Once, I was at the Dulles Airport very late at night, and I looked at the board and saw that all of the flights leaving were for Central America. There are a lot of direct flights from Dulles. I realized that maybe it might be possible to do a long weekend to Central America, which opened up some options! So far, I’ve traveled through Belize, Panama, and Costa Rica, so I had four countries left of the seven to explore. I settled on El Salvador – it’s small enough that I felt I would be able to see a fair amount, because the distances between things aren’t quite as much as, say, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and I’ve been curious about it for a while now.

It only took 4.5 hours to get to San Salvador. It’s amazing, living somewhere with so many direct flights, where I can get off a plane and find myself immersed in a different culture! I stayed in San Salvador, the capital, and used that as a base to explore a few areas of El Salvador. For such a small country, it has a lot to offer. I started with the Mayan ruins of Joya de Cerén and San Andrés.


I’ve seen a fair number of Mayan sites now, and I went to another on this trip that was more impressive (more on that later), but these were still interesting. I liked being able to peer down into the areas that were still being excavated and studied. The layers of rock were very neat.


From there, it was lunch near Coatepeque Lake! I loved the view from the restaurant. The color of the lake is gorgeous. If I’d had more time, I would have been interested in going down closer to the shore – it looked like there were communities down there that I would have loved to explore.

The whole area near the lake is part of a natural protected area, called Cerro Verde. After lunch, I headed there for an eco-walk, which included a higher viewpoint of the lake!



Overall, it was a good first day, but I liked my second full day in El Salvador a bit more. I did a tour of the Ruta de las Flores! And yes, it’s not completely “off the tourist trail,” but it did feel like a collection of places where locals were out and about, as opposed to that first day that was focused almost entirely on tourist sites.


I’m not saying going to tourist sites as a tourist is a bad thing, but I like to have a mix, and particularly in El Salvador, as their recent transformation is part of what drew me to visit. Their president, Nayib Bukele, was elected in 2019 and has been focused on radical changes ever since. Prior to his election as president, he served as the mayor of San Salvador.
He’s a polarizing figure – there is no question that under his leadership, the crime rate in El Salvador has plummeted, but his methods have led to a number of concerns over human rights. Also, when I say plummeted, murder rates went from a high of 66 per 100,000 people in 2012 to only 1.9 per 100,000 people in 2024, which is a decrease of 98% in only nine years. Those numbers are working in his favor. He was just reelected in 2024, winning a staggering 84.65% of the vote.


I was curious to see for myself what the new El Salvador looks like. I felt totally safe, even walking around by myself to get dinner as the sun went down. The Salvadorans were friendly and welcoming. I got the impression that tourism is on the upswing, with more tourists putting it on the radar now that the crime rate is lower.


One of the aspects of the tour that I really enjoyed was going to a coffee farm! Central America is known for producing great coffee, and it was cool to see the whole process. I’ve been to a few places that produced coffee, but this was a much more in-depth tour on how they get it from the plant to what I would put in a coffee maker or a French press.



There’s something very soothing about the beans drying out in the sun, being raked frequently like an oversized Japanese sand garden. On the other hand, once they’re put into the sacks, that work transporting them and confirming that they’re distributing the correct beans to the right places seems absolutely grueling.



Two full days is a short visit, to be sure. But I made the most of them, and I had a third day in the region that I used for a quick trip out of El Salvador – more on that next time. Because I dipped into my 2025 vacation days allocation for West Africa, I’m tighter on vacation this year, and this was a great use of a long weekend to explore a place that’s been on my radar for a while now. I would recommend longer if you have it, to spend more time in San Salvador and get out to the beaches (especially if you surf), but this was absolutely doable with the direct flight from DC.




All in all, it was a great Presidents’ Day weekend!