Regenerating
a nation
As El Salvador and its people seek to move on from the violence of the recent past, what is now reportedly one of the safest countries in Latin America is still waiting for its global reputation to catch up
Words Laura Field
El Salvador isn’t known as the ‘Land of Volcanoes’ for nothing (Alamy)
To find myself in a small, dark, humid room in El Salvador, surrounded by men with sweat running down their faces, would at one time have raised several red flags. However, as a curious cockerel poked its head around the corner at the generous laughter emerging from within, it occurred to me that this scene felt like a fitting symbol for how much has changed in recent years in a Central American nation that is still waiting for its reputation to catch up with reality.
The atmosphere was congenial in the workshop of Arcadio Hernández in the mountain town of Nahuizalco. Together with his colleagues, he was showing me his skills at weaving natural fibres, working up quite a sweat, having gotten midway through a giant lampshade that was taking several days.
The workshop felt more like a gathering of friends, full of laughter and chatter. I was told that they usually sold their wares to restaurants and hotels within El Salvador, and that business had been picking up in recent years. This was thanks to an increase in tourism across a country that, if you were to ask most people, still conjures images that aren’t always positive or reflective of what it is like today.
As recently as a decade ago, El Salvador had one of the highest homicide rates on the planet. However, over the past three years, the government has cracked down on the violence perpetrated here by gangs. The results have grabbed headlines around the world. At the time I visited, El Salvador had not long since been recognised as one of the safest countries in Latin America in a report by global analytics company Gallup.
“I never thought it would be possible to live this way,” local guide Ricardo Moreno, told me. Having grown up in the capital, San Salvador, at a time when safety and security were in short supply, he – like many Salvadorans before him – had relocated to the United States. But Ricardo missed his homeland, and having heard about how his country was changing, he returned in 2022. He was certainly not the only person I met during my visit whose life had altered dramatically in recent years.
Murals are everywhere in Ataco, with the first said to have been painted in 2003, when a local business owner decorated the outside of her shop with the image of a cat in the colours of the national flag (Laura Field)
Markets on the Ruta de las Flores offer a glimpse of the Indigenous heritage of the western highlands, which are the heartlands of the Indigenous Pipil people (Shutterstock)
In full bloom
Nahuizalco, where I spent time weaving alongside Arcadio and his pals, lies on the Ruta de las Flores (The Flower Route). This 35km trail passes through several villages in El Salvador’s flourishing western highlands, the heartlands of the Indigenous Pipil people, who first inhabited this area.
One tradition of the Pipil that still pervades local life is the bright colours used in textiles and clothing. Earlier on, I had stopped at the town of Concepción de Ataco (or just Ataco), where the cobbled streets are lined with artisanal boutiques. Here, I visited the local store and workshop Axul, whose wooden looms lay tucked away in an adjoining café. I took time to browse its multicoloured tablecloths and admire rugs of elaborate criss-crossed patterns.
Just off the main square, alongside where the local residents stroll in the shade of the trees of Fray Rafael Fernández Park, I turned the corner to find another source of great pride in Ataco: its murals. They’re everywhere here, with the first said to have been painted in 2003, when a local business owner decorated the outside of her shop with the image of a cat in the colours of the national flag. It inspired many more, with some depicting life in Ataco or the story of El Salvador.
This mural showed artisans popping out of their shopfronts, backed by the greenery of the hills beyond and framed by a starlit sky. Since it was gushing with rain on my only night in Ataco, I can’t say that I experienced the latter, but it seemed like a fair depiction of this peaceful town.
Rolando Ayala, the owner of a boutique hotel on the outskirts of Ataco, elaborated on another trend that I was beginning to notice more and more. Like my guide, Ricardo, he too had moved back here from the United States, having lived abroad since he was 14. He relocated in order to be closer to his parents, he said, after seeing El Salvador change from afar.
“I love being back, and I wouldn’t want to be in the US right now. Here, you can sit on a roof terrace and eat a mango in peace,” he smiled, signalling to the coffee shrubs lining the hills beyond. To me, that seemed like as good a reason as any to come back.
On hearing Rolando’s story, Ricardo enthusiastically shook his hand as he realised that they had both left the USA in the same year to return to El Salvador. These tales of homecomings seemed to punctuate my time in the country, and I got the feeling that it wasn’t just travellers discovering El Salvador afresh; its people were too.
The Renaissance Revival-style National Theatre in Santa Ana city was built using tax money from the exportation of coffee in the early 20th century (Alamy)
The caldera lake of Santa Ana, the tallest volcano in El Salvador, is worth the climb to witness first-hand (Alamy)
Volcanoes and coffee
Following the Ruta de las Flores also meant learning about a product that has helped shape the country’s past and present: coffee.
A visit to the El Carmen Estate gave me an insight into the meticulous, painstaking processes of artisanal coffee production. While on a guided visit, I passed by men heaving colossal sacks on their backs and observed others raking through furnace-roasted beans. I felt dizzy just watching a team of women analysing beans that whizzed past their eyes on a rapid conveyor belt, as they briskly discarded any low-quality ones that didn’t make the cut. It showed just how much work from the local farming communities goes into each aromatic cup.
Coffee has been the driving force of El Salvador’s economy for more than a century. Its production was introduced to the country in the 1880s, initially for domestic use, but quickly developed to surpass indigo as El Salvador’s primary focus. By the 1920s, it represented 90% of the country’s exports.
“I think one of the best things to happen to El Salvador is its coffee production,” Ricardo shared, “because it brings with it established road infrastructure and can even help to preserve underground water resources.”
It also brought another surprising benefit. I had admired some grandiose buildings during my time in the country, but the pastel-green façade of the National Theatre in El Salvador’s second-largest city, Santa Ana, really stood out. I learnt later that it was the wealth generated from a tax on coffee exports – implemented by the plantation owners in the early 20th century – that funded the building of this architectural jewel.
By the 1980s, however, El Salvador’s civil war had decimated its coffee production and saw many Salvadorans leave the country. A large percentage of them emigrated to the United States in search of safety and more prosperous work opportunities.
Today, coffee production in El Salvador is focused on quality over quantity. Speciality coffee shops such as Casa de la Abuela in the historic town of Suchitoto are leading the way, offering a new outlet for a product whose roots extend deep into the country’s past.
Maybe it was all the caffeine that helped spur me on to tackle my next stop: summitting the country’s highest volcano.
For a nation barely larger than Wales, El Salvador harbours an incredible number of volcanoes. Of these, 20 have been active over the last 10,000 years, including the 2,381m-high Santa Ana (also known as Ilamatepec), which last erupted in 2005.
The trek to the top, which must be done in the company of a professional local guide, wasn’t too gruelling and took around two hours to complete. Despite taking care to look at where I was placing my feet, I had plenty of time to take in views of the surrounding volcanoes of Cerro Verde and Izalco, as well as the huge crater lake of Coatepeque, which spans nearly 25 sq km.
While chatting with Saulito, the chirpy 14-year-old son of my mountain guide, Saúl Alarcón Aguilar, I asked if he wanted to follow in his father’s profession. I had assumed that was why he had joined us on a trek he had probably done umpteen times. Instead, he shared that he wanted to become a truck driver because he liked the idea of driving great distances and getting to cross borders into neighbouring countries like Guatemala. I thought that I’d much rather hike outdoors all day, but I kept my opinion to myself.
When we reached the top, I felt a sense of relief and achievement, followed soon after by a stark sense of disappointment. The summit was shrouded in bleached-white cloud. My view consisted of a few other disheartened hikers. But, after waiting for at least half an hour, hoping for a glimpse of something special, the clouds obediently dispersed and revealed the most rewarding sight of all: the aquamarine glow of Santa Ana’s crater lake, with only a few wisps of lingering cloud drifting across it.
It might be a well-trod cliché, but this was a valuable reminder that, just sometimes, the best things really are worth waiting for.
The Metropolitan Cathedral is the centrepiece of San Salvador, having replaced a mid-19th-century cathedral that was reduced to rubble following an earthquake in 1873 that razed much of the city. It now stands as a fitting symbol of renewal, given the wider changes seen in the capital in recent years, as new shops, restaurants and hotels have cropped up across a city centre that has been transformed back into a space for the local community (Shutterstock)
The fountain in Plaza Gerardo Barrios – named after a celebrated former president who was executed by firing squad in 1865 – offers a great spot to cool off in San Salvador (Laura Field)
No more fear
The same can be said of San Salvador. Back in the capital, nowhere embodies the country’s transformation more so than this city’s historic centre. Up until three years ago, when President Nayib Bukele began his crackdown on gang violence, downtown San Salvador was not a place anyone willingly set foot. Today, it is at the forefront of the city’s investment in tourism, with new hotels, cafés and restaurants mushrooming everywhere.
“I can go downtown and work in cafés with my laptop with no problems,” Ricardo commented. He said that mothers no longer feared their teenagers being recruited by gangs and that Salvadorans actively enjoyed spending time in the historic centre now. As we wandered around the two main squares, Plaza Gerardo Barrios and Plaza Libertad (Freedom Square), there was a palpable sense of being at ease.
Bikes were available to rent on one corner of Plaza Gerardo Barrios, and small children gleefully chased pigeons at the encouragement of their mothers. Elderly couples and groups of friends perched on benches dotted around Plaza Libertad, whiling away the day gossiping and chuckling in each other’s company. It felt momentous to be watching people occupying space here when so recently this had been a place of fear.
However, for all that Bukele’s policies have been effective in removing the gangs from the streets, they have not been without criticism. Having declared a State of Emergency that has dragged on into its third year, the country’s incarceration rate is now comfortably among the highest in the world.
What also can’t be ignored is that locals are finding ways to move beyond the horrors of the country’s recent history. As I wandered the centre, I learnt that the butter-yellow Metropolitan Cathedral, which stands proudly on Plaza Gerardo Barrios, was where a number of massacres had taken place, including a mass shooting at a civilian uprising in 1979, and another during the funeral of the assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980.
Just outside the building, I noticed a stall with two women selling temporary tattoos. In El Salvador, tattoos are a sensitive topic. Gang members once used them to signify their allegiance to a particular group, and this was how the authorities were able to identify and round up many of them.
The irony that some enterprising women were now selling the opportunity to get temporary tattoos in a part of the city that was, until relatively recently, under gang control felt both amusing and bewildering to me. I didn’t get inked that day, but I smiled to myself at their initiative as I walked past.
When I finally took the bus to the airport, I overheard a local radio show speak of “la rata”, which refers to payday. My flight was on the last day of the month, when locals received their pay cheques. As the show’s hosts joked about their salaries never lasting long enough, I thought about El Salvador as it stands today.
Despite what was lost to civil war and gang violence, there is so much worth celebrating here, not least the resilience of the Salvadorans themselves. More people are also starting to take notice, as talk about the country’s landscapes, its artisans, its architecture and its culture spreads. In a land where it is so easy to dwell on the past that you miss what is special about the present, El Salvador deserves its payday. And as tourists wise up, it may finally be getting the right kind of attention.
The cobbled streets, murals and workshops of Ataco make it a great stop on the Ruta de las Flores (Shutterstock)
El Salvador highlights
Santa Ana volcano hike
A professional local guide must accompany hikers on the trek to the summit and back (2–4 hours). All being well cloud-wise, you will be rewarded with magnificent views of the blue-green crater lake at the top.
San Salvador’s Historic Centre
Getting to know the capital’s historic centre and its recent transformation is a highlight to bookend any trip to El Salvador. The Metropolitan Cathedral, National Palace and El Rosario Church are highly recommended.
El Carmen Estate
This coffee farm lies at an altitude of 1,300m on the outskirts of Ataco. Guided tours showcase the details and work that goes into the artisanal coffee production process.
Lake Coatepeque
Head to this large crater lake on the eastern slope of Santa Ana volcano for fishing, birdwatching, boat rides, kayaking and swimming in the lake’s temperate waters.
Joya de Cerén Archaeological Park
Known as ‘the Pompeii of the Americas’, this impressive site in La Libertad showcases a Maya farming village that was
preserved in ash after the eruption of the Loma caldera volcano in the 7th century AD.
A peek inside San Salvador’s magnificent Metropolitan Cathedral (Laura Field)
Axul’s café is decorated in colourful cat murals (Laura Field)
Need to know
When to go
You can visit El Salvador year-round. The dry season runs from November to April, with temperatures of 30°C in the daytime and moderate humidity levels. The wet season is between May and October.
Getting around
From London Heathrow, Avianca (avianca.com) flies via Bogotá to San Salvador’s Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport, while Iberia (iberia.com) goes via Madrid and Guatemala City, with the journey taking about 18 hours.
Old schoolbuses, known as ‘chicken buses’, are the cheapest way to get around. It’s also easy to hire a car and hit the road.
Where to stay
Casa 1800 has charming boutique hotels in Los Naranjos, Suchitoto, Cerro Verde and Ataco (casa1800elsalvador.com). Cardedeu has comfortable stays in Lake Coatepeque, San Salvador’s Historic Centre and San Benito areas, and glamping pods at El Boquerón (cardedeuhotels.com). And lastly, InterContinental San Salvador offers not only elegant comfort in the capital but a refreshing swimming pool, too (ihg.com).
The trip
The author travelled with support from the Ministry of Tourism of El Salvador (MINTUR).
Murals now dot the walls of San Salvador’s historic centre, with creativity and expression now flooding an area that was once at the mercy of violent gangs (Laura Field)
