A Solo Travellers Mind

The trip to El Salvador included a bus, a boat, and another bus. It was a hella long day, so you can imagine when we arrived in El tunco to see our dorm had 2 bunk beds of 3 beds and we were on the top, for the price of $17 usd a night we werent too pleased! We decided we’d stay one night and then head to El zonte early, because honestly fuck staying on a 3 story bed… in the eve we headed out for some food, having pupusas for the first time, a bread like pancake with savory filling, for $1 each! A steal.

In the morning, I had a mental breakdown after discovering that when I was robbed, they also stole my fitbit charger. This, i think, was the straw that broke the camels back and resulted in me crying and calling home, looking for some validation of my feelings! After I got my shit together, we headed out to look around El tunco, exploring the local shops and the beach before heading on the chicken bus to el zonte. Apon entering the bus, i quite literally walked into a police man with a machine gun! Turns out the buses had police on in order to maintain free transport for that week (crazy).

In El zonte, things improved, we had a private room for $20 a night, so it was slightly more expensive, but at least we weren’t 6 feet high!
We spent our day exploring El zonte, which was a much smaller coastal town. We attempted to explore a beach cave. However, the tide came in rapido (which we’d be told about), so we couldn’t reach it! In the evening, we witnessed a very lovely sunset and a super cool orange moon before heading to our beds to catch some Zzzs.

The next day was a travel day from El zonte to Juayua, a town on the ruta del Flores. The journey was relatively pain-free, minus the fact we waited for 2 hours for the bus, and had a drunk man causing some inconvenience. On the bus, we also saw a couple who came on our shuttle to cross the border. Little did we know this would be a theme of our travels! On arrival to Juayua, we headed to our hostel, securing yet another private room as no one was in our dorm! The dream!

Our first day in Juayua was a kinda chilled one. The day started with some productivity stuff (me applying for jobs in aus, and carley applying for flats in England) before we headed out on a mini hike to the next village. The veiw was kinda nice, nothing too special, but it was mainly nice to go on a stroll! We then had some super nice tacos for lunch, followed by a brownie from the local bakery before some shopping in the second-hand stores, where I secured a Levis and a Clolombia jacket for 10 USD… insane.

Our second day in Juayua was spent exploring the other towns of ruta Del flores. Ataco was up first, where we headed to a veiw point of the town and explored the shops and markets. Apaneca was the next stop where we visited a cafe with a cool maze. We had a spot of lunch before heading to race in the maze. I won both going in and coming out, carley likes to claim i cheated, but if someone has won twice, you can’t really argue with that now… Dinner was again some pupusas, this time at a highly recommended restaurant. These were maybe the best ones I’d had yet and  included a pork one, which was unreal!

Our third day in Juayua was a tour of the 7 water falls, a very cool hike across the jungle to visit a total of 10 waterfalls, including hiking up a waterfall! The final 3 waterfalls were the chorres de las cascades. These were the most spectacular where we got to jump in the waterfalls, and swim and see all the fish. It was such a lovely hike and a very cool day. Our guide then actually took us to his house to make our own Pupasas with his family. They were super tasty, and it was very fun and slightly more difficult than you’d expect. Dinner was a local food stand that sold yucka (a sort of potato) with meat and salad. It’s a very traditional El Salvadorian dish and tasted unreal! Costing a total of $0.50c.

The final morning in juayua was spent wandering the town during the food festival. An event on every week. We didn’t have breaky to prep for all the food we could eat. We had an asado first, then boa buns, then choccy covered frozen strawberries, and then I tried a dried papaya type thing. This was all very nice and crazy cheap. We kept the bones from the Asado to go and feed the doggos of the town! There were so many little ones that needed a wee treat! We then headed to Santa Ana on the bus. Luckily, this was pretty easy and chilled, and we soon arrived at our hostel (with yet another dorm all to ourselves!).

The first full day in Santa Ana began with a solo morning going to explore some mayan ruins, known as tazermal. I jumped on the bus and found myself there an hour later. The ruins were very cool, they show how 4 different cultural groups all developed separate from each other but in almost identical ways. Tikal is another site located in guatamala very similar to this. The site was cool to walk round, and you could also walk up one of the pyramids before heading into the museum. This is where a group of university boys asked me for selfies to which I’d usually say yes, however there was legit 20 boys and even at my big age it felt like I was back at school being crowded by the cool kids lol.  On arrival back to Santa, ana I met up with Carley to head to Megapaca. Megapaca is the most elite second-hand store known to man! We had a very big and very successful shopping trip, with me getting a 1/4 of the new wardrobe i wish to purchase for cheap while away (my bag will EXPLODE). 

Our second day in Santa Ana was a busy one and started early with a 2 hour bus to the Santa Ana volcano. We then got rallied up like sheep and hearded up the volcano, all at once… it was the only hike I’ve ever done where the company actually wanted everyone to be at the top together. The hike was super easy though, and we soon reached the top, where we were luckily blessed with some breaks in the clouds and got to see the lake in the crater. We all had our snacks and admired the veiw. Unfortunately, carleys sandwich had gone soggy, but this was lucky for the doggos who got half a tuna sandwich each! We then hiked back down and headed for the bus again. On the bus, we met a group of morman boys on their mission in El salvador. It was actually really wholesome having some chats with them. You can really see they believe and love what they do, which is fair play, really. It was also cool to learn how they live during their missions and what it kinda entails. We avoided any strong religious talk and mainly stuck to how thousands of people are financed to live away for 2 years, lol. On arrival back to Santa Ana we headed into town, I got myself a new man bag as unfortunately mine had broke, my new one was temporary as it did infact resemble a child’s school lunch bag, but it cost 80p so I shall not complain. We then checked out the cathedral, which from the outside is crazy magnificent, before heading home to pack our bags ready for our boarding crossing!

The next morning started at 3:30, which is very early. However, I actually wasn’t tired… crazy! We got picked up and crammed into a small mini van with all our bags thrown on the roof and some in the front. I originally sat on one of those awful fold out chairs in the back, but soon argued my way to the front, through sheer logic! This meant that although sharing half my seat with random peoples rucksacks, I did at least have somewhere to rest my head. 5 hours later, we’d crossed our final road border and arrived in Guatemala!

El Salvador is a true gem, in my opinion. Everyone here was so unbelievably friendly and helpful. If you told someone you liked something they had, they quite literally offer you to have it ( like when I told my guide I liked his kitchen plate). The hostels (mostly) were so nice and cute. The people were just happy to see tourists in their towns. It was really wholesome if im honest and had plenty of little activities to do! El Salvador has a lot of bad press at the moment due to its mega prison, but if you ask me, and the people that live there, this mega prison is the best thing to happen. Maybe other countries could take notes!