In my previous post I ended at the spa and I’ll start there now. We sent Leighton home on an evening flight and settled in for a good sleep in preparation for our trip out to Suchitoto. Not that it was a difficult trip – one hour and and half Uber ride and we’d arrived at our cute hotel – Casa 1800.

Suchitoto was as hot as San Salvador had been so we had some lunch and then (literally) chilled out in our room until early evening. It’s a relatively compact little colonial town with a pretty square surrounded by restaurants and stores and of course, a church. I had to include a still photo of the church lit with my favourite colour and a video of the light show and chiming bells.

The next day we set out to hike to the nearby waterfall – Cascada Los Tercios. We knew there’d be no water (dry season) but the hexagonal rock formations (basalt columns formed from cooling lava) still made for a fascinating visit. I didn’t have proper footwear so only hiked about 2/3 of the way down but Megan stepped up (and down) and got the prize photo from the very bottom. It was a hot, gruelling uphill hike back to town but all in all a great morning to follow with an afternoon at the pool!

We also took a boat trip to get out on the actual lake itself – Suchitlán. A pleasant trip with a Spanish speaking guide (I wasn’t able to barrage him with questions as usual) got us out on the water at sunset with one unusual stop.

We were dropped off on Isla El Ermitano, climbed a rickety ladder to the top of the rock where the wreck of a small El Salvadoran Air Force Plane is permanently perched. Apparently it crashed into the lake during a post maintenance test run and 3 of the 4 people on board perished. After the investigation was completed it was dragged from the water and up the rock to be put on display. The epitome of dark tourism.

On the actual day of my 50th birthday, Megan had meetings scheduled most of the day (hence why we celebrated earlier in San Salvador) so I booked myself into an Indigo workshop. My host, Irma was absolutely lovely and I spent a couple of hours with her learning about El Salvador’s indigo industry and its history and just chatting about life in general. Briefly, El Salvador is the largest produce of indigo in Latin America and apparently their indigo is the most pigmented in the world. Indigo is extracted from the leaves of a plant that are macerated in concrete vats of water, left to ferment, oxygenated and then the pigment is collected from the bottom of the vats after it settles out and ground into powder.

And then we dyed scarves. The process involved folding the scarf (has to be made of natural fibre, not synthetic) multiple times in order to achieve the desired pattern. And then dipping it into the fermented dye bath multiple times to deepen the colours. The dye originally looks green, but when exposed to air turns blue. And the fermented dye baths are made using various combinations of chemicals.

We departed at 6am the next morning to travel back to the beach (El Tunco). We had an interesting trip with an American expat who’d been living in El Salvador for the past 17 years (he’s married to a Salvadoran). He was quite blustery over text so we weren’t sure what to expect and although he was definitely ‘a lot’, he did give us some good information!

And the rest of our stay in El Salvador can be summed up with these 2 pictures. A few days of relaxation in the sun, in a fun little beach town!

Fitting to begin and end this last chapter of San Salvador with the most beautiful street art! Go to El Salvador if you get the chance!!