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.
We found a restaurant on the corner of the main square and sat by the open window on the first floor to get a good view of the cathedral (Catedral de Nuestra Señora Santa Ana, a very impressive gothic-style building beautifully lit up at night). From here we could also see the awards stage for the Tour. We had a couple of very nice micheladas (a cocktail made with lime and spiced sauces a bit like Worcestershire sauce, topped up with beer), I used to dislike them but am becoming a fan of as they are very refreshing in the heat. We could see different groups of cyclists heading to the stage for various awards, the tour was a proper international event and we could see people from all different nationalities. The awards culminated in a brief but very noisy round of fireworks.
We went for a walk around the square and were surprised to hear live rock music blasting from giant speakers and a stage. We stood and listened for a while, and soon saw Will from the hostel. He told us the group was covering Heroes Del Silencio, a Spanish group very popular in the 90’s, who the locals all seemed to know and sing along to. They were good and we enjoyed listening along to something a bit different to the usual latin beats.
Our hostel had lots of information about how to do a several local attractions by public bus, which was really useful and refreshing to see well-explained options without the need for organised tourist buses. On the Monday we set off to get the bus with Will to see some Mayan ruins in a nearby town of Chalchuapa. We got the bus and managed to find everything successfully, we were feeling very pleased with ourselves until we got right to the gate and realised the site is closed on Mondays! We quickly checked and found the other site in the same town was also closed the same day. After a quick round of photos through the gates, and determined to see the funny side, we set off to continue our day trip to the next stop-off point.
We boarded a different bus and headed to the next town of Atiquizaya, here we had a nice walk through this little town walking through the market and across a small plaza as directed by our hostel. We found a small taxi, driving a little Indian car called a Qute, there were quite a few of these in the town, obviously the preferred way to navigate the narrow streets at speed. We set off down some dusty bumpy roads and were taken to El Salto de Malacatiupán, some natural hot water waterfalls. There was a pretty valley with a river running through it and cascading off rocks into a series of pools. As we got close you could feel the heat coming off the water. Chris followed a couple of other guys in jumping off the edge into a deep area, a very strange experience as instead of a nice refreshing pool, the water was like a bath! He then had to climb back out up the steep rocks, not an easy task.
We hung around for a while before getting a bus back to Santa Ana. When we arrived back it was still only mid-afternoon so we went to check out the old School of Art in Santa Ana. This used to be a very impressive colonial-style building, but has been abandoned since the 1970s and is now just a shell. In Europe this would be either entirely fenced off, or properly propped up, but here you could walk around and take photos. There was a security guard on the front gate, and to get access you had to request a pass for free at the tourist office in the main square. We decided to go and do this, so after a quick trip to the tourist office (lovely friendly staff who happily filled out the entry form for us) and we spent a good hour wandering around taking photos of this crumbling structure.
On our way back to the hostel we popped into the cathedral and climbed the tower to get a great view over the city at sunset. The roof was accessed by a maintenance walkway of metal platforms and staircases, with large signs indicating that it was not meant for tourists and please don’t jump on it! Thankfully it was all pretty robust and only slightly terrifying walking up behind a low parapet over the main roof.
We returned to the hostel to cook pasta and pesto in the hostel kitchen, sitting and chatting to Will about travelling, as well as his time in the police. It was really interesting to hear where he has been since taking early retirement, definitely adding more places to my go-to list and nice to be chatting with someone who is older than us for a change.
The next day we headed out on a walking tour first thing. We’d had both Fatima and Hector at GuruWalk walking tours recommended to us, and happened to time it right with Hector running a tour that morning. From the start he set out that this would not be a normal walking tour standing by buildings and talking about them, instead we helped set the direction of the tour by saying what we were interested in. The majority were interested in food and recent history. He started things off with a detailed account of how he avoided being part of the gangs that controlled the area in the recent past when he was 15. His storytelling was really engaging, it was fascinating and really sobering to hear about the recent past of this country, and how many of his friendship group are now dead or in prison. It was a lot to take in, and we took a break from history with a tour around the market. This was also really well done, he collected a few dollars from each of us and we went to five different stalls, buying something from each stall for us to share. We tried an amazing custard thing with a bread pudding, lots of different fruits (most served in plastic bags with a spiced sauce and salt), a tortilla thing, an amazing fried corn fritter thing, and some delicious juices all served in plastic bags with straws. After the food we wandered over to a coffee shop where he knows the owners and we could all sit in a room and chat more about the recent politics and the government in a private space. It was a really interesting tour, and very different from other walking tours we’ve done before.
After the tour we decided we would head back to the Mayan ruins and try to get in again. This time we were successful, and spent a good few hours exploring both the sites. Tazumal is very impressive in scale, although the adobe rendering does somewhat make it look like a big concrete block in places. Casa Blanca had a really interesting museum, including a demonstration of how indigo is used to dye fabric. The explanation was given in Spanish again, and the lady was really clearly spoken and helpful, although we had to keep checking words as our vocabulary doesn’t quite cover manufacturing methods!
That evening we met up with Laura, who was on the Travelling Spanish course with us. We had kept it touch as we travelled up from Costa Rica separately, and when we realised we might be able to be in the same city at the same time we extended our stay by a night to make sure it happened! It was great to meet Laura’s boyfriend Kasper, and her friend Nanna, all travelling together until the end of April. We went for pupusas at Pupuseria Loyda on the corner of our street. Pupusas are delicious corn or rice flour stuffed with a filling of your choice, sold for $0.50 to $0.75 per pupusa, meaning you get a good meal for under $2! It was so good to catch up and we ended up chatting until the place was closing.
Our final day in Santa Ana we hiked up Santa Ana Volcano (known locally as O Ilamatepec), the highest point in El Salvador. It was pretty cool to climb both highest points of Panama and El Salvador with Laura. This hike was much easier though, with only two hours and about a 500m elevation gain due to a conveniently located bus stop!
We boarded the public bus at the terminal in Santa Ana, where the majority of passengers were other gringos off to do the hike as well. When we arrived there seemed to be some confusion about where to go, so we pushed ahead and found a guide giving an introduction in Spanish which we then had to relay to a group of English speakers. There were so many other people there, it was quite bizarre. We all had to buy a bracelet then follow the guide through the forest to the entrance to the park, where we paid the entry fee. Whilst queuing for the entrance we saw a familiar face, the Belgian guy who we had shared a bus journey with from Costa Rica to Nicaragua several weeks before. We were just catching up on where we’d been, and then suddenly we were being beckoned forwards and told to get walking as our guide had set off!
It was a strange system, we seemed to be a huge group of people walking up, with the guide very far ahead at times. At one point the people ahead of us took the wrong path and had to backtrack causing a bit of a backlog queue! Despite the large number of people, it was a nice climb up through forest and then onto open rocky slope. We chatted to Laura, Kasper, and Nanna, as well as Norbert, a Polish guy living in Colombia who we had been chatting to on the bus. Once we reached the summit you had a great view into the crater of the volcano, with a sulphuric lake about 300m below us and very steep drop off the edge. Our guide was keeping tabs on one person per group, so approached me to check we’d all arrived safely. It turned out he thought we were all related and thought Chris and I were taking the kids out for a walk, we had a laugh about us with our tall blond Danish ‘children’.
We took some photos and then saw everyone seemed to be eating ice lollies or chocobananas (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate and peanuts), we spotted the enterprising local who had hiked up with a large polystyrene box of frozen goods and all bought ourselves a chocobanana. It was fairly rushed at the top, as our guide came to tell us we needed to leave if we wanted to catch the 1pm bus back to town, most people set off following him down the hill again.
Our hostel had said it was easy to combine this hike with a visit to the large crater lake Largo Coatepeque, so we decided we would hop off the bus on the way back down and try to hire a boat on the lake for a couple of hours. This didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned. First of all the bus stopped randomly on the side of the road, waited a while and then the driver said we all had to get off and board another bus behind us (he was headed back up the hill because they were closing the road shortly). We then had to stand on the second bus as it bumped and wound its way down the hill, getting off in the small town of El Congo. From there we took a very expensive taxi down the hill, Chris asked the driver if he knew of places we could hire a boat and we were taken to somewhere and quoted $100 for an hour! This was much higher than the $20 in our guide book! We then had a confusing conversation with the driver who we couldn’t understand very well as he was using some words we didn’t recognise and talking very fast. He took us to a sort of low budget El Savadorian Centre Parks place which fronted onto the lake, telling us it would be $1 to get in and we could swim there. As foreigners we were actually charged $3, but there was indeed a nice looking swimming pool and some basic changing rooms.
We went down to the lake to try and hire a boat direct, it was the same company as we’d already been to but this time they wanted to change us $55 for the hour. The lake didn’t look particularly appealing to swim in as it was quite muddy and there were a few bugs around so we decided to go for a swim in the pool. It was nice to spend time there, a very local place with El Salvadorian families playing in the pool. We got chatting to a nice guy who had lived in California for years but had decided to come back to El Salvador when the country became safer recently.
We got a couple of Ubers back to Santa Ana, much quicker than the bus or our dodgy taxi earlier and pretty good value. We found a well-reviewed Taqueria Los Plebes and met up with everyone there. The food was great, and the place was really friendly and lively. There was a group of locals filming things on a phone, so I’m now assuming we’ll end up in the background of some kind of promotional video!
Santa Ana was a really nice place to base ourselves and see a lot of sights in the local area. It was great that we could head out for the day without the big bags and to enjoy exploring and getting to know El Salvador better. The people were very friendly, the food was delicious, and the history and culture really interesting. It was also great to meet up with Laura and co, we were going a similar route and all got on really well, so we made plans to meet up again, more on that in a couple of posts time.
