Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 40 - Suchitoto, El Cuco, La Union, El Tunco (El Salvador)

After an interesting breakfast of pupusas, a typical Salvadorian food of maize flour tortillas stuffed with refried bean paste, we packed our bags and jumped in a taxi to the Oriente bus terminal. Once there we jumped on a chicken bus to Suchitoto, a small town of white washed buildings and cobblestone streets. Even the bus journey was great, despite being quite bouncy we passed though some pretty villages with brightly coloured murals and painted lamp posts. The lamp posts are all over El Salvador, the paintings range from simple naive style cherries to delicate landscapes and paintings of birds.

We fell in love with the place as soon as we stepped off the bus and quickly settled in to a little hostel with a fantastic communal terrace - Blanca Luna. After a stroll around town and an iced coffee and bread pudding at a little coffee shop on the square, we headed out to Cascada Los Tercios. After a 30 minute walk along a road leading out of town we arrived at the site of the small waterfall only to discover it was dry. In wet season, the ‘falls’ tumble over a cliff of tightly packed hexagonal stone spires, a geological oddity related to volcanic activity. The rock formation was impressive even without water but not quite photo worthy - I think we would have had to climb to the bottom to really appreciate it. Back in town we paid 25 cents to visit a hostel with a mirador overlooking the Suchitlán lake, an artificial lake formed when the Cerrón Grande hydroelectric dam was built in the 1970’s. The view was spectacular.

Back at the hostel we spent the evening playing cards with some other travellers heading out for a nice meal just in time to be back and tucked up in bed when the nightly storm hit.

The next day we decided to walk the 30mins down to the lake. Once there we paid 50 cents to enter the tourist centre, an area of market stalls and restaurants. We stayed only briefly as the boat trips were too expensive before heading over to where the ferry was docked to try to take a cheap alternative to the tours just to see the lake from the other side. The ferry wasn’t running anymore that day so we jumped on a bus back up the hill to town for a drink in a little cafe with another great mirador. We’d intended to swim in the lake but decided it wasn’t very appealing once we got down to the shore so instead we stopped off at a posh hotel and paid to use their pool and sun loungers. After lunch Rhys headed back to the hostel and I spent an hour wondering around the streets just soaking up the atmosphere. Another nice restaurant meal later and we made it back to the hostel just as the nightly storm hit.

Our next stop was El Cuco. To get there we had to take a bus from Suchitoto to the InterAmercana, and a guy flagged down another bus for us to get to San Miguel. We missed our stop and the conductor ended up dropping us out of town at a roundabout and another bus driver informed us that we were better heading to El Cuco from there than our intended stop of La Union. We were already pretty hot and bothered by the time we arrived and it didn’t help that the Rough Guide didn’t mention any decent places to stay in the town. After viewing some horrendous options we opted for one that looked abit like Butlins, right on the beach with two pools. We ventured out for a walk along the beach and realised it wasn’t really our cup of tea. However we did enjoy foraging for shell fish on the walk back and giving them to the locals, Rhys is an expert forager. Although the beach is nice with a big arch of golden sand, it isn’t really a backpacker place and is more kitted out for the hordes of Salvadorian day trippers. We’ve later learnt that we should have headed further up the coast to El Esteron but hindsight is a wonderful thing and we’re finding the El Salvador section of our guide book is pretty out of date in a country that’s opening up to tourism fast.

After a quick dinner before the whole town shut up for the night - I think there were only a handful of people actually spending the night, we were back in our room. The nightly storm hit about 10pm and we decided it would be a great time to test the water slides in the kids pool.

We left El Cuco early the next morning to head to La Union. As we couldn’t find any better bus information our journey took us back to San Miguel, the third time we’d passed through the town. We changed buses at the Metro Centre after stopping there for a Burger King. La Union was scorching when we arrived. Not a pretty town, just a criss cross of streets full of market stalls and shops. We checked into a room with aircon and after a reccy around town to work out where to get the boat from to Isla Meanguero the following day we headed back to the hostel to relax. As soon as we got back I started to feel unwell and came down with a fever, I pretty much went to bed at 4pm and didn’t get up again until the next morning except for when Rhys made me take a cold shower - he was a great nurse.

By the next morning the fever had pretty much passed but we decided a trip out to the island wasn’t the smartest idea as our intention was to go there to hike and I wasn’t really healthy enough. Instead we took yet another bus, back through San Miguel to San Salvador. Once in San Salvador we took a taxi across town to catch another bus south to La Libertad. From La Libertad we then caught a third bus to El Tunco. Salvadorian people are some of the most friendly people we’ve come across and are really going towards making this one of my favourite countries since we’ve been away, the problem is we’re used to being hounded and expect people trying to take your bag off you to put on a bus to be after a tip when in actuality, here they just want to be helpful.

El Tunco is a little village that has built up around a surf spot. It only has a couple of tracks but has a number of hostels, juice bars, restaurants and surf schools and it’s full of backpackers, most of whom come here to surf and end up staying longer than intended. As we’re not very accomplished at the sport we gave it a miss and took the time just to relax by the pool at the hostel, walk along the pebble beach accompanied by local dogs, climb onto massive rocks and generally kick back. The most active we’ve been is a short hop on the bus back to La Libertad to the supermarket. Other than that we’ve whiled away the days drinking Oreo smoothies and rum (not together unfortunately) and eating Rhys’s homemade blow your head chili popcorm. Although it’s a very pretty palm lined stretch of coast, the beach isn’t ideal for sitting on so we tend to hole up at the hostel, saying that, Rhys is on the beach as I type this watching the last of the surfers with a cold beer. We may have missed Glastonbury this year but this is a pretty decent alternative!