“The bus to San Salvador is really frequent,” my friend promised me over a pile of empty cans of Pilsner. We were sat in the tiny, outdoor common area of our hostel in Juayua. “You can just turn up whenever. It’s such a short journey, so there’s no rush!”
In my inebriated state, I believe him. Surely my friend, who I met about a week ago on a rooftop in Santa Ana, wouldn’t lead me astray. In my inebriated state, I’ve forgotten that this guy actually has no idea what he’s talking about. He is very much, albeit accidentally, leading me astray.
In the morning, he and two more of our little group are embarking on the long journey to Antigua. Three others are heading south, to the surf town of El Tunco. There is a group of about eight of us who, after meeting at a hostel in Santa Ana earlier in the week, decided to accidentally book out a tiny hostel on the outskirts of Juayua. We’ve spend a good few days here. We’ve climbed waterfalls, we’ve eaten some fantastic local food and we’ve drank a lot of Pilsener.
But tomorrow we’re splitting up.
Me and one of the other girls are heading east. My friend is stopping over for a night before heading to the colonial town of Suchitoto, to the north. While I am ignoring my mothers pleas to “please for the love of god don’t go to San Salvador” and visiting the city of San Salvador.
Everyone else has incredibly long travel days ahead of them tomorrow. But me and my travel-buddy have decided on a slightly more laissez-faire approach. None of the routes that google has offered us should take longer than three hours. So we decide to work it out in the morning once we’ve sobered up.
El Salvador & Juayua
Juayua is a small town in the Salvadoran highlands, about an hour from the popular backpackers hub of Santa Ana. Many visit Juayua as a day trip to do the Seven Waterfalls hike. But for those who do want a break from the general Central American bustle, Juayua offers some stunning mountain views, a weekly food festival and a thriving coffee scene that make it worth an overnight stop.
I hadn’t initially intended to visit Juayua properly. However, I’d spent 5 weeks in Guatemala during the high season, planning everything a few weeks in advance. And after I got caught up in huge protests and was hospitalised in Antigua, I decided to be a bit more flexible during my time in El Salvador. I had a hard deadline to get to El Tunco, but until then, I had no plans.
So when a group of people in my hostel in Santa Ana invited me to spend a few nights in Juayua with them, I thought why not? I’d only planned to see Juayua for the day, initially. So I was excited to see what the rest of the town was like once the day-trippers went home.
As for San Salvador, it wasn’t really even on my radar at all. Right before I left for my three month trip, my mum decided to watch a documentary on Central America from 2019. With a particular focus on the bit where Simon Reeves follows a volunteer ambulance crew around San Salvador. I can still feel her staring at me as we watched a guy get loaded into the back of the ambulance after getting his head kicked in by gangsters. Obviously, I promised I would steer well clear of San Salvador.
But then a girl I’d met a few weeks prior posted a photo of her in the main square and that’s all I needed to secretly change my plans again. Sorry mum.
Juayua to Sonsonate
We couldn’t work out the best route. A lot of people pass through San Salvador on their way from either Santa Ana or El Tunco when heading to La Union. But San Salvador still isn’t that touristy, so the journey there from Juayua seemed a bit less well-trodden. Also, tourism in El Salvador is still in it’s infancy. Shuttles don’t really exist here, except on the route from Santa Ana to El Tunco. So we had to try and work out our route on our own.
We eventually worked out two options: we could either head back to Santa Ana, or head to Sonsonate. But neither of us wanted to double back on ourselves. So we opted for option two: Catch the 249 bus to the terminal in Sonsonate, the city at the eastern end of the Ruta de las Flores, before hopping on a bus to San Salvador.
The plan seemed foolproof, and the best part was that we worked out that from Sonsonate to San Salvador should take us around an hour. Feeling pretty smug about our shorter day, we opted to have a lie in the next day, aiming to leave at around 1pm with the idea being we’d arrive at our hostel at around 3pm, just in time for check in. Perfect for a mid afternoon nap.
In the morning, after waving off our friends, we packed up slowly and trundled down to the bus stop at about midday. If you’re familiar with Juayua, the 249 is the bus that runs along the entirety of the Ruta de las Flores, between Ahuachapán and Sonsonate, and is popular with commuters, locals and tourists.
Usually, this would be fine, except we both had really heavy bags, we were both quite hungover, and neither of us had factored in how warm it would be when we decided to start our journey in the middle of the day. We encountered a very flustered solo traveller at the bus stop, heading to El Tunco, who had very clearly also forgotten that we were in the tropics, and was sweating buckets.
We were the only tourists on the bus, interestingly. This was the first time this had happened to me. People had described a shoulder season to me, where things start to get cheaper and quieter, but the weather isn’t too wet and wild just yet. Maybe it’s because Easter was so late this year. But as soon as Easter Monday came and went it almost felt like El Salvador just purged all its tourists.
Regardless, we handed over our $1 coins and were crammed on to a classic Salvadoran camioneta. Or Chicken bus to us gringos. I had to stand at the back, wedged between a huge basket of corn husks and a guy in a full suit. He spoke really good English and seemed very keen to engage me in conversation about quite literally anything, I guess for practice? But at this point the engines roared to life and someone decided to swing the back door open so I couldn’t hear anything besides the exhaust pipe rattling. So I just smiled and nodded, the universal language.
Salvadoran Buses
We trundled along to Sonsonate for about 45 minutes. And I think it was possibly the sweatiest 45 minutes of my life. I don’t know if it was hotter than usual, if it was the six beers I’d had the night before. Who knows? All I know is within 10 minutes I was actually dripping sweat like that scene from that Airplane film, wishing I’d been quick enough to nab a seat.
If you’ve ever taken a bus in the highlands of El Salvador, you’ll know what I mean when I say there were moments on this bus where I genuinely wondered if we’d make it there alive. These buses fly along the mountain roads so, so fast. There were points where I wondered if the tyres are still touching the tarmac. And I didn’t have much faith in the brakes on this thing. Factor in the fact that someone has decided to open the back door to allow for airflow. So I was suddenly praying to a god I don’t believe in to get me to Sonsonate in one piece. Every jolt in the road had me white-knuckling the seat in front of me to keep from falling out the back door at around 50mph.
Eventually, we slowed down to crawl through the residential streets of Sonsonate. At this point, people just started hopping out while the bus is still moving. Occasionally someone shouted for the driver to stop so they can get a piece of luggage down from the roof rack. By the time we arrived at the terminal, there was only a handful of us left.
Sonsonate
When we finally got off the bus, I had to restrain myself from kissing the ground in gratitude for just being alive, while the driver offered instructions to my friend on how to get to our next destination. He told us we needed to go to “the other terminal” before he shut the doors and drove off. It was very kind of him to try and help us but ultimately it means nothing. Our brains were fried from the midday heat. And the bus station was slightly overwhelming given the state of our hangovers. Sonsonate bus terminal is quite sleek and modern, especially by Salvadoran standards. But nothing was signposted and we had no idea where to go next.
Luckily, our guardian angel in the form of a local man in dungarees came to our rescue. He offered to walk us to the other terminal across the street to catch our onward connection. Our angel gave us a brief rundown on what to expect, which bus to take and how much it should cost. He also advised us to pay a bit extra for the especial bus, solely for the air conditioning, Then he waved us goodbye at the entrance and walked back the way we came. At this point we realised this guy wasn’t an attendant, just a kind soul waiting for his bus who went out of his way to help two very confused looking tourists. A common theme throughout El Salvador.
At this point I decided I just couldn’t take the heat anymore, and forked out for some very cold gatorade as well as some snacks to take on the bus. It should only take an hour to San Salvador from here but I hadn’t eaten since 9am. To my surprise, we were directed to a coach, with a closing door, a TV and seatbelts. It’s no National Express, but you need to understand that I’d not seen a coach since I took the ADO bus from Bacalar to Chetumal in Mexico about two months prior. The most exciting part was, of course, the Air Conditioning on board. I could cry even writing about it.
We climbed aboard and sat in separate rows, with our bags. However it became apparent fairly quickly that the bus would likely be full, and the driver came to tell us we needed to stow our bags below in the hold. At least I think that’s what he said. My Spanish wasn’t great, and he had an incredibly thick Caribbean accent. So all I really caught was abajo. He didn’t stop us from putting our bags down there and we weren’t charged extra for it. So it must’ve been what he wanted from us. Eventually, the bus filled up and we began the hour or so journey to San Salvador.
Sonsonate to San Salvador
There’s not much to write about this journey. The bus started winding around the streets of Sonsonate We stopped every few minutes to pick up or drop off labourers and commuters at the farms and factories surrounding the city, before eventually hitting the highway. There’s some old movie playing on the TV at the front of the bus. I think it was in Russian with Spanish subtitles so I had no hope. At this point both of our hangovers and our frantic mornings caught up to us and we both ended up falling asleep. What harm could it be! We’d get an hour of shut-eye and wake up in downtown San Salvador. All refreshed and ready to navigate the city bus network. Genius!
Two hours later, I woke up sweaty and confused. The aircon was turned off, the driver had opened both the door to the cabin and the main door. We seemed to have stopped on the middle of the highway for no apparent reason. Blearily, I checked my phone. Not only were we nowhere near San Salvador, but we’d diverted about an hour north of the capital. Upon further research, we worked out that the main highway into central San Salvador was closed. All traffic was being diverted to the north of the city. I asked around on the bus and someone told me that, because we’d hit rush hour traffic, it’s unlikely we’d get to San Salvador for another hour or so. Which was absolutely crushing to hear.
Sure enough, around ninety minutes later, we were pulling up on the side of the road outside Terminal de Occidente. The driver told us we had to get off outside of the bus station before he turned in there to pick people up to go back to Sonsonate. Fine, okay no problem.
San Salvador
Everyone else is getting off, so we let everyone move past before we asked the bus driver about our bags. He sort of waved us off with a si si, abajo abajo. Which I assumed meant that he’d open the hold for us once we get off. Silly me! We were a bit taken aback when he closed the door and started driving off. With our bags still on board.
We both started shouting at the driver, smacking the back end of the bus and my friend takes off in a sprint to chase him down, enlisting the help of a few locals around us to also start shouting. I’m trying to remember which bag I left my passport in. At least I’m in the right place if I need to get a replacement.
Thankfully, he pulled over a few meters down the road, and told us he was only pulling further up to get out of the way of the traffic coming off the highway. Is this the truth? Or did he succumb to pressure once he saw us shouting so loud, every local within a 50 metre radius noticed? Who knows, but we looked like a right pair of dickheads, sheepishly getting our bags off the bus.
At this point, the local bus to San Benito pulled up, full to the brim. My friend and I looked at each other and decided, with very few words, that we’ve both perhaps had enough of the highs and lows of Salvadoran public transport for a few days. An easy, ninety minute jaunt to the capital has taken us six hours and we’re still not there yet.
I fish my phone out of my pocket and call an Uber. By the time we arrived at La Zona hostel in San Benito we were both borderline hysterical. We decided that our initial plan to head towards Cuscutlán to find a comedor for dinner has lost its appeal. So instead, we wandered a few streets over to a Bavarian beer house while we debriefed, trying to figure out how our easy travel day went so wrong. At least we’ve made it here in one piece. With all our bags?