Guatemala - Sticking to the Safe Zones

 February 17-18

Hello everyone!

Still without a car and not wanting to spend a lot of money, I pondered what to do during a week-long February vacation. Without flying, options were limited. With that in mind, I decided to go old school and book myself on a bus to Guatemala City for two nights. 

In front of Palacio Nacional

My mango man near the main plaza

Why visit Guatemala’s capital? I wondered the same question, so asked a few of my colleagues for their advice. Those who had been to ‘Guate’ recommended…shopping malls. Not my usual reason for visiting a place, particularly one that does have history - it’s been the capital city since 1776, almost 50 years before Guatemala gained independence from the Spanish Empire.

One of many, many malls

Oakland Mall is actually quite nice, with lots of
greenery, bowling alleys and trampoline parks

I did a bit of research during the bus ride from San Salvador. Getting to the bus station on time relied on waiting over 20 minutes for an Uber biker and then relying on that man’s weaving skills to navigate the intense morning traffic. 

This was the 'economico' bus - my return bus, a
'diamante', was purple and really comfortable

The bus is scheduled to take five hours. This became six due to a hold-up for one of our passengers at the El Salvador border. 

The Chinamas border crossing

Though I’d read a little bit about Guatemala City before arriving, I asked a few people in the hostel what they had done whilst in the city. “Nothing,” was the common reply. Most people in the hostel were ending their Guatemala travels in the capital, solely so they could go to the airport.

Most visitors won't see the Torre del Reformador, a Guate
version of the Eiffel Tower which straddles a major road

That airport is incredibly close to the city. I’ve stayed in airport hotels which are further away from the terminal than this hostel, which is very much in one of the city’s safer zones.

This dual carriageway, Avenida Las Americas,
is only 200 metres or so from the airport

Mentioning ‘safe zones’ gives you an idea of why many avoid the capital. The fact that the hostel workers immediately told me that its surrounding area, Zone 10, is safe for walking suggested that many of the 21 zones were not safe for this pastime.

Plaza España

This image, created by another blogger, suggests which zones
are safe (green), not safe (orange) and downright dangerous (red)

This is a shame as the traffic, much like San Salvador, is ridiculously bad. Not wanting to spend my 36 hours or so sitting in traffic jams, I worked out a safe route to the places I wanted to visit, put on my trainers, and got walking.

Bumper to bumper

Yep, I made it up to 46,000 steps on that day

My first stop, an approximately 3 km walk from the hostel, was the bohemian area of Zone 4. This is one of Guate’s up-and-coming neighbourhoods, described as its equivalent to Brooklyn in New York City. It has a lot of graffiti and a large number of coffee shops.

Being quite early in the morning, most places were closed

A mural of indigenous people

From there it was another three kilometres or so to the capital’s Centro Historico. A lot of this was down a pedestrianised street called 6th Avenue: Avenida Sexta. Being mid-morning on a Tuesday, it was quieter than I imagine it would be on a busting Saturday or Sunday.

There are some government buildings on this street

This was the residence of Mariano Beltranena
y Llanos, who signed the Act of Independence

There are many similarities with San Salvador, and Guatemala City’s main plaza is certainly not unique. It has an old cathedral, an ornate palace…and a square which is heavily populated by pigeons. One thing that was different was seeing a man being arrested by Guatemalan police. Not sure why.

The library is also somewhat different. The story behind it is a window into the country’s troubled history of the past century. The building project was started by President Juan Jose Arevalo. After surviving 25 coup attempts, he was deposed and the project was abandoned. A later, successful, USA-backed coup was led by Colonel Castillo Armas. He restarted the building of the library. He never saw it opened, however; he was assassinated two months before its inauguration. 

I think this building was opened in 1959 

This is a sort of protest - it is missing a leg

Like San Salvador, this area is surrounded by markets of varying quality. Guate’s Mercado Central is surprisingly clean and well-organised, with souvenirs on the higher floor and foodstuffs in the basement. I tried a sweet which had something resembling marzipan as a top layer and zapote (like fig) on the bottom. That experiment doesn’t need to be repeated.

Lots of colourful handicrafts

Sweets in the basement

Further north (a little over 2 km, if you’re counting) is one of the city’s quirkier sights: a relief map of the country. This map of Guatemala’s physical topography has recently been refurbished, and shows the country’s numerous volcanoes, lakes and coastlines.

View from one of the towers beside the map

View from 'sea level' - this is the Pacific side

What makes this pretty special is that it was created well over a century ago, in 1904-5 - a long time before cartographical technology would have made this an easier task. It was made with over 60,000 bricks and enough cement to equate to the weight of four elephants.

The brown splodges are the settlements
of Guatemala City and Antigua

The perimeter of the surrounding wall is 215 metres

The country’s history spans far further back than the beginning of the twentieth century, of course. This timeline can be traced in the Popol Vuh Museum. I’d never heard of Popol Vuh until researching what to see and do in Guate. Essentially, it’s a book that told the stories of the K'iche people, one of the predominant Maya tribes in Guatemala. A replica of the text is in the museum, as well as many interesting artefacts.

It roughly translates to 'Book of the Community'

The text was probably written around 1550

The reason for the museum’s existence is also intriguing. A married couple, Jorge and Ella Castillo, had spent years collecting pre-Columbian and Colonial art. In 1978, they decided to leave their collection to one of the city’s universities. This has blossomed to include a wide variety of artefacts, all of which help to explain and visualise elements written about in the Popol Vuh.

Jaguars are commonly seen in Maya art due to
their connection with power and the underworld

The delightfully-named 'Grotesque Head'
has indigenous writing on the skull

Of course, San Salvador has its own version of this museum: MUNA. It struck me how similar these places were: terrible traffic, an overt Americanisation of brands and interests like shopping malls, similar historical elements. I guess it makes sense, both being capital cities in a region whose countries are often lumped together. I did find some different things, the main one being a delightful Greek restaurant.

Iglesia Yurrita, a pretty Gothic church

Greek lomito pizza at Del Griego - sublime

No car? Well, not ‘no problem’. It did lead me to visiting a little-seen and intriguing nearby capital, at least. I understand why people skip Guatemala City when travelling around Central America, but it does have enough to interest and occupy a visitor for a day or so.

Enjoying the Relief Map from up high

I wouldn't describe my feelings about Guate as
'love', but I am happy I visited

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Running Away from Frijoles

 January 18, 26

Hello everyone!

Late in 2024 I signed up for a trail run which goes up and down El Salvador’s highest volcano: Santa Ana, also known as Ilamatepec. As events transpired, the run itself was the easy part when compared to getting there…

Finishing the UltraVolcanes 2025 race

Maxi wasn't as keen on the idea of
me running up and down a volcano

Readers of previous blogs will be aware that we have had a variety of car troubles since arriving in El Salvador in 2022. The vast majority of these are connected to our first car, a Chevrolet Captiva we named ‘Frijoles’, or beans.

September 2022: when it worked

Many times after September 2022: when it didn't work

The problems it was causing us led to the purchase of a second car, a Suzuki Gran Vitara. This car was magic…until a freak problem led to radiator coolant getting into the engine. That was at the end of September 2023. We had lent Frijoles to friends until December, with the only time we used it being when we went to San Miguel in October…and had yet more problems.

September 2024: when the Suzuki broke down

October 2024: when Frijoles decided
that our kayaking holiday was over

Finally in the first month of 2025, after a ridiculous amount of time and too many US dollars being poured into it only for something else to break down, we decided that enough was enough with Frijoles. It wasn’t working again on our return, the latest problem being the gearstick. 

Maxi staring longingly at lakes in what
was probably her final trip in Frijoles

The car had been on the market - specifically, Facebook Marketplace - since late 2023. At that time, I was desperately trying to recoup as much money as possible, almost making a profit on the car. That was never going to happen. By early 2025, I was desperately trying to get that car out of our lives forever more. 

A lot of buying and selling in El Salvador uses Facebook

One Saturday morning, 8 days before needing a car to undertake the volcano run, I readvertised the car at a lower price. The advert went live at about 10am. Within half an hour, the number of people who had contacted about the car was in double figures. My poor mechanic, helping me sell the car but spending his day at the beach, was suddenly fielding multiple phone calls.

Page 1 of many bidders

By midday, about thirty different people had messaged about Frijoles. A man was driving down from Ahuachapan, in the north of the country, to look at the car. Another man was incessantly messaging, saying he would buy the car today. I started messaging with him, and agreed to meet him at 2pm. I cycled over, hoping my Spanish would be sufficient and that he would agree to remove Frijoles from our lives for good.

Well I couldn't drive to the car's location...

Brian looked at the car, drove it around the block (at this point I realised the gear stick could work, but no going back now!), and agreed to buy it. We told Ahuachapan man to turn around, visited an ATM and then went to a lawyer’s office to do the paperwork. Well, two offices - the first was shut. Part of the reason for not waiting for the Ahuachapan man was that he wouldn’t have made it in time to sort the paperwork before closing time, meaning it would have dragged on into the following week.

Lawyer in Spanish is 'abogado', which to me is a lovely word to say,
making it an oxymoron when compared to the nature of its workers

The relative lack of money received for the car is more than compensated by the release of stress. No longer worrying about what will break next, whether the part will be easy to find (for this car, they never were), the dashing of future plans because it wouldn’t turn on. It’s gone. The buyer’s phone and Facebook have been blocked. Good luck to him.

Frijoles having a final check before being taken away

Of course, this didn’t solve the volcano conundrum. Eventually, I had to bite the bullet and rent a car for the weekend. My friend Charlie and I left Santa Tecla at about 5:15am for a 7am start.

Car rental is generally $30 a day

Even before we woke up, some people were starting their race...

Ultravolcanes is a race like no other. If you’re fit/crazy enough, you have the option of running up and down three volcanoes in one race: Santa Ana, Izalco and Cerro Verde. The distances for those races, 50km and 35km, are well outside of most people’s range, including mine. The race therefore gives other options for one volcano: 16km for Izalco, 11km for Santa Ana, and 6km to run around the Cerro Verde volcano area. Having climbed Izalco last May, I knew that it wouldn’t be the nicest experience. I thus plumped to scale El Salvador’s highest volcano.

This is part of the Latin American Trail Running Circuit

Izalco: not this year!

Many people at the start line had climbing poles in addition to the usual gear. That was a clue that many were not going to ‘run’ the 11km. After running downhill for the first two kilometres - the highlight of which was undoubtedly the drone filming our start crashing into a tree as the driver wasn’t focusing on where they were going - we turned left onto the hiking trail. By jogging this section, I overtook a lot of people.

As I didn't care about time or position at this point, I'm
not in this picture showing people at the start of our run

That's what I was scaling

Having been up Santa Ana a few times now, I knew that running up the whole thing wasn’t going to happen. Deciding to enjoy the experience rather than run for a time or position, I stopped often to take photos. An older man and a stray dog helped to pace me up towards the top, until he disappeared over some steeper rocks.

The dog was adorable

The camera angle doesn't quite
capture how steep this section was

Glorious views!

About 50 minutes after starting the race, I reached 2,381 metres above sea level. The apex of Santa Ana Volcano. You’re not normally permitted to hike at this time, let alone reach the peak. The views, set against a clear, blue sky, were stunning. I went a little bit further than the intended route to get a better view of Lake Coatepeque. This also allowed me to see some of the longer distance runners, whose route included the circumnavigation of the crater.

The crater - the volcano last erupted in 2005

Clear views of Lake Coatepeque

A runner doing the longer distance

One thing which isn’t shown in the pictures is the wind. It was blowing a minor gale up top. When you’ve just gone up hundreds of metres, your legs have a fair bit of lactic acid within them. The buffeting breeze and reduced agility from the lactic led to a fairly wobbly walk along part of the crater!

You wouldn't get blown down to the lake, don't worry!

This gets narrower as you get closer
to where the picture was taken from

Heading back down, I needed to be careful. Not just due to the terrain. The route went up and back the same way, meaning that many were coming up as I was descending. I also got reminded of how idiotic some of the runners are when heading downhill. Seemingly without a care for their mortality, many runners zoom down the rocky and occasionally slippery route. I was still only focused on my own enjoyment and foot placement until a man I passed shouted in English, “Go, go, go! You’re in the top 20!” How he knew that I have no idea, maybe he was counting people coming down, but it startled me somewhat, and made me push a little bit more.

Parts of the trail were a bit more precarious

This man vaulted past me. When I saw him at the
end, he didn't have skin on either knee.

I pushed further when noticing many idiots aggressive downhill runners stopped at the rehydration and snack stand at the 9 kilometre juncture. They took a while to finish - I assume they walked the last part. Many people did, actually, as it was almost entirely uphill for the final 2 kilometres, taking the form of oversized steps under the shroud of a forest.

The long steps defeated many runners,
reducing them to slow walks

A chunky medal as a reward!

I finished the race and waited for Charlie to do likewise, before we munched a pupusa and drove home. The engine light coming on in the rental car terrified me, thinking that my lack of luck with Frijoles had transferred to this machine. That car, like the volcano race, is gone but will not be forgotten.

I'd have been happy to push Frijoles into the caldera

Volcano conquerors!

Love you all,

Matt