but it felt like we had enough time there to explore.
Santa Ana:
Our first stop in El Salvador was Santa Ana - a quaint city in the north of the country. We stayed in a lovely hostel in a huge colonial building, and because there are too many tourists in El Salvador we had the hostel to ourselves for the four days we were there! Like all cities in Latin America, Santa Ana has a busy Central Park surrounded by old buildings (a theatre and a municipal building) and full of vendors of food and drink. We spent a day wandering around the streets of Santa Ana, which has a lot of beautiful old buildings.
The famous dish of El Salvador is pupusas - a maize flatbread with a filling, usually beans and cheese (but there are lots of different fillings you can have!). We loved trying pupusas in Santa Ana, and we ended up eating them a lot! They are cheap - around 50p each, and they have lots of vegetarian options (and meaty ones too).
One of the main reasons we wanted to stay in Santa Ana was to hike the Santa Ana volcano, which is the highest volcano in El Salvador. It’s not a big volcano (2381m), and the hike only took an hour or so. At the top you can see the crater lake, which is bright blue, hot (80 degrees), and emits sulfur gas. The hike is supposed to have good views across the country and to the nearby lake, but sadly it was very cloudy on the day we went so we couldn’t see anything!
Tacuba and the Parque Nacional Imposible:
After four days in Santa Ana, we travelled on a very crowded chicken bus with our luggage to Tacuba - a small town in the moutains in the north of the country. We even saw an actual chicken on the chicken bus!
Tacuba is famous for producing coffee, which is sold around the world. Tacuba sits in the National Park Imposible - the reason for our visit; we stayed in the home of a family who organise hiking in the park.
We spent a day hiking in the park, doing around 12 miles in 8 hours. Not many people visit the park as it has a reputation for being tough (impossible!), and it certainly aas a tough hike - the paths were overgrown or non-existent, and you were either walking a steep incline or decline, there was no in between! Despite this, we had a good time - there was lots of nature, wonderful views across to the Atlantic Ocean, and we had a friendly guide.
La Ruta de Flores:
The ruta de flores (the route of the flowers) is a winding route through the El Salvador countryside, connecting colourful colonial towns, coffee plantations, and farms that grow flowers. Sadly, we missed the peak flowering season, but we enjoyed travelling along the route (by chicken bus), and stayed for a few nights in the small town of Juayua. We timed our visit in Juayua over the weekend when the town closes off the central streets to host a food festival. There were lots of stalls set up, mostly with BBQ meat and fish, and some music, drinks and dancing.
We decided to get the bus to another town on the route - Apaneca, to go zip lining. I hadn’t tried zip lining before, and as it is cheap in El Salvador it seemed a good time to try! There were 14 zip lines in total (the longest over 400m long), which zipped down the mountainside. Ash had done it before so he was away with no bother, I felt a bit nervous but absolutely loved it - we both had a lot of fun!
Whilst we were zip lining, we met John (a Canadian ex pat) and his friend Ivonne (visiting from Colombia). We enjoyed chatting to them both, and John kindly invited us to stay with him in San Salvador (the capital) for the night. So after the zip lining we collected our bags and spent the evening in John’s appartment, where he cooked a lovely meal for us. We enjoyed getting to know John and Ivonne, and Ivonne only speaks Spanish, so that was good practice for me! Ash helped with some DIY. The next day we all went to the local market to buy some fruit and veg, and to try some food - I had seafood soup, Ash had chicken, and we both had drinks in a bag! Then John drove us to our next location - the beach at El Tunco.
Some time at the beach in El Tunco:
We stayed for three nights in El Tunco, which is a famous surfing town. The beach wasn’t the nicest we’ve seen, and at high tide it mostly disappeared! And it was the most touristic and expensive part of El Salvador, and we ended up staying in a room without aircon to save money, but we were so hot it was hard to sleep! Luckily for us, John is a member of a beach club in El Tunco and visited everyday with Ivonne, so we got to hang out with them in the club, chilling in the pool and having lovely food and drinks. Ivonne and I went surfing one day (I wasn’t actually surfing, just flailing!), and we all did some body boarding. Overall we had a lovely few days chilling at the beach, before hitting the road again - this time to Nicaragua.
El Salvador - a round up!
Total days: 11
Total trip days: 114
Distance travelled: 236 miles
Total distance travelled: 8335 miles
Number of places stayed: 5
Number of planes: 0
Number of ferries: 0
Number of buses: 5
Number of trains: 0
Number of Mayan sites visited: 0
Favourite place: Ash - Santa Ana because of the old, cultural buildings and because we hardly saw any tourists.
Holly - El Tunco because it was great to spend a few days relaxing at the beach.
Highlights:
- Zip lining in Apaneca, which was a first for me and super fun! - Meeting some new friends, John and Ivonne, and enjoying getting to know them over a few days. Ivonne lives in Bogotá and we plan to see her again when we go to Colombia, and hopefully John will come to visit at the same time! - Hiking the Santa Ana volcano to see the crater lake. - Hiking in the remote and ued Parque Nacional Imposible. - Eating lots of pupusas!
Overall reflections: Though we only spent a short amount of time in El Salvador, we really liked it here. There were hardly any tourists there, it very much felt untouched by tourism, and almost undiscovered. We enjoyed being able to interact with the local people who we’re so friendly and helpful, everyone wanted to be our friend and make sure we were ok! Despite what we had read online, we found El Salvador to be very safe, and we didn’t once feel unsafe. The locals were always keen to let us know how safe their country now is, and it seemed to be a delight for them as well as us! It also meant we could use public transport to get everywhere (unlike other places we’ve been where this wasn’t alwaya the case) which helped with the budget too!
Next stop: Leon in Nicaragua
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