We decided to plonk ourselves slap bang on the Ruta de las Flores for no other reason than we’d be closer to the food. There aren’t any flowers at this time of year which is the main draw of the Ruta de las Flores, obviously, but Juayúa still have their mini food festival every weekend and we thought it’d be nice to be able to roll out of our hotel room and faceplant a pile of cooked meat. Juayúa ended up just being a lovely place to spend a few days, I’m sure Santa Ana has its merits (the done thing is to day trip to the region from Santa Ana) but Juayúa is smaller and is bursting with personality.

The food festival is, we were told, more about the atmosphere than the food. You can get better, cheaper food from your friendly neighbourhood comedor, thrown onto a plate by someone’s grandma from a warmer. There’s definitely a direct correlation between how delicious the food is and how likely you are to come away with a brand new bout of dysentery. It’s totally worth the risk. You’ll pay half what you’ll pay here, but the Juayúa food festival is still absolutely worth a look just for the lols.

The stalls were still setting up when we wandered into the square so we started strong with a big old dumpling whilst we waited for the big food to be carefully displayed. That was fun to watch. Obviously the display food is just that, it’s going to be sat there all day, it’s certainly not for your facehole. I watched a woman applying candle wax to the cut limes to keep them shiny. Definitely don’t go squeezing that into your Cuba libre.

So it’s all pretty much variations of the same food, it’s just presented differently, and you’re looking at US$6 to US$10 depending on the plate. Don’t go expecting it to be as well presented as the display food either once it’s chucked into a takeaway box. Fair enough really, we’re only going to shovel it into our chops like we were raised by wolves, it doesn’t need to be pretty. We opted for a meaty combo and were presented with ribs and thin steak which we shared and I’m glad we did. It was quite the assault on the digestive system, they don’t skimp on the portions.

One thing you definitely need to do, and yes yes yes I’m completely aware it’s an overpriced gimmick, is drink a pineapple juice from an actual pineapple. Rum is optional and we definitely opted. She used a special tool to gut the pineapple then blended the chunks with the rum and the coconut cream (yeah alright, we went for the piña colada) then poured it back into the shell of the fruit. You’re pretty much consuming the majority of a pineapple here, it’s really filling, I had to be rolled out of the tents the stalls were in.

We just spent the rest of the afternoon in a bar drinking rum with a woman we’d actually met in San Salvador but bumped into again whilst we were recovering from the pineapple coma with a beer. I can definitely see how it’d be easily done from Santa Ana, I’ll pop the Juayúa – Santa Ana bus schedule at the bottom. It doesn’t really get going until around 11am, it was super busy by 12.30pm, then it wraps up around 5ish I think.

The following morning we started our day with the obligatory search for pupusas and coffee and I’m so going to miss shovelling these little discs of joy into my facehole twice a day. Then we hopped onto the 249 to Ataco, a little town with a viewpoint, but it’s mostly known for the many murals that adorn the walls. We hopped off the bus and made our way up to Mirador del Cruz for some cracking views over the small town. Someone had set up a stall and was selling drinks so obviously we bought a couple because we want to encourage this kind of behaviour. Every viewpoint should have someone selling drinks. It should be international law.

We shuffled down to the main square via a craft store called Axul Artesania run by two artists from San Salvador with a minor obsession with cats. I say minor obsession, it’s not, it’s a feline related assault on the eyeholes. You’re greeted by a colourful cat mural on the outside wall of the shop and once you’re inside there are plenty of cat related art pieces. They do sell work from other artists too but we ended up with a carving of a cat painted a lovely, natural purple colour. What? I’m a sucker for local art.

Then we pretty much just wandered the streets in search of the murals that put the town on the map. You don’t have to wander far, they’re everywhere in various styles. Unsurprisingly many of them are cat based and bear the Axul signature. Some of them look a lot older, the paint starting to flake. A lot of them depict daily life in the coffee region and feature bags of coffee. That’s a thing though, Tarrant has been disappointed with the quality of coffee around here but I guess they export the good shit and that just leaves the second grade shit for local consumption.

We hopped back on the bus and jumped off outside Cafe Albania in Apaneca. We’d heard they had a big maze here but it also turned out they had a few adrenaline games which explained the blood curdling screams. They have this, like, highwire bicycle thing which combines two of my least favourite things, bicycles and heights, so that could fuck off. But there was also a giant swing. Well now, that’s a bit temping but you don’t jump, they literally remove the ground you’re standing on so you fall and just the thought of that made my bumhole twitch a bit. Let’s go and solve this maze then whilst I have a little think about it.

Ha, yeah, we would not be solving this maze. Don’t get me wrong, we paid our entrance fee and we tried to solve the bastard thing but after quite a long time of walking around in circles and the fourth time of ending up back at the start we decided the fates had spoken and packed it in before I started trying to chew through the walls in a frustrated rage. Yeah well I didn’t want to solve your stupid maze anyway. I did, however, fancy being dropped from a platform. I queued up to buy my ticket. Tarrant would absolutely not be joining me for this, she has more sense.

As they strapped me in I stared straight ahead and tried to keep my sphincter under control. He got me to lean back and hold onto two straps which would absolutely be coming with me when I went but shush, don’t tell my brain that. The anticipation was killing me. An alarm sounded which I’d been assuming meant everything was ready to go. He pulled a lever and off I fucked with a yell fitting of someone whose floor had just been removed. It was a good little hit of adrenaline but I’d be quite happy if the swinging would stop now, please. A bloke slowed me down and stopped me, probably about three arcs before my stomach made its displeasure known and ejected my breakfast pupusas over his head. That was a lot of fun though!

We did pop into Apaneca proper to have a look around but it was a ghost town. I guess outside of flower season all the action is at Café Albania. We got back on the 249 and jumped off at Salcoatitán which was a very cute little town with a print museum and a reputation for yuca frita con chicharrón. Fried yucca and pork, but in this case it’s fat and skin which didn’t exactly appeal to my British taste buds but fuck it. I’d give it a go. You buy this shit from yucarias and it’s actually phenomenal. Okay okay, phenomenal is a strong word but it was very nice and I was very hungry so obviously, right at that moment, it was the best thing I’d ever put in my mouth.

We did pop into the printing museum but there wasn’t a lot of information, not even in Spanish, so we decided to just call it a day and head back to Juayúa. We’d considered going to Nahuizalco as the indigenous museum sounded really interesting. It’s meant to be open on a Sunday but looking at Google reviews it doesn’t ever seem to be open when it’s meant to be. Fuck it. Beer o’ clock then, we could catch the back end of the food festival. I was happy with how we’d done this and I was pleased we’d based ourselves closer and taken the bus rather than renting a scooter in Santa Ana. Buses are good because the chances of falling off a bus and into a ditch are much less than a motorbike and it’s a whole lot cheaper too.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Ruta De Las Flores, Sonsonate, El Salvador

Stayed at: Hostal Carolinas, Juayúa

Useful shit to know…

How To Get From Suchitoto To Juayúa By Bus

• Take a 129 or 140 to San Salvador from outside the market on 1 Calle Poniente. The 140 seems more regular.
• It cost a dollar each and took about 90 minutes, mostly on account of the traffic heading into San Salvador.
• You’ll be dropped at the Nueva Terminal / Terminal Plaza Amancer.
• You need to change terminals. Urban buses get very, very, uncomfortably packed which is tolerable when you don’t have two backpacks but undeniably stressful if you do. The path of least resistance is Uber.
• It cost US$7.48 to Terminal de Buses de Occidente in an Uber (obviously this can surge) and took 30 minutes, again thanks to the hideous traffic.
• The 205 goes to Sonsonate, I think quite regularly.
• It cost US$0.75 and took an hour and 50 minutes.
• You have to walk about 200 metres to the proper bus terminal as you’ll be dropped at the one that only the 205s go to and from.
• You want the 249, you’ll see bus numbers listed above the bays.
• It cost US$0.50 each to Juayúa and took 50 minutes.

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How To Do The Ruta De Las Flores By Bus

• The 249 bus will take you all along the Ruta de las Flores between the huge cities of Sonsonate and Ahuachapan.
• The bus terminal in Sonsonate is at 13.710884, -89.718221. The 249 is quite regular.
• From Sonsonate travelling north the first place of interest will be Nahuizalco. We didn’t go here in the end as the only thing we really wanted to see was the museum but reviews on Google made it sound like it was unlikely to be open.
• Next is Salcoatitán. The bus will travel right through town and you can get off at the square.
• The bus will travel into Juayúa and turn around before it stops to let you off.
• If you’re catching the bus in Juayúa check with the driver which way it’s going. You use the same stop on the same side of the road for both north and south bound.
• The coordinates for the bus in Juayúa are 13.842821, -89.749186.
• The bus skirts the edge of Apaneca. It stops right outside Cafe Albania.
• In Ataco the bus will stop at the triangle at the south corner of the town.
• We didn’t go all the way into Ahuachapan as we had no reason to given we were staying in Juayúa.

• The bus from Juayúa to Ataco cost 90c. Every other bus cost 50c but you have to let the driver know where you’re going so he doesn’t charge you full price.
• The maze cost US$3 each and the big swing cost US$5.