El Salvador: Adventure, Culture and Whale Shark Expedition

Day by day

1. Day 1Arrival in San SalvadorArrival day · 650m

   You land at San Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport, on the coastal plain about forty minutes south of the capital, where your leader and the local team will be waiting. The drive in climbs steadily towards San Salvador, which sits in a valley at around 650 metres beneath the shoulder of its own volcano.

   Once you have shed your travelling clothes we head out for an orientation walk through the historic centre: the National Palace, the National Theatre, the vast Metropolitan Cathedral with Romero's tomb in the crypt below, and the noise and colour of the surrounding markets. It is a short introduction, but it puts the rest of the trip in context.

   In the evening we gather for a welcome dinner, first pupusas of many, and the expedition briefing: how the ten days work, what to carry each day, water, sun, the surf and boat rules, and what to expect from a country that has changed more in the last decade than almost anywhere on earth.

2. Day 2Santa Ana Volcano and Lake Coatepeque4 hrs walking · 500m ascent · Exposed summit

   An early start west to Cerro Verde National Park, where three volcanoes stand in a row: Izalco, the black cone that burned for two centuries and was known to sailors as the Lighthouse of the Pacific, Cerro Verde itself, and Santa Ana, also called Ilamatepec, the highest of them at 2,381 metres.

   The climb takes around two hours up and a little over an hour down, on a clear, steady trail through coffee, then scrub, then bare volcanic gravel with the wind picking up as the cover disappears. Roughly 500 metres of ascent and no scrambling, but it is exposed near the top and you will want a wind layer. The reward at the rim is genuinely startling: a crater several hundred metres across holding a lake of pale turquoise sulphurous water, steam drifting off it, with Izalco below you and Lake Coatepeque laid out to the east.

   In the afternoon we drop down to Lake Coatepeque, a caldera lake five kilometres across, deep blue and warm. There is time to swim, take a boat out, and eat a slow lakeside lunch before the light goes gold on the water.

3. Day 3Coffee country and the Ruta de las FloresHalf day driving · Plantation tour · 1,200 to 1,500m

   The Ruta de las Flores runs for about thirty six kilometres along a ridge of coffee country in the west, linking a string of small colonial towns at around 1,200 to 1,500 metres. The air is cooler up here, the streets are cobbled, and almost every wall in Ataco is painted: murals of harvesters, saints, birds and volcanoes, done by local artists over the last twenty years.

   We spend the morning at a working coffee finca, walking the shaded rows where the cherries grow beneath native trees, then through the wet mill, the drying patios and the roastery, before sitting down to a proper cupping. El Salvador grows some of the most prized coffee in the Americas, largely Bourbon and Pacamara varieties on volcanic soil, and after an hour with a cupping spoon you will taste the difference.

   The afternoon is for the towns themselves: the mural streets and workshops of Ataco, and Juayua, where the weekend food fair fills the plaza with grills and the church holds the Black Christ. There is time to browse, to talk to makers, and to drink more coffee than is strictly sensible.

4. Day 4El Imposible National Park4 to 5 hrs walking · Humid · Wildlife

   El Imposible takes its name from a gorge that once killed mule trains on the route down to the coast. Today it protects around 5,000 hectares of tropical forest on the Apaneca Ilamatepec range, and it is the most biodiverse place in El Salvador: more than 500 species of butterfly, some 280 species of bird, ocelot, king vulture, and eight rivers rising inside its boundaries.

   We walk with a park guide, on trails that climb and drop through dense forest to ridge miradors where the canopy falls away towards the Pacific glinting on the horizon. Expect four to five hours on the move, uneven ground, tree roots, some steep sections and river crossings where you will get your boots wet. It is humid under the canopy and the going is a fair bit more demanding than the distances suggest.

   Wildlife here rewards patience rather than luck: the birding is superb, the butterflies are constant, and the guides know where the troops of white faced monkeys move. There is a swimming hole for anyone who wants one, and cold beer at the ranger station afterwards, which is exactly the right idea.

5. Day 5Surf City: El Tunco and the Pacific coast2 hr surf lesson · 27°C water · Free afternoon

   We come down out of the highlands and turn onto the coast road, which runs east along the cliffs above the Pacific with the surf breaking below you the whole way. El Tunco is a small, scruffy, entirely likeable village of surf shops, hostels, taco stands and good coffee, named after the pig shaped rock offshore.

   This stretch of coastline is why El Salvador is on the surfing map: a run of consistent right hand point breaks over rock and cobble, at Sunzal, El Tunco, El Zonte and, further east, the long wall at Punta Roca. The water sits at around 27 degrees, which means boardshorts, no wetsuit, and no excuses.

   Beginners get a proper lesson with professional local instructors, starting on the beach and moving to the mellow, forgiving shoulder at Sunzal, and most people are standing by the end of the session. Experienced surfers go straight out with a guide who knows where the tide is working. The afternoon is free: sleep in a hammock, walk the black sand, or sit on the point and watch the sun go into the Pacific, which here is a genuine event.

6. Day 6Whale shark expeditionFull day at sea · Snorkel only · Never guaranteed

   An early start and out onto flat morning water. We run offshore with experienced local skippers and marine guides who spend their lives reading this stretch of the Pacific, watching for feeding activity: birds working, bait balls turning the surface silver, and then the slow, unmistakable shadow and the tip of a dorsal fin.

   Whale sharks are filter feeders. They have no interest in you at all, and no capacity to do you harm. If we find one and the conditions allow it, we enter the water quietly, two or three at a time, and swim alongside a fish that can reach the length of a bus while it carries on eating plankton and ignoring you completely. It is one of the great wildlife encounters and nobody who has done it forgets it.

   We follow the code of conduct absolutely: no touching, no chasing, no flash, no blocking their path, no diving beneath them, and small numbers in the water. Along the way there is a good chance of spinner dolphins, sea turtles, manta and mobula rays, and humpback whales are seen off this coast in season. Be honest with yourself about this day: the ocean owes us nothing, and a day at sea in El Salvador is a fine thing whatever swims past.

7. Day 7Marine adventure dayYour choice · Los Cobanos · Optional dives

   Today is built around choice. Some guests will want to dive the rocky reefs and wrecks at Los Cobanos, the only significant coral and rock reef system on the Pacific coast of Central America, with a resident population of reef fish, turtles and rays. Others will snorkel the same ground, or take a kayak or paddleboard along the coast in the calm of the morning.

   There is more surfing for anyone who caught the bug on Day 5, coastal exploration by boat towards the cliffs and sea caves, and a long list of ways to do nothing at all in a hammock. Your leader is a professional scuba diver and will help you pick, and will be in the water with whoever needs company.

   It is a deliberate breather in the middle of a busy itinerary, and in our experience it is one of the days people talk about afterwards. In the evening we eat seafood on the beach, straight off the grill, with the surf twenty metres away.

8. Day 8Mayan history and a Salvadoran kitchenUNESCO site · 2 hrs driving · Cooking class

   We leave the coast after breakfast and head inland to Joya de Ceren, El Salvador's only UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in the Americas. In around AD 600 the Loma Caldera vent erupted and buried a small Mayan farming village under fourteen layers of ash. The villagers got out. Everything else stayed exactly where it was.

   What was excavated from the 1970s onwards is not a temple complex but ordinary life, preserved in a way no stone ruin can manage: houses, kitchens, a sweat bath, a communal building, painted gourds, sleeping mats, planted maize fields with the ridges still visible, beans still in their pots, and the fingerprints of the potters in the clay. It is quiet, low key and quietly astonishing. Where time allows we also stop at San Andres, a larger ceremonial centre nearby, for the contrast.

   In the afternoon we swap the past for the kitchen. A local cook teaches us the national dish from scratch: masa worked by hand, filled with cheese, refried beans and chicharron, slapped flat and cooked on a hot comal, served with curtido and salsa. Expect your first three to be a disgrace and your fourth to be respectable. We eat what we make.

9. Day 9Jiquilisco Bay kayak expedition2.5 to 3 hrs paddling · Biosphere reserve · Farewell dinner

   East along the coast to Jiquilisco Bay, the largest mangrove ecosystem in El Salvador and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve: a vast, shallow, tidal maze of channels, islands and sandbars behind a long barrier of Pacific beach. It is one of the most important nesting sites in the world for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle, and green and olive ridley turtles nest here too.

   We put in and paddle the channels, which are calm, sheltered and easy going, with the leader and local guides alongside. Under the mangrove roots you find crabs, juvenile fish and the nursery that keeps this whole coastline alive; above them, herons, egrets, roseate spoonbills, ospreys and kingfishers. It is quiet in there, and the quality of the silence is the thing people remember. No kayaking experience is needed and doubles are available for anyone who would rather share.

   Where the season and the local conservation project allow, we visit the turtle hatchery and hear from the people who buy nests back from the collectors and put them behind a fence. Late afternoon we drive back to San Salvador for the farewell dinner: the last night, the photographs, and the usual round of everyone admitting they had no idea what to expect from this country.

10. Day 10DepartureDeparture day · 45 mins transfer

    Breakfast together, a last coffee that will spoil the one you get on the plane, and then the transfer south to San Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport for onward flights. Your leader will have confirmed everyone's timings the night before and will see the group through check in.

    You will leave with a phone full of photographs and a slightly evangelical urge to tell people about a country most of them cannot place on a map: a turquoise crater at 2,381 metres, coffee drunk where it grows, a Mayan kitchen sealed under ash for fourteen hundred years, a right hander at Sunzal, mangrove silence, and possibly the largest fish in the ocean.

    El Salvador is not a secret for much longer. It was a good idea to come now.