Falling in Love with El Salvador

Historically El Salvador has been a country that has had issues with gangs and safety; however the country is beaming with optimism and it is contagious.  Although the actions of their President are controversial (imprisoning over 60,000 people) most citizen's couldn't be happier and are so excited to be able to safely see their own country and be able to show their country off to visitors.  During our time in El Salvador we fell in love with this small central american nation and it's people.  So often we received a wave or a friendly honk with a thumbs up.  Any issue or question was quickly answered with people routinely dropping everything to help us or show us how to get somewhere.  We do wonder what will happen in a few years when people start being released, but in the meantime we would recommend everyone to start looking at buying flights and exploring.

April 6th – Quiet towns

We couldn’t leave our campground without going back and enjoying the hot springs for another few hours.  We couldn’t believe how beautiful and relaxing the hot springs were.  Alas all good things have to come to an end so we packed up the vehicle to explore the western area of the Ruta de las Floras, a mountain road known for flowers.

The route started at the community of Ahuachapan where we saw the source of the hot springs for the area, a location known as Los Ausoles which almost looked like a micro Yellowstone.  Next we explored the center of Ahuachapan which surprisingly was very quiet.  We assumed for Santa Semana people would be in the streets but it seems that the people of El Salvador choose certain communities to celebrate in, and this was not one of them. Paul tried to get a smoothie at 11:30am but was told he was too early.

We had read of a cute mountain town close to Ahuachapan called Tacuba so we headed there next only to find another quiet town.  There were some beautiful ruins of an old church but they were all locked up meaning it was impossible for us to truly appreciate them. 

Our next stop was the community of Concepcion de Ataco which was the opposite of quiet.  It seemed that everyone from the  surrounding communities had come here to celebrate the Holy Thursday portion of Santa Semana.  After finding parking we wandered the street, had a cold coffee and admired some other floral carpets created on the roads. We even watched the Santa Semana procession and a funeral procession face off in the street, someone somewhere is having a laugh about that.  Sadly, it was getting late and we had to find camping, which we decided would be a volcano crater.

We drove up some ridiculously steep roads following some side by sides and quads/4-wheelers but us and our van eventually made it to the crater; a spot we could camp for $5!  The place was very busy with locals relaxing in the cooler weather, having fires, taking hikes and rowing boats but by 7pm we had the place practically to ourselves for a nice quiet and cool night.

 

April 7^th – EXTREME GAMES

Yesterday, as we drove to the campsite we had noticed a very busy place with a labyrinth.  We enjoy doing labyrinths but hadn’t done one in years so we decided to backtrack a bit to test our navigation skills.  With it being Good Friday the place was already getting busy by the time we pulled into the parking lot, but we knew, based on the traffic we saw yesterday it was going to get way busier so we purchased our tickets and headed to the entrance of the maze.

The maze was tough and way larger than anything we had experienced before, we actually started to feel anxious about finding our way to the center and back.  According to online, anyone who knows the route can get from the entrance to the middle and back in less than 15 minutes, well it took us an hour and a half.  The amount of people also doing the maze actually made it more fun as you would see the same people again and again and greet them with a laugh, both knowing that you had been turned around. Kendra also didn’t do the proper research for this maze and thought there was an exit different from the entrance.  Once we rang the bell to announce that we made it to the centre we did a lap around the entire maze looking for the exit.  Just as we were about to use the emergency exit since we had seen many others use it, we were back at the entrance where the ticket checker made sure we rang the bell, or else we couldn’t leave the maze.

This adventure park had other things to do that they classify as “EXTREME GAMES”, which in general all involve zip lines or swinging over the edge.  The two “games” we couldn’t stop watching people do were riding a bicycle over a wire and surfing down a zip line.  Paul choose to ride the bicycle and Kendra decided to surf down the zip line.  We purchased our tickets, waited in line and before we knew it we were far above the ground.  Paul was first on the bike, he jumped on and the guy told him to bike slow, which Paul thought he did, until all of a sudden he had passed everyone else and had no real way to slow down.  The speed wasn’t his concern, rather the slight wobble from the wind that kept him concerned about the tire jumping off the wire. He survived.  Kendra was far less scared during her ‘game’, she jumped on the surf board with confidence and surfed her way down to ground level.

We drove to the community of Juayua in the heart of the Ruta de las floras where there were more flower carpets for Santa Semena and a large food market.  It was time for lunch/dinner (3:00pm) so for less then $10 we ate delicious “street food” that resembled something you’d get at a good restaurant.  Each vendor had their food on display so we picked what looked good. We both choose a food stall that had food we wanted, ordered and they brought it to our table in the middle of the park. Kendra had chicken stuffed with cheese and tortillas and rice and Paul had a seafood feast with shrimp and fish fillets.  A random guy even came by selling beer.  It was the perfect way to celebrate surviving EXTREME GAMES.

Just outside of Juayua is a relatively famous overlanding campsite, it’s a free spot in a farmers field.  We arrived met the farmer and his family and set up for the night beside a few other overlanders.  We spent the evening watching the animals and playing some games.

 

April 8^th – Surrounded by Volcanos

We woke up and met our overlanding neighbours who all had different goals and ambitions. Some were going to live in Belize, others were going to continue traveling, and one family was going to teach in El Salvador and open a French café/restaurant. Next we returned to Juayua; we had missed the procession for today but the market was busy and we wanted to purchase some coffee to drink and coffee grounds for future mornings as this area is known for its coffee.  I don’t know how we will survive Canada again  since after going to southern Mexico we have been spoiled with amazing coffees for relatively cheep prices.  Even the coffee we make in the morning with purchased coffee grounds from local producers have been out of this world. The only thing missing from our morning coffee is dairy/creamer, but the coffee still tastes amazing even with coffeemate powder in it.

El Salvador has a negative history with gang violence and murders but their current President went through the entire country and has purportedly arrested 60,000 people and threw them into jails that could only accommodate 10,000 people.  In general the people of El Salvador love their president but many dislike him for putting their loved ones into prisons with little to no trials or due process.  There are many who believe their loved one was innocent.  The president disagrees with these allegations stating that anyone put into jail either had known ties to gangs or had gang tattoos, determined when the police went into communities and searched the bodies of young men. We often wonder what will happen when people start being released as our understanding of the history of incarceration without rehabilitation is typically a recipe for worse future crime, but right now places that historically a tourist could not go are welcoming and safe. Once such place is Sonsonate, the last community on the Ruta de las Floras which was the murder capital of El Salvador.  This community still bares a lot of emotional scars from its past so we didn’t stay too long, but it definitely felt different then the other communities in El Salvador we had visited; a bit more grungy and real, but people were still friendly and curious and talked with us about Rupert.

Our final stop for the day was Cerro Verde National Park.  This national park historically was controlled by gangs with the police offering armed escort (for a small donation) for anyone wanting to hike to any of the three volcanos within the park.  On our camping app, iOverlander, there are numerous warnings about robberies and armed violence at viewpoints and on roadways, but this was all before the mass incarceration of people.  Salvadorians are exploring their own country for the first time in years and seeing Cerro Verde is one of those spots that they wanted to go to.  We couldn’t even get to the parking lot it was so busy! They had the equivalent of the Ministry of Tourism on the road to Cerro Verde explaining to people that the parking lot was full, so you didn’t have to pay to park if you were on the road, so we parked on the road and hiked up into the park. (NOTE: it was extremely busy due to Easter/Santa Semana, not because it was finally safe, its been relatively safe for a couple years now).

There are three volcanos viewable in Cerro Verde National Park, Cerro Verde, which isn’t that impressive and has been dominant for hundreds of years. Santa Ana, which you can, and we will, hike up, it is quasi dormant, it hasn’t erupted in about 18 years or so and last time it did it caused the evacuation of a community.  The final one is called Izalco which is mesmerizing to look at as steam still comes out the top and it looks like a stereotypical volcano and has caused monumental changes to the landscape of El Salvador with a peninsula 50 kilometer away made completely from volcanic rock from this volcano. 

We viewed all the viewpoints in Cerro Verde National Park and even did a small circular hike with a guide, but by 3pm the clouds were rolling in and the views were disappearing so we decided to camp in a hotel parking lot where many people hire a guide to take them up Santa Ana Volcano. 

We had a pretty low key evening of movies in the van and beers and the BEST Michelada (passionfruit and tajin flavoured) at the hotel restaurant, excited to hike up Santa Ana in the morning.

 

 

April 9^th – Hiking up Santa Ana

We  woke up at 6:30 am which is the earliest time you can hike up the volcano and learned there are two options to hike up.  The first option is to spend $35 usd for a private group; the second option is $3 usd per person for a public group that will leave whenever the minimum amount of people is reached (15).   We originally thought to do option 2 but a couple from the Cayman Islands was going to do Option 1 regardless and wanted to make sure they were on top of the Volcano before the large groups of people start hiking.  We decided to also do the first option because it cut both our costs in half as we would share the group cost and we could leave immediately.

The hike was beautiful with sweeping views of Lago de Coatepeque and the other Volcanos.  We didn’t know what to expect when we arrived to the top of Santa Ana Volcano but were happy with what we found.  It was a barren landscape up to the crater.  The crater itself was dynamic with multicolour lines all the way down to the bottom which contained boiling water that was a beautiful blue colour.  We could have stayed here for hours but the wind was wild and would occasionally pelt us with rocks and sand to remind us who was in charge.

As some may know Bitcoin is an official currency of El Salvador and pretty much all businesses accept it (Unfortunately Paul only has Ethereum and alt coins so we never attempted to pay with cryptocurrency).  Samuel, the guy from the Cayman Islands who is originally from Canada said it was a must do to tip his guide on top of a volcano in bitcoin and so we got to watch this crazy interaction where bitcoin, a legal tender, was transferred from one digital wallet to another on top of a volcano. We are glad we checked that item off of our bucket list, even though it had only been on our bucket list for about an hour.

During the course of our hike down Paul tried to practice his Spanish with the guide, which went pretty well, having conversations about our trip, El Salvador and of course the weather.  Paul did have an awkward incident with some Police as we hike down when they said to him “Diez Fruitas” at least that is what Paul heard, where he instinctually said “No Tengo Fruitas” or I have no fruit and opened up his bag.  Turns out what they has actually said was enjoy your trip, meaning Paul’s response made no sense, especially since there were apples in his backpack…  The Police burst into laughter and everyone around us had a good chuckle too.

Samuel and Jo were the interesting couple we shared the hike/guide with, both living on the Cayman Islands, but neither were citizen, Samuel is Canadian and Jo is English, they just applied for jobs, and after successfully interviewing were offered jobs with the government of the Cayman Islands.  It really made us think maybe we should think about applying for jobs in the Cayman Islands as we are getting used to warm weather and being so close to the ocean.

After saying goodbye to our new friends we drove Lago Coatepeque, the location where the rich El Salvadorians own property.  Unfortunately, most of the lake is privately owned or the location of restaurants/nightclubs makes a quiet day on the lake a challenge.  Samuel and Jo had been to the lake and found it underwhelming, we took their advice and avoided the touristy areas but there was one cooperative that allowed camping for $5 in a rural part of the lake.  We drove over and set up camp, taking a swim in the lake to wash away our sweat and then spent the rest of the day relaxing by the beach and looking out to the volcano we had just climbed, which just happened the highest volcano in El Salvador.

 

April 10^th – Pupusas with a view

We had hoped to go to the Pompaii of Central America, Joya de Ceren, but after driving from the lake to the Archaeological Site we learned it was closed on Mondays.  Usually we would have googled when it was open however we ran out of cell phone data and learned we could not recharge our Guatamala cell account in El Salvador.  We thought we could pay by credit card, but their app only accepted Guatemalan credit cards. 

Joya de Ceren was a small Mayan village covered in volcanic ash and perfectly preserved.  It sounded interesting but unfortunately due to our timeline we had to skip it. 

Our next stop was groceries in the community of Quezaltepeque, Kendra successfully navigated us to a grocery story without internet, but the grocery store was in the middle of town near a huge market, the roads were wildly busy and the drive was an adventure.  The benefit of a grocery store so close to the market is while Kendra was waiting in line to pay for our groceries Paul went to the market and purchased eggs and cheese at a fraction of a cost of those in the grocery store.  Paul also had to run around the grocery store once we realized that they weigh the vegetables and put a price on them in the produce department, not at the cashier.  This system works extremely well and we are surprised we haven’t seen it in any other country. 

We decided to go to another national park just south of Guezaltepeque, Boqueron National Park.  This National Park is probably the smallest one we have ever done which means that very quickly we arrived at the main view point overlooking a volcano crater, we took a few photos, but spent most of our time reminiscing about Cerro Verde.  We had been told that there was a good restaurant with a view of San Salvador near the national park, so we decided to try the national dish of El Salvador, Pupusas.  They are tortillas filled with cheese and other ingredients eaten with fermented coleslaw and hot sauce on top.  You are supposed to eat it with your hands and not eat it like a taco, but we really struggled to eat it correctly.  Regardless, it was delicious and the views of San Salvador complimented the meal perfectly.

We decided to go into San Salvador as there was a microbrewery close to where we would be camping and we wanted to get a new SIM card so we would have data on our phone again.  After our errands we tried to go to a camping area within an eco park but the road was in very bad shape so we eventually abandoned our plan and camped in the parking lot of the eco park.

 

April 11^th – Back to the heat

Our first stop today was to visit San Salvador.  This city was also previously known as a dangerous place due to gangs but has begun to change since the arrests.  After getting caught in an infitinite  loop of one way roads on the opposite side of the highway we wanted to be on, Paul informed Kendra that there is a different navigation app that Salvadorians use, but he couldn’t remember the name of it.  We eventually found the beloved retorno and ended up where we needed to be, a parking lot on the edge of the historical central district. We saw the cathedral and national theatre and met some very friendly people wondering where we were from and checking in to see where we had been in El Salvador and making sure we were enjoying the country. After wandering we went shopping at the market.

One thing that we may not have shared before is that we have 10 +/- days of clothes each. We have had to dispose of some clothes along the way, have bought new clothes and touristy shirts, and had some clothes go missing when we have gotten laundry done (we also still have a random pair of socks we use for rags and did end up with a new pair of sweatpants in Mexico).  Kendra has regularly lost 1 pair of underwear the past few times we had laundry done.  Of course it’s her favourite pairs, which are also the expensive quick dry, smooth material, hiking ones. So with her underwear count below 10, she noticed a lot of booths selling underwear and was able to buy two new pairs in the market (for those wondering it was $5 for 2 pairs)! We also bought some grapes, avocados, and green mangoes- an El Salvadorian specialty at the market.  As we were walking back to the care we picked up one last “essential” item for the van, a pop up reflective pylon.  We have heard stories of people having trouble at some borders or when interacting with police because they don’t have a fire extinguisher or reflective pylon to put out in case of emergency, so we now have our pylon and we hope we don’t need to use it.

Next we decided to drive to Suchitoto because we had read that it is a beautiful colonial town on a lake.  We didn’t realize how hot Suchitoto would be as when we arrived it was close to 40 degrees.  The town was very quiet and our best guess as to why was today is the first day after Santa Semana and Suchitoto is where many people go to experience Santa Semana.  We think that the town was having an official day of rest from all the activities.  It was a colourful community but no different from other colonial cities we had been to in Central America.  We had hoped to people watch in the town square but only found a touristy restaurant with subpar food; however, their beer was very cold and delicious.

We ended up meeting a family originally from England but the parents had moved to Georgia and the daughter her partner had moved from Malawi to El Salvador to teach at an English school.  It was nice chatting with them and it made the decision to go to a restaurant with subpar food and food decision for us. We didn’t’ end up catching their names, but we are sure they will read this and say to themselves ”thank goodness they didn’t mention our dogs”.  They had two terriers that were curious about Rupert and tried to get his attention, but Rupert’s deafness and daftness meant that he slept through this interaction; he was too busy focussing on getting acclimatized to the heat that he didn’t have time to make friends.

After leaving the restaurant and a bit more exploring we headed to a campground near the Suchitoto Lake where we tried to avoid the heat by distracting ourselves with games in the shade of our awning.

Our evening was spent visiting and sharing beer with a German couple who rode their motorcycles from Ushuaia Argentina all the way north to their current location in Suchitoto.  We swapped stories and got a new appreciation for the roads ahead and what it takes to do this trip on a motorcycle.  Before we knew it, it was almost midnight and time to sleep.

 

April 12^th -  Doing our own Laundry again

By 8am it was sweltering hot in Suchitoto so we decided to pack up the van and do a bit more exploring of the area.  We said goodbye to our new German friends, Thom and Andrea-and swapped old SIM cards and currencies that we had for each other’s future countries and made our way to a Basalt Column waterfall.  Unfortunately, it is almost the end of the Dry season meaning everything is very dry and there was no water in the waterfall.  The views of the lake and the Basalt Columns was still worth the price of admission as we spent our morning sweating out the beer consumed yesterday.

We returned to a much busier Suchitoto and ran into the family from England again.  After a quick hello we had lunch at a Pupuseria and grabbed some ice cream for the drive.

We were in desperate need to do laundry and found and laundromat in a small community called Berlin.  We expected to drop our laundry off and pick it up tomorrow as we had done since leaving the US, but this was a laundromat that we would have seen anywhere in the US or Canada meaning we had to do our own laundry.  I don’t know why this seemed to be a stressful endeavour for us, but it was and with some help from the woman who owned the laundromat and a lady visiting her family from LA, we cleaned, dried and folded our own clothes. Nothing went missing this time!

Our final stop for the day was another volcanic crater called Laguna de Alegria a peaceful place with emerald water surrounded by the rim of a volcano.  It was cool in temperature and generally a cool place to be.  Being in nature camping beside a lake really made us want to relax for a day, but alas we applied to be in Nicaragua in one weeks time, and there was still lots to see in El Salvador and Honduras.

 

April 13^th – Preparations for future borders

We debated for hours whether or not to stay at the lake, but in the end decided to leave.  We were in no rush because we paid the camping fee plus the next day’s day use fee for the park, so Paul spent the morning writing the blog lakeside with a couple delicious cups of El Salvadorian coffee.  It never feels like we have slow starts to the day, normally the start of our days always consist of waking up, packing up, cooking breakfast then immediately leaving, but we could get used to these slower starts.

We also read about a cenote en route to San Miguel in the community of Moncagua so decided to spend the late morning/early afternoon relaxing in the water.  When we first arrived at the “cenote” we debated turning around as it appeared to just be an outdoor swimming pool but decided to spend the $2 and check it out, besides it was dog friendly!  Well, it definitely was a cenote but they had expanded it so more people could enjoy it giving some areas a outdoor swimming pool feel.  We still enjoyed it immensely, well Paul did.  There were tonnes of fish in the pools who loved to eat the dead skin off your body and Kendra was having none of that.  Paul was a little unsure after the nipple biting incident in Belize but felt better after a few minutes without feeling pain or seeing his own blood.

Before we knew it the temperature outside was nearing the mid 30’s so it was time to go to San Miguel and get some errands done.  We had made a decision to leave El Salvador on Sunday (2 days from now) so we needed to get our paperwork in order, specifically a couple vet certificates for Rupert (one for Honduras and one for Nicaragua) and various photocopies required for leaving and entering countries.  We thought we had enough for the entirety of Central America, but we were wrong. We made copies for entering countries, but it seems we’ve needed copies of drivers licenses and passports to leave with our van. Borders officials seem to want to keep a lot of mementos of us and our journey, and we are not going to argue with any official. 

After sitting in a lot of traffic we finally found a vet that was open and was willing to see Rupert right away.  After some discussion and a good examination Rupert had his clean bill of health.  We looked at google and were surprised to see that a place that does photocopies was only a couple blocks aways meaning within short order we had all our preparations done for future borders (well almost, but I’ll get to that later).

To celebrate Kendra wanted to get some pupusas and for some reason no restaurants in San Miguel near where we were located sold them meaning we spent an hour wandering the hot streets of San Miguel in search of food.  Kendra was lucky that the pupusa place she did find had the best Pupusa’s we had had in El Salvador; better yet they were the cheapest.  A full meal of pupusas with smoothies cost just over $6!! (65 cents/pupusa x3/person, plus $1-$2 for drinks).

It was still a few hours until sunset so we decided to drive to the coast.  We hadn’t seen the Pacific Ocean since Mexico so we felt it was time to be near the water.  The drive was uneventful but ended at a campground 100 meters from the ocean.  We took our chairs to the water and just sat staring at the water (and occasionally our phones or the iPad- we are currently watching El Chapo) until it was too dark to see anything.  Before going to bed we did the final thing we needed to do to enter Honduras, our Prechequeo.  The Prechequeo is a document that tells the government of Honduras all the questions the border guards typically ask you and is required to be filled out before arriving at the borders.  We were told it must be filled out 3 days before entrance to the country but we were undecided when we would actually enter the country.  Today we had made that decisions and now we truly were done all our preparations!

 

April 14^th – We got WIFI!!

Paul wanted a beach day!  He had a vision in his mind and he wanted to stop at nothing to find it.  He had been reminiscing about Baja and camping right on the beach and wanted to recreate on of those days. 

We drove down the coast as far as Punta Mango, known for it’s black sand and volcanic rock beaches, but nothing was fitting the bill.  Either there was no view, or no access to the water or it was a rocky beach.  After about an hour and a half of driving small roads where the minivan had no business in driving he finally gave up and went to the beach that many El Salvadorians say is their favourite, Playa Las Flores near El Cuco. 

We had heard that there was camping available but it wasn’t directly on the beach, we compromised.  We would camp away from the beach but would spend a lot of time at a beachside restaurant/bar enjoying the view of the beach.

After a fair bit of time, we eventually decided to go to the campground, set up camp then wander back to the ocean.  Well, that was the plan.

We had been debating about having a hotel day for a long time, mostly to have wifi and get caught up in the world and other tasks (including updating this blog on the internet).  Well, this campground had amazing wifi.  Before we knew it we were updating everything, downloading Netflix, video calling family, etc.  We ended up going to bed after midnight.  It seemed it had been too long since we had wifi and couldn’t seem to shut off our supply to the internet and go to bed. A fun fact is that we hadn’t had wifi since San Pedro on Lake Atitilan, and the wifi stopped working because the power was out, and the time we had wifi before that was outside of Tikal, and again the power went out at 8 pm and didn’t return before hotel check out time, so we had some unfinished business when it came to uploading and posting things.

 

April 15^th – Reminiscing about El Salvador

After another slow and hot (+32 at 9:30 am) start to the day we left the beach towards La Union, a community known for its heat.  It wasn’t really what we wanted but it was the last community before Honduras and there was a volcano that you could drive to the top of which gave you views of three different countries: El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. 

During the drive to La Union (less than 50 kms set to take over an hour), we couldn’t stop thinking about our time in this country.  We have thoroughly enjoyed the sites and the people.  They are so genuine and willing to help you.  They are genuinely excited to see tourists and want to strike up a conversation about what you have seen and what you enjoyed.  It was common for us to drive and get a honk or two and a wave when people saw our license plate.  It really made us feel special and that we have accomplished something. 

We are at the point in the trip that we are running into people (or learning through Instagram) that people who had hoped to do the Pan-American highway have decided the journey in their mind was not the one their heart wanted and have stopped and turned around or are planning to turn around.  We often would talk about people “only” going to Panama or “just” to Mexico.  But really these are massive accomplishments that really take you out of your comfort zone.  No matter how far someone goes, it is an accomplishment; however, we still have our sights set on south.

We picked up our groceries and some water from La Union and headed up the volcano and a road where some people said high clearance and 4x4 is recommended and other said any vehicle can go up it.  Well, we made it up but it was a difficult 6 kilometers.  It was worth the drive, but maybe just barely.

On top of the volcano was our viewpoint but due to pollution and fog we could only see two countries.  We had a similar let down at our view point for sunset, the weather was just not cooperating with us.  We did have another very positive experience with the El Salvadorian people though.  A man went out of his way to take us to the Mirador for sunset and help Paul practice Spanish.  We half assumed that he would want money for helping us but after all the help he just wished us well and said he was glad we enjoyed his country.  We truly will miss this country.