Blogs from Suchitoto, Central, El Salvador, Central America Caribbean

Getting from Copan Ruins in Honduras to Suchitoto took the entire day. I left at 8AM and took 5 different buses and a taxi, with a total wait time of about 10 minutes, since buses just wait till they're nearly full to leave, which doesn't take long at all. But the journeys were pretty slow-going since the buses stop to pick up anyone waiting on the side of the road. The border was easy since several Central American countries have an agreement to allow travelers a 90-day visa. The town of Suchitoto is a charming time capsule of cobblestone streets, fading pastels, and a bustling town square. This is all worth a visit, but aside from trying different restaurants and cafes, there isn't much to do there, aside from checking out Lake Suchitlán, the largest lake ... read more

Our next stop was Santa Ana because we heard from friends it had the best hostel boasting a well deserved high nineties review rating for little over USD11 per night. Make sure you take extra change from home to Santa Ana since there is an ice cream vendor (we encountered him near Parque Libertad) who seems to genuinely want to chat and collect foreign change. He was excited to show us his collection that he stores in a styrofoam cup, but we still made sure to be watching our backs since we can never tell what kind of distractions people may come up with to get a drop on you. From Santa Ana we were able to take a bus to a national park, Cerro Verde, that contains several volcanoes, including the Santa Ana volcano. We ... read more

It feels a little weird to write a blog entry (or 4) more than a week after I returned. But, I’m too much of a perfectionist to stop the blog in the middle. So, I’m operating on the “better late than never” philosophy. Fortunately, I left little breadcrumbs of photographs and notes to retrace my steps into my memory. Some of the notes make total sense – like “church made from egg whites, manure, and soup bowls” reminded me of the creative building materials used for the main church in Suchitoto, and “old lady machete” reminded me of this super old woman on the side of the road walking with a machete. But, some of them are already lost in the backroads of my brain – like “when she’s flirting, she’s 87” or “santa lucia cut ... read more

When I was in Santa Ana, chatting to a guy from San Salvador, he asked me if I was going to Suchitoto. I had never heard of it. He said people go to San Salvador just as a jumping off point to go to Suchitoto, they don't even visit the capital, just go to this village... After this conversation, I was intrigued, so checked out what the LP had to say about it. The general idea was that it was a quiet village, very pretty and taken over by artists, with plenty of galleries (most only open week-ends) and a few good hikes. So even if I was going to be there on a Thursday, I thought it was worth a little detour. I set off not so early (about 9-10am) from the San Salvador hostel ... read more

Suchitoto One of the guide books describes Suchitoto as being like Antigua in Guatemala before the tourists arrived. It has the same kind of colonial feel as Antigua with the cobblestone streets, the central square and no new buildings in the centre. It’s another of those small towns where everybody is really friendly to us and with a relaxed laid-back atmosphere. Our hotel, the Posada Del Sol, is just two minutes walk from the main square and right next to the post office {but, somehow, I again fail to find and send postcards during my couple of days here}. We meet our guide for our next couple of days, the excellent René. René owns a restaurant on the main square as well as his tour company. When he is not organising stuff for us he is ... read more