April 2025 – ChrisGreenwood.co.uk

Ruta de Flores – A trip through rural El Salvador

The Ruta de Flores is a chain of pretty towns in El Salvador not too far from Santa Ana. Each town has it’s own character and must see activities and people spend anything from a few days to a few weeks exploring what the area has to offer. We had opted to base ourselves in Juayua in the middle of the route.

We caught a taxi from our hostel in Santa Ana to the bus station, to board an old American school bus that would take us on two hour journey to Juayua. We got to see even more brightly and eclectically decorated buses here, and managed to perfect our pronunciation of the destination town sufficiently to find the right bus on first ask of one of the friendly locals. The bus ride went quickly as it wasn’t nearly as busy as we experienced in Nicaragua, and before too long we were checking into Hostel Doña Mercedes in Juayua which was small and family owned. We decided to walk around the town which was small, pretty and very quiet. At the weekends there is a locally famous food market and it comes to life but in the week it was just a pretty rural town. We found a proper pizzeria in the evening where we had probably the best pizza we’ve eaten on this trip. I did mention this when we paid to the man who I presume is the owner and he seemed quite unmoved, I think he understood me, maybe he’s just accustomed to hearing this night after night from the string of tourists who kept all five tables filled the whole time we were there.

Exploring Santa Ana – Mayan ruins, thermal waterfalls, and volcanoes!

Santa Ana is a small city in El Salvador, a nice place to base ourselves for easy exploration of a few key tourist sites in the country. We booked three nights at a small hostel here and ended up extending by a night as we liked it so much and there was lots to do.

For a change from the last couple of posts, the journey there will not take up the majority of this blog post! There were regular buses to Santa Ana throughout the day, all running from a nice and well-organised bus terminal (Terminal de Occidente) in San Salvador, the nicest bus terminal we’ve been to since Panama. We got a fast hour-long bus from San Salvador, with air conditioning and a proper luggage storage space, and made it in good time to check-in and go out exploring the town before dark.

The on-site hostel manager Eddy was really friendly and showed us around. We got chatting to another guest called Will, a retired police officer from near Wolverhampton. We’d heard Eddy and some other guests discussing a big cycling thing in the centre and we decided to head in and see what it was about. It turned out to be the Tour El Salvador, a multi-stage international cycling race which was finishing that evening in the centre of Santa Ana. As we walked in we got to see some of the women cycling past us to the finish line. There was a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere in town, with people sitting on the street to watch the race and all smiling and greeting us. We assumed this was because of the big event and festivities around it, but over the next few days we realised people in Santa Ana are just really friendly and wanted to say hello.

A Bougie Weekend in San Salvador

The journey from Nicaragua to El Salvador was a little complicated. Have a look at a map of the region and you’ll see that El Salvador doesn’t actually border with Nicaragua at all. The logical route overland would be via Honduras. However, last year the UK introduced a visa for Hondurans, and they responded in kind. Several months before we left I reached out to the Honduran embassy in London about getting a visa, but was told they needed to know exactly when and where we would be visiting. This is pretty impossible to predict more than a few days in advance, let alone a few months! So we almost gave up on the idea of going overland the whole way up Central America. I did some research though and found mention in a blog about a boat that ran a few times a week from Nicaragua to El Salvador without going through Honduras. Chris was initially pretty sceptical about my less than official findings! We’d thought maybe we could fly straight to Guatemala instead. However, from the start of the trip we met people travelling south who had been on the infamous ‘Mario’s boat’ and told us that El Salvador was a must do as it is safe right now and the people are lovely. It definitely lived up to the recommendations.

Discovering Beauty Off the Beaten Track in Jiquilillo, Nicaragua

It’s late at night and dark except for the light of the moon. I’m floating in a kayak in a estuary near a small village in Nicaragua that is well off the tourist trail. I have no phone, and I can neither hear nor see either Alex or our guide.

I realise that I’m totally alone, with no means of rescuing myself, in an unfamiliar country in an unfamiliar kayak.

I don’t panic however because I’m at peace in this beautiful place. The stars are shining, there is an occasional firefly and every time I dip my paddle in the water the disturbance causes a bioluminescence that briefly illuminates the water around me.

I also know that because of the darkness Alex and the guide can’t be too far ahead and if I just paddle onwards for a minute or so, hopefully I’ll be able to catch a sound of their paddles.

I’m the most relaxed that I’ve been on this trip and, although it took a while, I have now firmly fallen in love with Nicaragua

How did it come to this?

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