El Salvador - Water, Water, Everywhere…

August 4, 10, 16

Hello everyone!

…even in the house.

Paddling in Lake Ilopango. Below is one of our bathrooms...

El Salvador sells itself as the Land of Volcanoes. One consequence of having over 20 volcanoes in a small space is that, over time, they have created some spectacular crater lakes.

Ilopango is the country's largest natural lake

Coatepeque sits beneath Santa Ana
volcano, the tallest in the country

I’ve pledged to myself that I will make more use of my inflatable kayak this year and spend more time at these lakes. Having returned a week before needing to get back to work, I took the opportunity to drive up northwest to one of my favourite spots in the country: Lake Coatepeque.

Coatepeque is the green circle and Ilopango is the orange oval.
One of the red dots is home. The other red bits are flood
warnings, which may give a hint about the last part of the blog...

Mini and Maxi enjoyed the lake when they came in 2024 - it actually
was closed the week after for a significant period due to pollution 

A lot of the lakeshore is privately owned. With that in mind, I had contacted the lake’s hostel with a view to parking there. I arrived just before 7am to find that many of the guests were parting on the dock, and had clearly been partying for a while. Not wanting to interrupt - or deal with questions about inflating a kayak from people who were worse for wear - I spoke to the owner at the restaurant next door, and said I would buy a coffee in exchange for use of their dock.

An internet picture of the hostel - the next building out
of shot on the right is from where I launched

I decided to start out against the slight ripple so that I would have an easier return. As you’d expect, the wind had picked up by the time I turned around…so that I was paddling back against larger ripples and into a headwind.

I paddled a little over 8 km on along the western side of the lake

A week later, I woke up ludicrously early - 3:15am - to meet up with a group of people to head to a crater lake to the east of San Salvador: Ilopango.

We set off at about 5:15am

I paddled around until about 7am - that little island was my marker in case I got lost

We were going for a sunrise paddle on El Salvador’s largest lake. I have seen sunrise here before on a school residential. This time I could relax in a kayak whilst watching the sky transform, rather than worry about 9-year-olds wanting to play football at 6am.

6am in February 2024: idyllic

5am in August 2025: dark

The colours were incredible. From cotton candy pink into a tranquil yellow haze as the sun started its ascent, it has an amazing metamorphosis.

They appear pink because of the scattering
of sunlight by the Earth's atmosphere

Looking east - we were paddling in the northwest section of the lake

The night before my Ilopango paddle, there had been a relatively strong storm in Santa Tecla. I had woken up to a little bit of water in the kitchen, which had probably come in under the back door. I had expected needing to clean it up on my return; I hadn’t expected my dogs to have ravaged part of the living room.

Books, art supplies and puzzle pieces
littered across the floor. Thanks, doggos.

Cardboard: tasty??

It is very much rainy season in the country at the moment. Even with that knowledge, there wasn’t much forewarning about what was to come on the following Friday night. The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources had stated that rains and storms would be ‘scattered’ across the country.

This was the rainfall over the 24 hour period that
included Friday night for the country

Maxi laughing at the prospect of rain

I woke up Saturday morning, got out of bed…and stepped in a shallow puddle. Carefully tiptoeing around the house, I found quite a lot of water. In every room.

Mini surveying the puddles

When we’ve had flooding issues before, it’s normally been connected to a leak in the roof. Not this time. Neither me nor my landlord could work out where it had come from, and how it was in every room. 

Water in the kitchen - you can see how
much the rug absorbed from its colour

From a quick look online, I could see that I wasn’t nearly as badly affected as others. Santa Tecla and San Salvador had been buffeted by a storm that damaged at least 130 homes. The rains also caused 216 fallen trees and 136 landslides.

Downtown Santa Tecla, about a 15 minute walk from my house

Central and eastern San Salvador also had huge rains

As the clean-up - more like a dry-out - takes place over the next few days, one consolation can be the knowledge that those lovely crater lakes have been swelled by the rain, giving me the chance to keep on kayaking in them as the year goes on.

The dogs are enjoying their new garden toys

Paddling a Monday morning away

The Land of Volcanoes

Love you all,

Matt