Blogs from Western, El Salvador, Central America Caribbean

Santa Ana Central American capital cities tend to be congested urban jungles, brimming with cement and re-bar. The second cities are often less dangerous and more unique.. While this is somewhat true of Santa Ana, it hardly rivals Xela in Guatemala or Leon in Nicaragua. There are signs throughout advertising their 450th anniversary, so there's quite a lot of (colonial) history there, but the town center mainly comes off as being dirty and sketchy. But Peggy and I enjoyed our stay at Casa Verde, essentially a model for what every hostel should be. Lago de Coatepeque This turquoise-blue lake, 15k around and cradled in a vast, forested caldera, is reason enough to visit El Salvador. In fact, it's probably the prettiest lake I've been to. After my experience at the filthy Lago de Suchitlan, I wasn't ... read more

I heard El Salvador is a dangerous place. Should I go there or better not? I was debating with myself for a while and being just by me I probably would have skipped it. But I was still with Mitch and Justin. So, destiny had different plans for me and we decided to give it a try. How bad could it possibly be? From Guatemala City I took the chicken busses to the border, had an easy border crossing and got a ride from a Guatemalan father with his two kids, all the way to the first destination – Santa Ana. This was an awesome start and it was just the beginning. We went for a coffee and I got to know a father who does everything to get his daughter out of the endless circle ... read more

First of all: sorry for my super late update. I have been so lazy to put pictures or to write the blog. a lot has happened over the last few months. On my day off, I went with the shuttle from León to el Tunco. I had a great day there. I went with Guayo to lake Coatepeque and in the evening I had dinner at Casa Bonita where Devon&Greg stayed with some other people and later I went out with the girls. I stayed the night with Claudia and the next morning I got on the shuttle back to León... Before the shuttle even left (I was already in it) My boss told me that I could stay in el Tunco to cover the girl in the office here because she was going on holidays ... read more

After Bryan and Emma left, I made friends with some people at the hostel. We formed a real nice group. We went to watch the sunset every evening. The sunsets are spectacular over here. Especially because of the big rock forming in the front. I have been told that the place got it's name because of that rock forming. If you stand on the left side of it, it looks like a pig, laying on his back. I looked up the word in spanish but it doesn't exist, so it must be a local word for pig. One of the days we all went with a local guide (Guayo) to the waterfalls in Tamanique. We had to walk down for about 30-45 minutes through the forest on a pretty steep path. When we reached the waterfalls, ... read more

Shuttles and tired drivers There are two reasons why we went to El Salvador the so called "murder capital of the world". One was that I wanted to add El Salvador to the list of countries visited and you have to stay at least a night to make it count. The other reason was that we didn't fancy sitting in a shuttle for 16 hours straight to go between Leon and Antigua in Guatemala our ultimate destination. Shuttles are small 10 seater mini buses that are used to well shuttle around tourists between the main sites in Central America. We had used them before and we were using one to go from Nicaragua through Honduras to El Salvador. Our journey started at 2am in the morning with a pickup from our hostel. We finally left Leon ... read more