[Note: the header photo is actually of Centro Histórico!] Today we woke up not very bright but early and made our way to the San José airport. After a brief, confusing stop in the middle of the ride to pay our fare by credit card to (what we presume) was a colleague of our driver, we arrived at the airport 2.5 hours early. It was a good thing we did, as the lines were HILARIOUSLY long – probably 60 passengers ahead of us for bag drop for our flight, and legitimately a few hundred subsequently ahead of us for immigration and security.

Happily, there was a cute Christmas sloth awaiting us when we finally cleared.

Fortunately, our flight was on time and weather was beautiful (although some significant G-forces on takeoff had the kids on the flight shrieking – this apparently happens regardless of how smooth the takeoff is as we’d discover on subsequent flights!). While we waited at the gate for boarding to complete, I noted a pallet of beautiful fresh fruit (they looked like mangoes) waiting to be loaded on the plane. I also noted… Air Serbia flies to Costa Rica? Having spent time in Serbia, I can’t quite picture that crossover (to be clear, Serbians are very friendly under the Eastern European exterior, but the Pura Vida vibe doesn’t jive with my impressions!).

Once airborne, it was a beautiful and short flight – in fact, I’m surprised that domestic flights run between Liberia and San José, since our flight to El Salvador was only about 50 minutes. My flight tracking app, Flighty (a new favorite – it tracks every flights and aggregates things like lifetime miles, types of aircraft you’ve flown on, etc.) suggested we were above Liberia, Costa Rica 7 minutes in (I suspect it would have been closer to 20-25 minutes as we didn’t have wifi and Flighty got slightly confused, but still!).

Along the way, we passed a few volcanoes (one in Honduras and the below is the Quezaltepeque volcano in El Salvador viewed from the sky during our approach).

Upon arrival in San Salvador, we were quickly escorted to the hotel after clearing immigration and departed on the day’s activities about 45 minutes later. Since we wanted to see some of the museums and cultural sights but most are closed on Mondays, we opted to hire a professional driver through the hotel to take us to various sites throughout the afternoon – for only $10/hour! San Salvador itself is a giant city, with the traffic that comes with it – rush hour is pretty much all the time. There are two main tourist areas within the city, Zona Rosa and Centro Histórico (although it’s certainly worth just driving around and hitting some of the sights outside of these neighborhoods as well!). To capture our activities, I’ve split our travel within the city into two separate blogs (Zona Rosa and Centro Histórico) as each neighborhood has a distinct feel.

We inadvertently focused our first day on Zona Rosa, a neighborhood known for its upscale shopping and business districts, as well as the National Museums. We began our trek with lunch at the upscale shopping complex Bambu, which houses a variety of European, Latin American, and especially American brands from the Gap to Sketchers to Kenneth Cole to Nine West and beyond. It also has a relatively large food court and several upscale restaurants. Wanting to try Salvadoreño food, we opted to visit Tipicos Margoth, which is a popular chain within the city. It wasn’t fancy, but we enjoyed a great meal for <$20 total. We tried:

• A chile relleno, filled with a sofrito and beef mix
• Sauteed veggies – very simple but flavorful served with a little lime juice
• Roasted chicken – also very simple but delicious
• Rice cooked in black bean liquid
• A Salvadoran “pudding” – this was fascinating; it tasted like bread pudding but had a quasi-flan consistency; it’s clear they don’t use cream fully to make it, giving it a thicker mouthfeel
• A stack of 4 pupusas (3 with a corn base, unpictured); pupusas are a very common, traditional dish here. Essentially, they are a corn, rice, or yucca “pouch” of sorts that can include a variety of toppings (traditional are cheese, beans, cheese and beans, cheese with a meat, etc.)
• The pupusas were accompanied by a slightly fermented cabbage side (it reminded me of kimchi, but a bit sweeter and without any of the spice), as well as a crushed tomato sauce

Driving around San Salvador, we noticed that El Salvador seems to love American fast food chains (‘cadenas’ in Spanish) – you can’t drive 4 blocks on a main road without passing the classics: pizza (Dominoes, Little Caesars, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut), fast food (Wendy’s, KFC, Popeyes, Burger King, McDonald’s, etc.). They also have some of the ‘fancier’ American chain options, including a prominently placed Tony Roma’s. Heck, we even passed a Jimmy John’s on our way to the museums!

After lunch, we made the short trek over to the National Museums, which are conveniently located right across the street from one another. Along the way, we passed the beautiful Parroquia San Benito church.

First up, we hit the Museum of Art of El Salvador, which includes a modest but interesting collection of artwork. I did appreciate that the main gallery chronicles El Salvador’s history using a variety of art styles, from historic maps to classical paintings to abstract and sculptural art. Both the main gallery and contemporary exhibit feature works related to the history of El Salvador and Salvadoreño people.

As a note, I’ll use “Salvadoreño” throughout my blogs to describe the people and sights of El Salvador because there seems to be widespread disagreement on the “correct” spelling in English (Salvadoran vs. Salvadorian). Most menus / written items we saw in El Salvador spell it “Salvadoran” in English (as does Wikipedia), but most English-speaking Salvadoreños we met (though few) verbally said “Salvadorian” and felt quite strongly that the “i” needed to be there to be “correct” (all, however, agreed Salvadoreño was preferable to any English translation!).

The first exhibit explores components of Salvadoreño identity, including how Salvadoreños are viewed abroad.

From there, the exhibit moves to a chronological history of El Salvador through art, from early depictions by the Spanish during the conquistador period, colonial portraits of local Salvadoreño people.

Then, the art moved to depict the modern period, including El Salvador’s “guerra” (civil war) during the early 1990s and struggle with gang ‘warfare’ in the subsequent ~30 years.

For context, until about 3 years ago, the country was largely controlled by gangs; in 2022, things were so bad that the government enacted a “State of Exception” which allowed them to essentially arrest anyone potentially affiliated with gangs and hold them without due process (from what we heard, this led to the arrest of almost ~90,000 people). This obviously has raised significant human rights concerns on the international stage, but most Salvadoreños we met spoke very highly of this regime change, as it allowed them to go back to normal life, including free transit throughout the country and commerce (especially for those whose income is reliant on micro-businesses such as selling food on the buses). For tourists, this means that the country went from a “Level 3: Reconsider Travel” (the current rating for surrounding countries like Guatemala and Honduras due to continued gang issues) to a “Level 1” (i.e., totally fine – for the record, countries like Belgium and the UK are a “Level 2” given potential terrorism concerns). To put this in further context, the only thing worse than a Level 3 rating is a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” which is reserved for places like Haiti and Somalia where the government literally recommends you get your will in order before venturing abroad.

As you can imagine, this art is evocative, heartbreaking, and thought provoking. Sadly, the museum didn’t include much more than nameplates by way of curation notes, but the following art pieces almost speak for themselves. The text in the above right hand side painting translates to “the candles are always lit” while the embroidery bottom RHS says “justice” twice.

I found the “Call of Duty” children’s room especially interesting – for those who don’t know, Call of Duty is an incredibly violent, first-person shooter video game (and extremely popular with men – and some women – of all ages). There’s something heartwrenching about a cotton version of what should be a fictionalized depiction of war, only to realize that Salvadoreño children were living it as reality every day. Similarly, the LHS bottom embroidery piece included a side-by-side video where the artist was stitching handcuffs onto the wrists of the person depicted.

On the way out of the museum, I did get a good smile out of the “Mi Snacky” vending machine.

Next up, we visited the Dr. David J. Guzmán National Museum, which includes a similarly modest but interesting curation of various historical items. The exhibits include an overview of important trades and agricultural products in El Salvador, including coffee, indigo, balsam products (used for herbal medicine), and jade.

They also have a small exhibit showcasing items found in shipwrecks off of the country’s coast and a few items found at the archeological sites (including Tazumal, Joya de Ceren, and San Andres – see my archeology blog for more info on these sites!). The top RHS image shows a full-body urn, which would have been used in burial rights by inhabitants of Tazumal.

The final exhibit I found interesting was on the contributions of formerly enslaved Africans to El Salvador’s history and culture. As we’d learn on our archeology tour, most Salvadoreños have a mix of indigenous (Pipil), African, and European blood, with a defined conception of Salvadoreño identity going back to the Conquistador period.

Two items in particular were especially interesting from this exhibit: 1) the ceremony of San Benito de Palermo (middle, below), which emerged as a result of Black and mulatto (individuals with mixed Black and European ancestry) people being required to attend church (and, in turn, allowed to become priests to further proselytize). Because these Black priests wanted to incorporate their existing culture to make the religion more accessible, celebrations such as the Ceremony of San Benito emerged.

As would be reinforced by our tour to the archeological sites the following day, the exhibit emphasized that representation matters – in this case, the representation of a religious figure as looking similar to the population being asked to convert / worship. As the story goes, San Benito (an Italian from Palermo), had dark skin that would have looked similar to that of Mesoamericans (and he thus became the patron saint of ~10 different cities within El Salvador).

Similarly, Black Salvadoreños incorporated other parts of their culture into their Christian religious practice, combining “magic” with rituals dedicated to saints such as San Simón. As you can see in the LHS photo below, candles and paper decorations with colors corresponding to different Mesoamerican / African “Seven Powers” traditions would have been used (for example, orange would have corresponded to love / marriage, red for passion or power over enemies, blue to ‘open doors’, white for peace, lighter blue for femininity, etc.).

The below masks were also used in the “cuche de monte” traditional indigenous dance of the people located in Acalhuapa and Mejicanos. I couldn’t find too much more beyond one journal article about this dance, but it’s apparently also called ‘Cújtan-Cuyámet’ and typically performed with a drum, pipe and tepunahuaste (apparently another type of drum) during wedding ceremonies.

The other thing I found really interesting was the crosswalk between African and Nahuatl words / phrases and Spanish. It was a great way of highlighting how even basic, everyday words have rich cultural history behind them.

Of course, the entire country is dressed up for Christmas (one guide described Christmas in El Salvador as a ‘disaster, but in the best way!’) including the plaza of the National Museum. I loved that they translated the holiday theme for the local context.

After the museums, we headed to the Centro Histórico, which I’ll cover in a separate blog as we did a variety of activities there over the course of our time in San Salvador. However, we returned to Zona Rosa twice more.

First, we had dinner at El Xolo, a restaurant that has featured on the World’s Top 50 Restaurants for Latin America several times (and for good reason, as we’d discover!). The restaurant features updated versions of traditional Salvadoreño food, including several new cocktails. We tried:

• A Tamal de Hongos (a mushroom tamal), which came with a delicious sauce made from dried chiles
• Pastelitos de Maíz (a little dough pouch filled with the national smoked chicken, quesillo cheese, and a nice sauce made of pickled veggies)
• The Santo Domingo de Guzmán (underneath the fried chipilin was local snapper, white beans, and a alhuashte mole)
• Risotto de Camarón, which included chipilin (a local vegetable similar to spinach), shrimp, and a fried, cured shrimp (these looked pretty but were basically impossible to eat – reflecting on the menu in writing this blog, I wonder if we were supposed to keep the shell on since they were ‘cured’)
• A lorocotini (a Loroco martini – oddly, ‘locoro’ is a type of edible flower, not a pepperoncini); this is a clear nod to the current trend of ‘salad dressing martinis’ (yes, we millennials are clearly looking for escapism wherever we can find it – BUT in our defense, a ‘salad dressing’ martini is just taking the traditional olive brine from a dry martini and taking it a step further with herb oils, non-traditional garnishes, etc.)
• A dessert tamal! Unlike other cultures in Central America, El Salvador has a variety of sweet tamales – this was a chocolate version (very sweet, texture felt like what would emerge if a fudgy brownie and flan had a baby, not to be confused with chocoflan!), with a nice eggnog sauce

On our final day, we returned to Bambu for a delicious drink and localized sushi roll at Brutto (definitely a fine dining / trendy vibe – we loved their Salvadoreño take on classic cocktails!).

We then migrated to have dinner at Monterosso, a nice Italian restaurant (they even import one of my favorite Pinot Noirs from California!).

Final notes on Zona Rosa for anyone looking to travel to San Salvador:

• I’d recommend staying at a hotel in Zona Rosa – the area is extremely upscale, safe to walk around (again, take normal precautions at night or as a woman traveling alone), and has a variety of hotels intended for business and luxury travelers, including the Presidente (an upscale Sheraton) and a Barceló, which is a luxury Spanish hotel brand (we stayed at the InterContinental, which was convenient to both Zona Rosa and Centro Histórico, but it wasn’t walkable to dinner and we ended up eating at the hotel a couple times and would have preferred to be closer to a variety of options since the local options were so good!)
• Consider getting reservations for dinner, especially if you want to dine later in the evening (we were able to sneak in since we were largely exhausted after all-day tours, but if we wanted to dine at peak times from 8:30-10pm, we’d definitely have been turned away)
• Pack for fine dining! We weren’t able to gauge what was appropriate since so little literature is available for US travelers to El Salvador, but I wished I’d had nicer jewelry / shoes / etc. to wear!

Overall, a great start to our time in El Salvador!