El Salvador - Spectacular Sunrise over Three Countries

December 9-11

Hello everyone!

El Salvador is a little place which seems to pack in a lot of everything, from beautiful beaches to mega mountains. This blog shows arguably the most spectacular sight so far.

View of the Gulf of Fonseca

Sun rising over Honduras in the distance

Welcome to the top of Conchagua, a volcano found in the southeastern corner of El Salvador. It overlooks the Gulf of Fonseca, a small bay of the Pacific Ocean which is flanked by three countries and filled with many islands. Disputes have formed, and been settled, over their ownership.

The drive meant listening to a dramatic World
Cup penalty shootout on the phone

This was the ultimate destination, 24 hours later

Being a small country with good roads, this far-flung corner of the country is about four hours from Santa Tecla, even in Friday afternoon traffic. As we knew we couldn’t make it to the volcano in time to reach its peak (you’ll see why daylight is important later), we spent the night near El Tamarindo. The sunset pictures below are from nearby Playa Blanca. 

As El Salvador faces south, it's a bit strange to
see the Sun disappear into the ocean

Unlike those nearer Santa Tecla, the beaches
here often have white, non-volcanic sand

As usual for trips out of the city, a large group of us were staying together in an AirBnB. This is the usual way of finding lovely places to stay for affordable prices - splitting $230 between 10 is a lot better than splitting between two. This was one of the stranger places we’ve stayed…

Our AirBnB for Friday night

How they got this extremely heavy bed upstairs is beyond us

The following morning was spent at the nearby beach, a personal throwback to lakeshore beaches in Malawi with its colourful fishing boats and relative peace. The volcano looms large to the north, the Sun rises above Honduras to the east, and the western tip of Nicaragua is hazily visible to the southeast. An incredible experience.

Being a sheltered bay, the water is calm 

This crab-like critter was scuttling around,
with the volcano in the distance 

Enjoying a cooling morning dip

Scaling Conchagua involves a drive up on the northern side, from the regional town of La Union. As we weren’t taking our own cars (thankfully), we parked at the meeting point: a Chinese restaurant. I’m not sure how popular this cuisine is in eastern El Salvador, but we were happy to spend a couple of hours there watching football before our ascent.

Sorry! I was supporting England!

Our mountain-scaler

Like the beach from the morning, the vehicle was a throwback to African life: essentially, a large safari van modified with the installation of aeroplane seats (no screens in the back, for some reason). After loading, we bumped and bounced our way up towards the 1,200 metre or so peak, known as Espiritu de la Montaña. This road is a key reason for us not heading straight up on the Friday. I hesitate to call it a road, actually - more a cluster of rocks which big vehicles can use as a path. Occasional glimpses of a stunning sea view remind you why you’re allowing your body to be flung up and down in a safari van.

In the indigenous, pre-Columbian Lenca language,
Conchagua means 'flying jaguar'

The edge of La Union, the capital of the eponymous
region which covers the eastern frontier of El Salvador

This area has been developed by an entrepreneur called Luis into an area which people can visit. The popular thing to do is to go up in the afternoon, sleep on the peak overnight, then wake up for sunrise the following morning before heading down in daylight. 

It's a little under an hour from pick-up point to the peak

Somehow our contact had 'reserved' our tent spots,
which were in the best possible position

View from the tent!

The view from the camping platforms is jaw-dropping. A wide panorama encompasses the shores of La Union and a Honduran forest across the bay before being interrupted by a large, green landmass called Isla Zacatillo. The vista then switches to the east, revealing a plethora of small volcanic islands sitting in the gulf in front of the west coast of Honduras. Sweeping to the southeast, you see a distant volcano which constitutes the western tip of Nicaragua, before looking due south at the enormous blue of the Pacific. 

El Salvador only has 29 km of shoreline on this gulf,
so a lot of the land under the cloud belongs to Honduras

You can stay on some of these islands and
do a boat trip through the gulf - next time!

You need a couple more pictures of that, don’t you.

Our camping spot just after sunset

The view at about 8am

El Salvador is a warm place, where winter and cold don’t really exist as concepts. The peak of Conchagua is one of those exceptions, particularly after that spectacular sunset. We started layering up, warmed by laughing and a barbecue. Oh, and Baileys, of course.

Marshmallows to keep us warm!

A smorgasboard of food considering the trek up!

There was also a large Moon rising,
which was orange for quite a while

It wasn’t a time to be staying up too late. After all, the hype about Conchagua is the sunrise. We had positioned our tents to face first light, which would appear over Honduras. I woke up shortly after 5am to this…

As more people began to stir, the light began to paint its pretty patterns across the sky…

Before peeking over the faraway hills just before 6am. I’ve been lucky to see some incredible sunrises in places as diverse as the Okavango Delta and Iceland. This was one of the best.

I saw Luis before we took our bumpy bus down the mountainside. He said that there were plans to slightly expand to include areas for yoga retreats. I hope it doesn’t start to become too busy. Part of the charm of being on the mountain was the feeling that you and the other campers had hunted to find something special.

There were probably about 40 people at
the top but it didn't seem crowded

Pondering life - or more likely not thinking at all!

We had come here as my early birthday trip. It more than lived up to the hype, and was worth the relatively long journey across this country which is increasingly demonstrating its magic.

Great company for a magical weekend

Enjoying beach life

We'll be back!

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Walking with Saints

December 3

Hello everyone!

Arriving in El Salvador in August, I had a little, Western-based viewpoint of its history. This mainly revolved around violence, gangs and more violence. I wanted to get a different, more local perspective, which was offered by going on a walking tour of the historic centre of San Salvador. 

The National Palace

Walking through the Centro Historico

The walk itself started in Parque Cuscatlan, a large park to the west of what is seen as the capital’s historic centre. A more modern trend, and one seemingly reflected in Santa Tecla as well, is for oversized and garish Christmas decorations to be erected in public and private spaces.

The park is large and connected to a
children's museum called Tin Marin

A giant Christmas Haribo gummy bear?

The park’s name is an indicator of Salvadoran history. Parque Custcatlan is named after the area of land which covered the western half of modern El Salvador, and was home to a tribe known as the Pipils. Cuzcatlan means ‘Land of the Jewel’ in the Nauhatl tongue.

Pipils made up a large proportion of the land

Legends about jaguars from days gone by

This kingdom disappeared when the Spanish arrived on their Central American conquest in the 16th century. Brief skirmishes soon after led to Spain’s new regional capital being shifted a few kilometres to what is now downtown San Salvador. 

A step mural of a torogoz, the
national bird of El Salvador

The wall depicts pre-Columbian life
before progressing to more recent events

Spain ruled the roost here for the best part of 300 years, before independence from Spain was achieved in 1821. It was in an area now known as Parque Libertad, a few kilometres east of Parque Cuscatlan, that people started meeting to discuss independence ten years prior.

Independence from Spain in 1821 led to El Salvador
becoming part of the Federal Republic of Central America

Walking here took us around the
outskirts of one of the main markets

There are some charming colonial-era buildings dotted throughout the historic centre of San Salvador. One fun story is connected to the Rosales National Hospital. The Belgians helped with the construction of the building pictured below. Helped in some regards. They accidentally sent their materials to Salvador…Brazil. Even now, a lot of people add ‘Central America’ to post to avoid this issue.

The inauguration was in 1902

There aren’t a vast swathe of colonial buildings which have survived to the present day. This is less political and more geographical. Earthquakes have smashed history to smithereens on many occasions in San Salvador. More recent buildings have been adapted. The gothic-inspired Basilica Sagrado Corazon, for example, has a metal exterior for protection.

The last major eruption was in 1917

The church was built in 1901

Walking down the street from here will bring you to another square filled with pigeons and flanked by two important buildings. I’ll talk about one of these, the church, later. For now, I’ll focus on the statue in the middle. This depicts Captain General Gerrado Barrios. He was President of El Salvador from 1859 to 1863, and is seen as a key person in the development of coffee production and its industry in the country, by making it compulsory amongst many farmers.

The palace was stopped being used by the
government in 1974, and is now a museum 

Barrios was executed by Guatemalan forces in 1865

El Salvador has more modern history, of course. Its most notorious period, the Civil War of 1979-1992, is memorialised in Parque Cuscatlan. The wall of names stretches for 85 metres to reflect the names of the 75,000 confirmed deaths and 15,000 ‘disappearances’. Our guide suggested the actual death toll is probably a fair bit higher.

The Civil War was between the government and a
group of left-wing groups under the acronym FMLN

The war was ended with the signing
of peace accords in early 1992

The most famous martyr of all of these is Oscar Moreno. He was the archbishop of San Salvador when trouble transformed into outright violence. His decision to speak out against the violence in 1980 ultimately cost him his life. He was assassinated, in all likelihood by a group known as a ‘death squad’, whilst giving mass. There was then a massacre at his funeral, with an official death toll of 31. 

Romero had pleaded with US President Carter
to halt American support of the Salvadoran government

Murals inside the cathedral

Romero is a hero here. The airport and one of the main roads are named in honour of Monseñor Romero. He is also portrayed as a saint. The tour guide said that priests can become saints if they perform three miracles. He didn’t elaborate or offer examples. However, further research taught me that Romero was beatified in 2015 and canonised, thus becoming Latin America’s first saint, in 2018. What the guide did show us is Romero’s crypt, which is under the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador.

The third and most recent
construction was finished in 1999

President Obama visited the tomb in 2011

This walking tour gave me the beginnings of an insight into major events throughout the centuries in the land of Cuzcatlan. Much of it has featured turbulence, some of which has spilled over into extreme violence and slaughter. One can only hope that Romero’s preachings of peace are adhered to in the future, both by the people and the land upon which they live.

We enjoyed learning about our new city's history...
when not being accosted by pigeons...

In memoriam

Love you all,

Matt