A Week Off the Tourist Trail in El Cuco, El Salvador

25.09.2024 - 14:47 / matadornetwork.com

I am not the likeliest serial traveler to Central America. I don’t speak Spanish, or surf, or have any kind of Latin dance skills. But in recent years, I’ve been drawn to the region repeatedly, making visits to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and, this past June, to El Salvador. After the country made this year’s “52 Places to Go” list from the New York Times, I felt the familiar, early tug of intrigue that so often sends me into trip-planning mode.

But the same spotlight that piqued my interest also made me wary. Did I want to go to a place where the best-known spots were becoming increasingly crowded? What else did the country offer, away from the deepening grooves of the tourist trail?

I was keen to avoid the usual tourist destinations, like those in “Surf City.” Photo: Omri Eliyahu/Shutterstock

Once famously dangerous, though now safe under strong-arm tactics from a government that some say has jailed innocent people, El Salvador’s recent tough-on-crime laws have helped make it an up-and-coming tourist destination. On my trip, I wanted to avoid the usual haunts, including Salvadoran “Surf City” (actually a region, not a city), advertised to both gringo and local wave-riders around El Tunco, El Zonte, and La Libertad. Nor did I want to drive the much-traffickedRuta de las Flores (“Route of the Flowers,”) a flower-packed highway through colonial villages in the country’s west.

So with the goal of avoiding tourist traps, I decided on a week in El Salvador in the country’s quieter corners, as well as a nearly-deserted beach or two. I did spend some time in the capital, San Salvador, necessitated by my flight schedule. But mostly, I explored the San Miguel region, in the country’s southeast. It’s near the Gulf of Fonseca and has seen little of the tourism-driven growth experienced elsewhere in El Salvador in recent years.

Photo: Gianfranco Vivi/Shutterstock

I slept hard and awoke the following day for a traditional breakfast of scrambled eggs, beans, tortillas, and coffee at the hotel’s on-site restaurant, with a view over Highway 2, which would later lead me to the region’s beach towns. Soon after, a 45-minute bus ride took me to San Salvador’sCentro Historico, home to the Palacio Nacional (or National Palace, now a museum), the National Library, and the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador.

It was in this cathedral on March 24, 1980, that guerrillas fatally shot Cardinal Óscar Romero, who was also a prominent human rights activist, as he gave Catholic mass. Romero’s killing set in motion the country’s civil war, which ground on for a dozen years before a negotiated peace ended the bloodshed for good in 1992. Though figures vary widely, an estimated 75,000 civilians died during the conflict.

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