On 2/12/26 we drove towards the El Salvador border at a blistering 55mph, descending out of the Guatemalan highlands. The outside temperature slowly climbed the further we descended, reaching 90F by the time we reached the border at the Rio Paz. We had just parked and were ready to go in when a man popped up outside my window waving- and I recognized him! It was the Swiss couple we’d met on the road to Uaxactun almost 3 weeks earlier. They had done a route through Honduras and El Salvador, and were now returning north into Guatemala. He said that they had loved both countries, which made us both excited for what was to come.
The border process was pretty easy and the facilities were newer and nicer than what we’d seen before. They even had really nice public bathrooms, which has been surprisingly rare in all the countries so far. We did all our paperwork to leave Guatemala, and drove across the river into El Salvador. Here, we had our passports stamped and then started the process in import the vehicle. In all the countries so far it has been a paper form, but here, it was electronic. While filling it out on my phone, the form kept glitching and not allowing me to change my choices. The default vehicle color on the form was “gray”, and it would not let me change it. The border guard helping us also tried, and wasn’t able to make it work. I then tried on his phone, with no changes. I then told him, in Spanish, that the jeep was gray- white top and black body make gray! He roared with laughter- my first joke told in Spanish!
We finally figured out the electronic form issue and were legally in El Salvador: country number six. We drove into the city of Ahuachapan to get some groceries and some lunch. It must have been market day because the city was packed with people and vehicles- it was not easy to find a place to park. Delaney and I split our efforts- she went one way to get groceries, and I went the other way to grab some Little Caesar’s pizza! We couldn’t resist. It took us a while to get back out of town due to all the traffic. It was absolute chaos, with no lanes, logic, or traffic signals, but it has become normal for us. No one honks, no one gets angry, people let each other in when they need to, and the system actually works pretty well.
We headed north a short distance to a camp spot we’d found online- it wasn’t supposed to be anything special, but it was close by. When we got there we found lots of locals doing their laundry in the river that flowed alongside the camp spot, which was little more than a dead-end dirt road. We’d heard rumors that the river was actually a hot springs, and were not disappointed. The dead end of the road was at the confluence of two hot rivers, one of which was bathtub-warm and cut deeply into the surrounding rock, like a flooded slot canyon. The other river, which was much larger, was too hot for us to get into! It was an amazing amount of hot water, perhaps equal to the summer flow of Campbell Creek in Anchorage or the dry-season Big Thompson in Estes Park.
It was super hot outside, well into the 90s, so we waited for dusk before getting in. There was sadly a lot of trash in and around the water, so we didn’t stay long. Though we did enjoy El Salvador as a whole quite a bit, it definitely had the most litter of any country we’ve been in (as of Costa Rica where I write this)- gutters and roadside ditches just full of trash bags and empty soda bottles.
We were about to go to bed when I noticed that our spare tire and rear fuel tank were loose. Some investigation revealed that the big bolt that held everything together had completely stripped out. I’d actually worried about this a little bit when I’d assembled the bumper back in Alaska- both the fuel tank and spare tire are only held to the rest of the bumper by a single bolt, albeit a large one. Tightening the bolt simply pulls the fuel tank against the frame of the bumper, so I couldn’t tighten it down too far. Fortunately, much like our track bar issue, the bolt was there for adjustment- different size tires or in our case, a fuel tank. Since we already have everything adjusted the way we want it, the whole thing can simply be welded together. I found a repair shop that could weld, and we made plans to head there in the morning.
The heat rapidly crept up the next morning- it was 85F by the time we left at 9am! We ratchet strapped the bumper together and headed out past local families doing their laundry in the hot river. We had a beautiful drive up and over the central mountains of El Salvador- lush and green, unlike the arid and brown desert we’d spent the night in. We dropped down into the town of Sonsonate, and pulled into the shop. The owner Enrique, who spoke great English, was out, but his employees pointed us to his waiting room where we enjoyed some time with two large Doberman dogs.
While we waited for Enrique a van pulled into the parking lot with European Union plates- other overlanders! We quickly got to know each other- Dominic and Pia were from Germany, and were on much the same schedule that we were- in fact, they’d requested the same ship date as us from Panama to Colombia.
Enrique soon showed up and had us park in a shaded area in his open-air shop- it was so hot out! I disassembled the bumper and got everything ready for him to weld it. He did an awesome job, and would only accept $20 for the work. It felt so good to have something fixed that could have been a real problem- if we hadn’t noticed that it was loose, we could have lost our spare tire, fuel tank, and rear-view camera.
Pia and Dominic weren’t so lucky- they had just come for an oil change, but discovered that their radiator had failed and was leaking. Their vehicle is a Fiat Ducato, which is a re-badged Ram Promaster van, quite common in the Americas. Unfortunately, their engine and therefore radiator is not sold here, so no replacement was available locally. They ended up having a custom radiator made in Sonsonate, and spent 5 days at Enrique’s shop. We would see them a week later in Honduras- more on that later.
All fixed up, we headed south towards the beach. We found a small and shady paid campground right on the ocean, and spent two lazy days there. It was a black sand beach, with sand almost powdery fine. It was really too hot to do much of anything other than swim, or sit in the shade and do nothing. We did end up swimming for a few hours the second day, having a blast fighting the massive waves. Delaney was fairly anxious about them at first, but after some coaxing she swam out through the breakers with me and had a great time ducking under or popping over them. The place we were at was actually a surf camp, but we were having so much fun without surfboards we never bothered renting one!
We soon realized that we’d spent far too long out in the sun, and were both horribly sunburnt. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the shade, reading or just napping. We wandered into the small town of Mizata that evening to try the El Salvadorean specialty of “pupusas”, which are small tortillas stuffed with all sorts of fillings- beans, cheese, meat, or seafood, and then fried. They were a lot like the gorditas we got in northern Mexico, but we liked them a lot better!
After two nights at a paid campground, we drove down the coastal highway east of Mizata for an hour or two. The highway is gorgeous and winds along the coast, but didn’t have quite as many ocean views as I was hoping for. There were several highway tunnels, one nearly a quarter mile long- the first drivable tunnels we’d seen since the abandoned railway tunnels in Sinaloa. We camped perhaps an hour east along the coast at a free spot, but it was really too hot to do anything. We set up our awning, and spent most of the day hiding underneath it from the scorching heat, only leaving it to take a quick dip in the ocean to cool down. There was a small group of restaurants a half mile down the beach, and there we each had the best seafood pasta I think we’ve ever had.
We got moving again the next morning, planning to head inland and to get some elevation. The heat was really too much for us- we don’t love beaches as it is, but when it’s nearly 100F out, it just isn’t very fun. We did stop at a very fancy resort restaurant on the coast for breakfast, and ate as we looked down at the waves crashing into the rocky coast. The resort had a really neat saltwater swimming pool below the cliffs, which they encouraged us to explore. The pool was built into the rocks, and some of the larger waves would overtop the pool. There were all sorts of colorful fish, and even a small octopus!
We drove inland at La Liberdad towards the capital city of San Salvador, on a very nice 4-lane highway, which climbed steeply away from the coast. We were headed for Volcan San Salvador, a volcano that looms over the city. We only cut through the western edge of the city of San Salvador, but there was quite a bit of traffic we had to navigate through. We continued climbing and climbing, and ended up camping beneath some radio towers at the near the top of the volcano, at just over 6000ft above sea level. The cool mountain air was just lovely, a welcome change from the heat that morning at sea level. We hiked for a bit along the volcano rim, looking down into the crater.
We slept better that night than we had since Antigua. It was amazing to finally be cool after three miserably hot nights at the beach. That morning, we walked along the rim in the other direction to El Boqueron, a national park. The park is very small but offers a few high viewpoints into the crater and beyond. We met a very interesting person there- one of the CFOs of Maersk Shipping and his wife. They were vacationing in El Salvador during his work post in Panama- he is stationed in Panama to advise that division of Maersk on the purchase of the Chinese ports on either end of the Canal, if it happens that Panama decides that China must divest of the ports (it seems now that this has happened!). We had a great conversation about all sorts of things- he is the only European that we have met thus far that has a positive opinion about current U.S. foreign policy. We hope to meet up with them again in Panama!
After El Boqueron, we drove back down the narrow road from the lip of the volcano and down to the dry lowlands to the north. We drove for most of the day through hot and dry farmland and ranchland. We had a bit of a tough time finding lunch- we wanted to try and find some street food, but we passed through 4 or 5 towns that had no street vendors at all! Each of those towns, if they had been in Mexico, would have had no less than 10 street food shops. We finally found a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and we both ordered pupusas, which were amazing. Most Latin America food revolves around various ways of mixing tortillas, beans, cheese, and meat together, and pupusas are one of our favorites so far, behind Mexican tacos and quesadillas.
After a long drive through some very flat, boring, and hot desert, we finally began seeing some topography. We climbed up and up, and the desert turned into jungle. We climbed higher after turning off onto a small road at San Ignacio. The road was mostly paved, but incredibly steep. We stopped at one point to let another vehicle past, and couldn’t get going again without putting the jeep into low range. This was on a paved road! The jungle soon turned into a beautiful pine forest. The road got smaller, steeper, and rougher, and we started seeing signs for “4×4 taxis”. The road zigged and zagged up to the summit of El Pital, a popular tourist destination in El Salvador. We learned that it is also El Salvador’s highest point! At the top we found a Jeep ambulance, which was very similar to our jeep, but has some very interesting upgrades. Jeep made them with 1-ton axles, leaf springs, bigger brakes, and no rear doors. They were never sold in the U.S., but have been sold to various military and EMS organizations around the world.
El Pital is a forest reserve right on the border of Honduras. It has incredible views out over both countries, and we camped within 50 feet of the top, looking out over Honduras from 8957ft. We’d been all the way down below 1000ft earlier that afternoon! According to the border markers up at the top, we actually camped on the Honduras side, despite Honduras not having any access road to this point. We enjoyed the cool mountain air for the second night in a row, enjoying an epic sunset as we made dinner.
We would have loved to spend a second night here, but we’re quite cognizant of our approaching shipping date- March 22nd. However, the vehicle is scheduled to load into a container on the 17th, and we need to have it inspected in Panama City on the 13th! We drove back down the incredibly steep road from El Pital down to San Ignacio, and headed north for the border with Honduras. We’d only spent six nights in El Salvador, and only seen a tiny corner of the country, but we both really enjoyed it. El Salvador felt a lot wealthier than Guatemala or Belize, and everywhere we went felt like a “safe” place. It has incredibly varied climates, from some of the best beaches in the world on the coast, all the way up to cool pine forests. The El Salvador side of the border was incredibly efficient- we didn’t even need to get out of the vehicle to cancel our Temporary Import Permit, and getting stamped out of El Salvador only took a few minutes. We left El Salvador and crossed the bridge into Honduras.
