Join Me for 3 Days Exploring La Ruta de Las Flores in El Salvador

La Ruta de Las Flores (route of the flowers) is a collection of picturesque hillside villages connected by winding roads adorned with a rainbow of wildflowers. It’s the flowering crown of El Salvador tourist destinations and truly unique.

It’s my favourite part of El Salvador and I would love for you to join me for three days exploring La Ruta de Las Flores.

Day one: The foodie day! Juayua, otherwise known as “that village no foreigners can pronounce” (they weren’t wrong!)

Day one was off to a rocky start as we showed up at the address of our hotel to a spot where there simply was no hotel there. We checked the address over and over and wandered round and round looking for it. We tried contacting both the owner and booking.com to no avail. After an hour on the street, we thought we were going to be homeless for the night. Finally, the owner got back to us and directed us to the hotel which was nowhere near to the location we’d been given.

Joe later said that he had heard that El Salvador doesn’t have addresses, not in the same way as the rest of the world. Their addresses are location descriptions, for example, “next to the white church after the shop”. No wonder that didn’t show up correctly on the map!

Luckily, things only went up from there.

We had timed our trip to Ruta de Las Flores so that it fell on a weekend to coincide with the local food fair in Juayua. A pristine white church with bright cherry red moldings overlooked the lovely little square. There was a small, sweet souvenir market, tempting me with cute ukuleles and handmade toys for my niece and nephew.

We quenched our thirst with fresh, pineapple blended with rum and served in a pineapple husk. Dreamy! We meandered around the food stalls of various piping hot things sizzling on a grill. We weren’t able to choose, so we went for a mixed grill. It contained the most unbelievable prawns, melt-in-the-mouth skirt steak, and indescribable chicken. There’s nothing quite like a Salvadoran BBQ!

For pudding, we tried this local drink, warmed up in a big cauldron of a milky, alcoholic, spiced concoction that tasted like Christmas in a cup. It was a little odd drinking this wonderful winter warmer (ponche) in the baking sun but it was so tasty I was willing to look the other way.

That night we went out for our first pupusas (El Salvador’s national dish). Oh my God, how can something so simple be so amazing?! Tortillas (the rice flour version was our favourite) stuffed with cheesy fillings and seared on the griddle, served with tomato salsa and tangy coleslaw. We were drawn straight back there the following night, we couldn’t get enough.

Day Two: The adventurous day! Apaneca — zip lining and more

Our second day was my favourite because it was so jam-packed. The village of Apaneca is beautiful and offers a lot of things to do.

First of all, was zip lining! We put on our helmets, strapped on our harnesses, and hopped into the back of the truck, which took us up and up and up.

At the start of the course, there were a few short and not-too-high wires to ease you in. The trouble was that once you were a few wires in, you couldn’t at that point turn back. That’s when they hit you with the big badass zip wire.

So…I’m scared of heights and call me crazy, but maybe signing up to do zip lining wasn’t the best idea in the whole world?

The start was sneakily hidden by the tree cover so you couldn’t see how far it went out and how high up it was.

I was a few seconds into zooming down the wire when I started screaming like a banshee. I squeezed my glove on the wire (i.e. my brake) so damn hard in a freaked panic that instead of slowing me down as it should do, my hand stayed where it was and yanked my arm back with it, feeling as it almost pulled my arm right out of the socket (my shoulder hurt for a week after). This pulled me to a dead stop and left me hanging. My eyes popped out of my head like a cartoon character when I looked down at the treetops below me. I could think of nothing but expletives!

I had no choice but to let go to begin the descent and the screaming all over again. Upon landing on the other side, I finally felt the literal meaning of the phrase “my legs were like jelly”, they were trembling and could barely hold me up. Joe was speaking to me and I couldn’t reply, my mouth just opened and closed like a goldfish.

It’s always good to face your fears, even if it doesn’t feel so good in the moment! That’s what I tell myself anyway… Heights come up again and again traveling and they never get any easier, but I always give it my best shot, and I always feel proud after.

For a slightly more wholesome activity, we decided to test our mental agility and do a little puzzle. I’d read about a great hedge maze which was a lot of fun and harder than we expected it to be, but we somehow managed it. It’s built on a hill so you also get quite the leg workout, traipsing up and down the hill. Some parts were incredibly pretty too. For example, you enter through a tunnel of hanging tangerine flowers.

After we walked around the sweet colourful town, admiring murals and mosaics, the town of Apeneca felt like an outdoor art gallery.

In the afternoon we wanted to visit Los Choros Waterfalls outside of Juayua. I had read that you just take a tuk-tuk down there and have a wander around. Simple right? Wrong (as always eh?!).

We told the driver where we wanted to go and he said that we weren’t allowed to go there without a guide. Then he made some phone calls and arranged a guide for us. Our guide was a man in a too-small t-shirt riding up his belly that made him resemble Winnie the Pooh. He had a glazed look and couldn’t stop scratching his exposed belly.

A local family who had with them a deathly bored teenager and a new baby joined us. The whole time I felt like we were crashing someone’s family picnic.

We ambled down to an enormous metal fence and padlocked door which the guide opened with his own set of keys. Now we understand why you couldn’t visit without a guide.

We walked past one waterfall and looked at it for 5 minutes, then onto the next. The waterfalls were strange because the pools at the bottom had a wall built around them, making them feel weirdly industrial. We all had a little dip in the cold water and snapped a few photos before promptly leaving again.

We were left starching our heads as to why we had gone out of our way to come here. It was all in all a pretty underwhelming experience that you can easily give a miss.

At least we could drown our sorrows in our second round of pupusas!

Day 3. The Spa Day. Thermal Waterfalls

Another great activity in the Ruta de Las Flores is the thermal waterfalls. Now I’ve been to a thermal spring and I’ve been to a waterfall but never have the two combined! I didn’t even know such a combination existed!

It was incredible. As the falls thundered down, you could watch the steaming rising from the surface of the water.

We hiked down from above to some smaller pools and falls on a long ledge above the main waterfall. Sinking into it was heavenly, like enjoying a warm bath surrounded by nature.

I opted out of swimming below in the large pool as it could only be reached with a jump, from quite a height I might add. We were warned that the climb back up would be slippery and dangerous. Count me out. I’d had enough scary heights for one weekend. I enjoyed my private outdoor bath while Joe and the guide jumped in.

After we went to visit the river that feeds into the waterfall. Two streams are feeding into the river, one is ice cold, and the other is scolding hot. You can swim between them. You lay on your back, and when you reach your arms out, the left side of your body feels cold and the right side hot, it’s bizarre. The water temperature varies wildly depending on your location and it’s fun to swim and play around with it.

Lastly, we headed to the real source of it all, exploding geysers, and steaming hot pools of volcanic mud! It was thrilling to see, and we enjoyed smothering our faces in the mud, a little impromptu spa day!

I hope you enjoyed spending 3 days on the Ruta de Las Flores with us!

If you’d like to spend longer, then please do! There are plenty more villages to discover and activities to try. Some of which we only didn’t do, because we’d done that somewhere else before, for example taking a coffee tour.

Even if you’re not jamming in the activities, it’s a lovely place to just be.

Take a breath, enjoy the flowers, the murals and of course the pupusas!

Thank you for reading! Hearts and tips are always welcome, and your support is very much appreciated.

This story was originally published on Medium

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