What’s the best thing about El Salvador?
It’s the people.
Everyone we met in El Salvador went out of their way to be helpful to us! We started our journey on the beach in the small surf town of El Tunco with the intention of learning how to surf. After a few not so promising days, we befriended Omar from the surf shop who brought us to his family’s beachfront restaurant for two hours of private surf lessons.
The black sandy beach was the perfect spot to learn the mechanics of surfing, which we learned is more technical than the surf instructor in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” says. Omar also organized a waterfall hike and took us to his favorite spot to get pupusas – corn-filled tortillas with your choice of filling. Omar said to get the pescado and it did not disappoint!
After the beach, we traveled inland to Juayua where we stayed in a lovely garden hostel with a fun hang-out area and over 500 movies! There was something magical about cooking stirfry and watching “Little Miss Sunshine” that made us feel at home. Here we met Douglas who brought us on a six-hour trek to see seven different waterfalls!
This trek included hardhats, rappelling equipment, a machete, and lunch — all of which Douglas carried to make sure we had a pleasant and safe experience!
While we were mowing our sandwiches, he was sharing his with the perros, and while we were swimming and enjoying the sun, he was picking up garbage people left near the falls.
We took a day trip by chicken bus to Ataco to enjoy the colorful streets filled with some impressive paintings.
We enjoyed a nice lunch, a splurge of pesto and shrimp pizza with a carafe of sangria, before walking up to the mirador that overlooks the entire town! The best thing about taking the chicken buses is that all of the locals want to know where you are going and what you are doing and they always make sure you get off at the right spot!
After our relaxing and unplanned stay in Juayua, we went to Santa Ana – our jumping off stop for Volcan Santa Ana. We weren’t expecting to love the town as we were walking down the dreary streets, but then we met Chillen. He was the cousin of Julio, who owned the Pool House Hostel we stayed in, and he drove us in his white Honda Accord to the park to hike. The volcano hike was fun with great views at the top of Lake Coatepeque and a green sulfur lake in the middle of the crater!
After our group of five finished the hike, he was at the bottom waiting to bring us to Hostel Captain Morgan to swim on the lake for the afternoon. This lake has a similar feel to Lake Atitlan in that there’s hiking around cool, blue water and nice places to drink cervezas and eat hamburgers.
On the way back to Santa Ana, Chillen said we should all go to Clubbers for bottle service and dancing because that’s what you do on Friday night in Santa Ana. He would pick us up at 9 pm. During cocktail hour, he offered to drive us the next day to Apopa where we could catch the bus to La Palma free of charge because he was going that way anyway! We, of course, tipped him for saving us the hassle and letting us catch a few more ZZZs the next morning!
In La Palma, our goal was to hike the tallest peak in El Salvador. El Pital is on the border with Honduras and at the summit there is a white monument where you can stand in two places at once! Here is Coons in El Salvador and Kourtney in Honduras!
This was to be our last day before entering Honduras through immigration, however, we were running out of money and none of the ATMs were taking our cards. To save our cash, we were hitchhiking our way to and from the park entrance of El Pital and planning to skip meals in order to save money and get to Honduras or anywhere with an ATM that would work. And then we met Brian.
Brian is an 18 year old kid from California in El Salvador visiting family and renewing his citizenship. Desperate to speak English with us, he asked us to join him and his cousins for lunch. He offered to give us some cash with a quick Apple Pay transaction to hold us over for a couple of days when he heard about our troubles. We walked around the town with him talking of revolutions for this poor country he loves so much while his cousins chatted up girls washing windows outside small tiendas. He bought a soccer ball on the drive back towards our hostel, so we stopped to play with the guys and some smaller boys that joined us on the field. Kourtney watched as Brian made sure everyone got a chance to touch the ball, all the while thinking, I hope someday my kid is this cool and open-minded and generous.
Be kind to one another.
It’s the El Salvadorian way.