I left El Salvadors Ruta de las Flores via a chicken bus to the bustling town of Sonsonate where I grabbed a quick snack and then hopped on another bus to the nations capitol, San Salvador. I’m only spending one full day here, so this will be a quick post, but I thought the capitol was worth exploring a bit. I started at the National Museum of Anthropology, right around the corner from my hotel. They had a pretty impressive collection of Mayan flutes and whistles.

Frogs have always been important to the Mayans as harbingers of rain and fertility.

Below left is an actual skull from a tomb nearby. One of my biggest fears is that some day my skeleton will end up in a museum someday. Just let me rest when my time comes.

The section with Mayan artifacts was only about half of the museum, the rest was devoted to mostly textiles and information about farming. I learned more about corn than I ever thought I would, but the museum was a good way to start my day.

They also had quite a bit of jade artifacts. I don’t know why, but I really like the jade stuff.

My hotel and the museum are kind of at the edge of the city in a posh part of town known as Zona Rosa, far from the historic center. After leaving the museum and before making my way to the center I went to take a look at the modern presidential palace where El Salvadors controversial president lives, which was just down the street. You can’t see a whole lot, but I was able to get this halfway decent shot of the residence.

I walked about halfway to the historic center of San Salvador, up to the main road to see the big Christ the Divine Savior monument in the middle of a giant roundabout. San Salvador is significantly hotter than Ruta de las Flores. I am really sweating today!

From the Christ the Divine Savior monument I jumped on a local bus and rode the rest of the way to the center. The bus was hot too, but the breeze felt awesome. I stopped just a few blocks short to take a look at a couple of famous El Salvador churches. Unfortunately, they were both closed, but they were pretty.

Eventually I made it to Plaza Gerardo Barrios, the center of San Salvador. Gerardo Barrios was president of El Salvador three different times. The third time he was forced to flee the country when Guatemala attacked El Salvador. A couple of years later he attempted to return and reclaim the presidency, but he was arrested and executed instead. Today he’s considered a national hero, and his statue is in the middle of the plaza right in front of El Salvadors National Palace. I wish I had more time to go into his story, it’s pretty interesting.

The Plaza Gerardo Barrios is surrounded by three very important buildings, the National Palace I mentioned before, the modern National Library, and the Metropolitan Cathedral.

The cathedral was first built in 1880, but it’s been destroyed once by an earthquake and once by a fire, so this version is from 1999.

Next up was a tour of the National Palace, the only way to get in, and probably the highlight of my day in San Salvador. Even though the president now lives in Zona Rosa, this was traditionally the presidential palace and the seat of El Salvadors government. The inside is really beautiful.

Each room has it’s own floor design too. I’ve never been so fascinated by tile work before.

The best part of the National Palace though was the giant courtyard in the middle. This must’ve been a fabulous place to live in it’s day.

The view out onto Plaza Gerardo Barrios was really great too.

One block further east is Plaza Libertad with a monument commemorating El Salvadors first attempt at independence from Spain in 1811. Their insurrection was unsuccessful and they would have to wait another twelve years for the other Central American nations to join them in winning the real independence, but November 5th, 1811 is still an important date here.

This next church, Iglesia el Rosario, was listed on everything I read as one of the biggest tourist attractions in San Salvador, so of course I went and checked it out. Honestly, it’s just a big modern art mess. I didn’t get it. Moving on.

Finally, I made my way to Parque Cuscatlan. El Salvador had an unbelievably bloody civil war from 1979-1992 and in Parque Cuscatlan is a pretty somber monument to that conflict. All the names of the approximately 75,000 dead, and approximately 8,000 missing people are represented. Unfortunately, they had closed the monument off for cleaning and repair, but I was able to get a look from the skywalk going over it before catching an Uber back to my hotel.

San Salvador was a very quick yet worthwhile stop. I included it mostly because I just needed access to the airport, but I am glad I had time to see what this cool city has to offer. Now it’s time to hop on a plane and wing my way to my next stop, and the next country on this Central American adventure. So stay tuned…