We have a message for those thinking about where to travel to, the answer is El Salvador! Here are some very honest opinions what famous YouTubers have said about their experience visiting El Salvador.
The famous YouTubers Marianne and Chris, whom in May 2018 quit their 9-5 job, rented their house, to travel full-time, Like everybody, the corona virus affected our daily lives, and their around the world drive has now come to a standstill.
After spending over 70 days in the same car park, they often found themselves daydreaming of past trips and adventures.
In fact about two years ago today, they were actually in El Salvador Central America. El Salvador is sometimes overlooked by backpackers due to its reputation, in fact they actually created a hashtag #Dontskipelsalvador and how happy will we that we chose to spend a few weeks in this wonderful country.
In fact when they arrived at the border, they did a land crossing, and the tourists in front of them kept saying the word “in transit”! and they were really unsure of what was going on.
What question were they being asked? so when they arrived for their turn and the immigration guy said “how long are you here in El Salvador?” and they looked to each other, grinned and said “A couple of weeks maybe?!”
He was so excited in fact he asked them to wait and he disappeared, and he came back with this ‘welcome to El Salvador tourist map’ with all the best places to visit! And in fact the hospitality continued to grow from that point onwards!
What a a country, they say. As travel bloggers, people always ask them ‘where is the best place?’ ‘ what is the best place? But for them, it always comes down to the people, and it has some of the most friendliest people they have ever met. They remember they had a party in El Tunco, they Airbnb host Eduardo and Kriscia actually took the time to take them up into the mountains in the hills, surrounding San Salvador, to a village called Panchimalco, what a village! such a beautiful colorful village up in the countryside.
They were blessed because the whole family just took them in, and they heard about this national dish called ‘Pupusas’ and were curious and when they asked them, Nancy actually showed them how to make them, showed them the different fillings you could put in, and even cooked them from fresh for us to taste that deliciousness!
Now, if you don’t believe them on how amazing El Salvador is, they actually invited some of their friends, YouTube creators that they knew have visited El Salvador to share their experience with you as well.
Here is what Brittany and Drewfrom Mr. and Mrs. adventure said:
Hola Amigos! hola! Brittany and Drew here from the YouTube channel, mr. and mrs. adventure and we’re here to tell you a little bit about our travels in one country in particular, that stood out amongst the rest, and we want to thank you Chris and Marianne for allowing us to share a bit of our story with your community, because for the past six years we’ve been traveling the globe by van.
We spent over two years in our beloved ‘Howling Yowler’ ford transit van, all across Europe and Northern Africa, as well as exploring North America and Latin America. And right before everything with Cova 19 hit across the globe. We had the ultimate pleasure of being able to spend a blissful week in El Salvador, not only were we running on the beaches and surfing in the waves but we were able to eat the delicious food of that country ‘pupusas’ Ah the pupusas, it was so fun to learn how they are made and just taste and relish every bite we had.
The fresh fish and the smoothie, some of the fruit smoothie and on top of all of that one of the things you remember them was the kindness and hospitality that we received from the locals. people are very warm welcoming there’s been a big push in recent years from the new president to encourage tourism, bring people in to surf and explore the beach communities as well as many of the other delights and adventures that await them.
We had the opportunity to be guided by a really wonderful local his name is Salva with Tuncolife they do these adventure tours to certain parts of the country, so not only did we get to summit this incredible crater volcano that has bleu waters, they were gorgeous, it was like nothing I had ever seen before!
One thing we can’t forget, is the motorcycle trip we took from to Tunco to Mizata, and just exploring those windy roads it was picturesque I felt like we were in Southern California all over again, cruising through Malibu!
And we even got to explore the city of San Salvador, we really enjoyed the Heritage stepping into the grand Cathedral, and looking at how beautiful that cathedral was in the centre of San Salvador those glass panels. yeah that was one of the most beautiful churches we have ever seen, and I wanted to mention exploring the city, exploring alone on a motorcycle just us two, we felt completely safe and not only that, we felt very welcomed and supported by the locals.
And they were grateful that we were there grateful that we had the courage to explore this country that on the outside has had a bad of reputations, but on the inside truly has so much to offer. yeah and on top of that we should talk about the weather ,the climate along the coast and beaches are some of the best in the world, it’s dry air and it’s so beautiful.
So when all of this is over, we truly hope that you all will consider exploring the beautiful country of El Salvador, and to the people of El Salvador, if you are watching this, thank you so much for the experiences and memory that we will carry in our hearts forever.
El Salvador to the very top of your bucket list, because it is a one for the books!
Here is Alex Outhwaite, a travel television presenter and a travel blogger and this is what she said about El Salvador:
I visited El Salvador last year in January, and I just wanted to share with you a couple of stories about why I thought it was such an amazing country, and why I was super excited to hopefully visit again after the covid 19 situation. So when I first arrived in El Salvador, I flew in and I just collected my rucksack, and as soon as I came out at the airport I had people approaching me asking if they could carry my bag.
This does actually happen at quite a lot of airports, but usually people are wanting to make a couple of dollars by carrying your bags for you, so initially I was saying ‘thank you’ or ‘it’s okay no thank you’ and then I started to realize, that these people weren’t trying to actually make money, and they were just doing it genuinely to be kind and to try and welcome me to the country.
This kindness actually continued throughout the whole of my trip. My Spanish isn’t particularly good, but I would have people coming up to me stopping their cars and asking if I needed their help, translating or directions to other places, when we were on buses people would go out of their way to try and tell us when our stop was, and make sure that we didn’t miss it!
On top of the kindness I think another amazing aspect of El Salvador is just how diverse it is there’s something for every type of traveler, so there’s a lot of adventurous activities if you want to go hiking you can go up to the volcano which I did!
Which I absolutely loved, you can stay by Lago de Coatepeque and stay in some beautiful huge properties by the lake there and go swimming and boating in the lake there’s actually a lot of lovely up-and-coming luxury hotels, especially around the El Tunco area.
And so if you’re in need of a bit more of a luxurious side El Salvador can offer that as well, certainly El Tunco itself has so much to offer for everybody it’s a huge surf destination I think a lot of people don’t know that El Salvador is so good for surfing.
And it’s got an incredible nightlife as well so I actually spend quite a bit of time in El Tunco, going out to some of the bars and it’s actually got a bit of an Ibiza feel I posted some videos on my Instagram from El Tunco and people genuinely seemed to think that it was an Ibiza!
They we’re very surprised to find out that it was El Salvador. It’s only a small country, so it’s quite easy to get around there’s lots of buses going up and down the coast and inland, and it’s very cheap to travel around as well which certainly as a backpacker like me is a big benefit.
It’s somewhere that I’m really keen to go back to, because although I did spend a few weeks there. I certainly want to go again, I’ve made some nice friends in the country. I’m absolutely obsessed now with pupusas so that’s one reason that’s good enough to go back, and I hope to see you all there!
And if you’re still in doubt why you should visit El Salvador,
here’s a few more reasons why you should travel to El Salvador
El Salvador is so diverse, and one of the benefits of visiting this country is it’s so compact and small, that you can visit so many different types of tourism all in a couple of weeks.
There’s lots of wonderful archaeological sites to really get the imagination going. There’s a massive selection of volcanoes you can either drive to or hike up and get the magnificent views from.
And let’s not forget the wonderful diversity of wildlife, and nature trails and things that they have available. And if you’re a foodie like us? there is something for everyone, there is the delicious street food all the way up to the high-end restaurants.
Yes and some of those restaurants have the best views. We went to a restaurant in Suchitoto called Casa 1800, and the view from that restaurant has to be one of the best views I have ever seen! Definitely worth the visit!
Every village or town in El Salvador, the main square is overlooked by wonderful colonial churches, and when we visited Panchimalco, we got to see the traditional Nahuit style buildings too. Amazing, I really loved the hustle and bustle of the markets.
We went and walked around, got lost in the markets with the locals, and you see colourful vegetables and produce and definitely colourful characters! Yes we met some amazing people there, just the the banter that goes on with everyone.
It’s so vibrant and colourful and just a really lovely place to visit. One of my favourite things as a massive coffee drinker was visiting Entre Nubes, meeting Daniel and his family, who’s been farming the lands for years, for generations, and tasting the delicious coffees.
All the little colourful villages along the Ruta de las Flores, well Ataco took my heart! It was so beautiful, the street art is second to none! the colourful and beautiful artwork ,just brightens up the cobbled streets doesn’t it?
Absolutely! and well one of the things that sticks in my memory of how friendly people were, when we were in Ahuachapan, we saw a group of bikers all dressed up in their leathers, with bandanas and we thought let’s go and say hi to these guys. And what a welcome they gave us !
