An Epic One-Week El Salvador Travel (and Food) Itinerary

A 7-day family-friendly El Salvador travel itinerary hitting up the best beaches, volcano hikes, surf lessons, and restaurants we could find. 

El Salvador doesn’t get the best press. For years, many travelers skipped over El Salvador in favor of neighboring Guatemala, or perhaps Nicaragua, Panama, or perennial favorite Costa Rica. I know we skipped over it for years on our multiple trips to Central America; it was always deemed too dangerous and gang-ridden by the U.S. State Department.

But recently that’s changed, and suddenly El Salvador was showing up on Where to Travel lists (like the 2024 New York Times edition). It turns out the current president, Nayib Bukele, solved the country’s gang problem via a brutal campaign, violating all sorts of human rights in the process. But much of the population could breathe again. And more and more tourists, beyond the surfer types that went there all along, were finding their way to El Salvador’s gorgeous shores.

We’ve long wanted to visit this country, so in February 2025 we jumped at the chance. It wasn’t a decision we took lightly. Were we inadvertently supporting a strongman leader with no regard for due process? Around this time, people around the world were canceling plans to visit the U.S. because of Donald Trump’s policies, and we couldn’t blame them. After further consideration, however, we concluded we’d be supporting the growing number of Salvadorans working in the hospitality industry by traveling the way we do: staying at properties owned by locals, eating at local restaurants, hiring for local services, etc. It wasn’t unlike traveling to Cuba a few years ago under the “Support for the Cuban People” visa category.

So off we went to El Salvador, with our two kids (age 9 and 11) in tow, and spoiler alert: It was amazing. Like many other first-time travelers, we split our week between the beaches and the volcanic highlands, to get two totally different Salvadoran experiences. It’s easy to get around this compact country (a little smaller than the state of Massachusetts)—only two hours separate the heart of the coast from the mountains, and there are plenty of opportunities for pit stops (which is why we rented ourselves a car).

There’s still limited updated travel information online about this country, so you might be wondering: What’s the best beach town to stay in as a family, or as a solo traveler? What activities should I book? Is the food actually any good in El Salvador? (It is!) We learned all this and more, and have packed it into this seven-day El Salvador travel itinerary, the same one we followed.

Here’s where to stay, what to do, and where to eat for an incredible week in El Salvador.

Days 1-2: A Town Famous for Pupusas and a Day in San Salvador

The airport, in San Luis Talpa, is not very close to either the capital or the coast, and we landed late in El Salvador. So we stayed our first night in an airport hotel called Hotel Maria Ofelia, arriving in time to scarf down 10 pupusas between us (and some delicious curtido, the customary pickled cabbage slaw everyone makes differently) and get in the pool for a late-night welcome swim. We headed out the next morning right after enjoying our first typical Salvadoran breakfast—eggs, beans, plantains, fried tortillas—which was included in the room rate.

Our next stop was, naturally, for more food. Just 15 minutes away, en route to San Salvador, is the pueblo of Olocuita, famous for its rice pupusas. Pupusas are most often made with corn masa, but rice flour is also used, resulting in a springier, crispier pupusa. The main drag of Olocuita is literally lined with pupuserias, most with open-air kitchens, so we just chose one at random: Pupusería La Familia.

The pupusas here ranged between 75 cents and $3, so we ordered freely—pupusas stuffed with cheese plus chicken, shrimp, jalapeno, mora (a wild leafy green), chipilin (a leafy herb), revueltas (chicharrón/pork, beans, and cheese)—and managed to spend only $12.50. We enjoyed each and every one, particularly with all the different jars of curtido to try with them. Before we left we picked up a dense rectangle of plastic-wrapped quesadilla, which is more like a cake in El Salvador, typically made of cheese and masa—in Olocuita, the quesadillas were likewise made with rice (also, fresh cheese with a bit of funk to it).

Our first stop in San Salvador was to Parque Nacional El Boquerón, a gorgeous national park smack in the middle of the capital city. Technically, it’s just northwest of the city in the crater of the (still active) San Salvador volcano, whose last eruption in 1917 is well documented inside the park. Here we were in the onetime “murder capital” of the world, and we were ensconced in lush, peaceful surrounds with gorgeous vistas. We took the 20-minute loop trail up and down stairs, past colorful flora and a few lovely viewpoints, and stopped at the café for some good Salvadoran coffee. On our way out, I scored a steaming cup of atol de platano, a popular type of Central American atol I’d never before encountered, thick and sweet with boiled plantains. It was delicious.

In the city center, we parked near Plaza Libertad to ogle the imposing buildings and monuments around it, then peeked into the architecturally significant 1971-built Iglesia El Rosario, hoping to catch a glimpse of its rainbow-hued stained glass. Unfortunately it was closed, so we moved on to another offbeat must-visit we’d heard about in San Salvador: the National Library.

The Biblioteca Nacional de El Salvador, aka BINAES, is a gorgeous seven-story building that opened in late 2023 (at the reported cost of $54 million, courtesy of China). It’s not only a library but a 24-hour cultural center that houses an auditorium and art gallery, dedicated floors for children (with play areas), a café, a gaming center, a robotics and VR area, a LEGO zone, Harry Potter/Game of Thrones/Star Wars-themed areas, and thousands upon thousands of books, of course, in Spanish, English, and Nahuatl. The seventh-floor terrace has sweeping views of Plaza Gerardo Barrios. It is an incredible building, and I was struck by how family-forward it is. Especially impressive is the gaming policy—my kids’ excitement quickly evaporated when they learned that in order to get a controller, they had to read for 30 minutes and then answer some questions about the text. Brilliant!

Before heading out to the coast, we needed a good local dinner, and found it at Relajo Cocina Salvadoreña, which had been recommended in my Eat Your World (Outside Queens) Facebook group. We ate on the restaurant’s open-air second floor terrace, enjoying our first tastes of fresco de ensalada—an oversize fruit salad in drink form, like sangria without the wine—sopa de gallina India, a comforting chicken noodle soup that came with a side of fries; and chicharrón stacked atop cakes of yuca, a popular local dish we’d later spot at mountain-town markets and roadside vendors. One of my sons loved the typical snacks platter, a plate of chorizo, farmers cheese, boiled egg, refried beans, avocado, and fried blue tortillas. 

An hour later, we were picking up groceries in La Libertad, and an hour after that, we were swimming in the pretty, lit-up pool at our house rental in Tamanique—in the pouring rain. No matter: We were elated to be “home.”

Days 3-5: The Salvadoran Coast

For four nights and three full days, we explored the Salvadoran coastline between El Tunco and El Zonte, with a base somewhere in the middle, in a gated community called Atami in Tamanique. Distances were short, and it was easy to get around in our rental car. We felt safe everywhere we went.

The Pacific Ocean here, in February, is stunning. Wonderfully warm, clean, and empty. We had many of the beaches we visited mostly to ourselves. Only some of the beaches have lifeguards, unfortunately, but as I got more accustomed to the waves—these beaches were not stretches of exposed coastline, and not once did I feel a strong current—I broke my own rule about swimming sans guards. The water was too glorious (and we were very cautious).

Our first morning we found an open-air roadside eatery just outside Atami, a little blip on Google Maps with no reviews called Comedor Yani. We checked it out and liked what we found: a couple of clean tableclothed picnic tables under a thatched roof, interspersed with hammocks and wandering chickens. The women running the place were sweet and welcoming, and the typical breakfasts were very good: coffee and lots of bread served alongside plates of eggs (topped here with colorful sautéed peppers), plantains, beans, cheese, avocado, and fruit salad. It’s the kind of varied, filling breakfast I could eat every day—which is lucky, because in El Salvador, you will.  

Playa El Palmarcito gave us our first much-anticipated taste of the Salvadoran coast, and we immediately fell in love with the silky dark-hued sand, the gentle waves (this beach is a protected cove), the 80°F-plus water, and the overall tranquility. No one else was around. Was this normal? (As mentioned in the Resources box, it was likely because it was a Monday and all the weekending locals had left.)

The Atami community is also home to the Atami Escape Resort, a hotel with lovely facilities and incredible ocean views from its cliffside perch. Because we stayed in the community, we had access to the resort’s saltwater rock pools—swimming pools carved into the cliff, overlooking the rocky shoreline below—which my kids loved, and we were excited to eat lunch at the on-site restaurant, Pelicanos. Turns out the views (and cocktails) far outweighed the food and service—give it a skip.

Dinner was at Covana Kitchen in El Zonte our first night, a beautiful open-air restaurant adjacent to the beach (and Puro Surf Hotel & Academy) with very good fish tacos, ceviche, and a delicious shrimp salad. (Note that the restaurant has limited signage and is somewhat hidden inside Puro Surf.) Back at our house, we lit up our swimming pool and jumped in.

Eating on or next to the beach should be a priority here. The next morning we found Merendero El Teco, an inexpensive comedor overlooking a cove of Playa El Zonte. We all had delicious fruit smoothies (plus coffee for the adults), terrific scrambled eggs with bell pepper, plantains, beans, cheese, tortillas—you see the pattern here. A

After more swimming we lunched on a plastic table in a (rather dry) river bed at El Ostrero Chepe Aleta, locally famed for its large oysters (ostras) on the half shell. I no longer can eat those, unfortunately, so it was shrimp ceviche, garlic shrimp, fried fish, and garlic snails for us. Each platter was tasty and generous, with some salad, grilled tortilla strips, rice or sautéed onions. This was a very fun meal. (Note that parking is across the street; the restaurant is down a long driveway, where the river would be in wetter seasons.)

We swam for hours that night on the black-sand Playa El Tunco, which was busy with surfers and glowed in the setting sun, its distinctive offshore rock formations looming black against the orange sky.  The sunset surf vibes reminded us of Honolulu, but it was way quieter—there were still not many people around.

El Tunco is a popular surf area, and seemed the most developed of the beach towns. There are lots of hotels, surf schools, bars, restaurants with international food, and shops—we swung by a modern, open-air food court and switched gears for dinner, picking up a pizza to bring home and homemade ice cream and paletas from Ohana.

Surfers have long been coming to El Salvador to chase waves, so a surf lesson is a great idea. Countless outfitters abound, and we found ours near El Tunco: a very nice guy named Roberto Carlos Escobar (and his wife) of Paleta Tours in Playa Sunzal; his Instagram indicates he mostly runs fishing excursions around here. With their instruction and assistance, my sons were up and riding the long, chill waves in no time. It was definitely harder for the grown-ups! We rewarded our efforts back in town with icy fruit smoothies and pupusas at the cute Pupusería El Sol, followed by an excellent cold brew at a now-closed café (Point Break Café looks similarly promising though).

Our final full day at the beach brought us by the oceanfront Cadejo Brewing Company for some local beer and more stunning views; the brewery also has both chlorinated and saltwater rock pools overlooking the coast that our kids enjoyed (just watch out for sharp edges in the saltwater pool!). We discovered the smaller private beach that’s part of Atami Resorts, a short but very hot walk from our house, is absolutely epic, so we swam there for a bit, witnessing a local baptism in the water while we were there.

For a celebratory birthday dinner, we headed to Beto’s—it was by far the most-recommended restaurant to us in this area, and its expansive coastline (and sunset) views, blue-and-white Santorini vibes, and delicious fresh fish didn’t disappoint. We ordered well off the huge menu: whole-fried pescadetas (a small fish) to start, Beto’s special mixed ceviche, “washimi” (thin-sliced sashimi with leeks, lime, olive oil), paella, fried shrimp. (Total cost of everything for a family of 4, plus cocktails and limonadas for the kids? $110 all in. They even comped us a yummy flan dessert for my birthday.)

Days 6-8: Ruta de las Flores and El Salvador’s Highlands

Not gonna lie, we weren’t excited to leave the Salvadoran coast. We were perfectly content with our daily schedule of beach-hopping, local eating, and enjoying the pool and hammocks at home. Before we had to leave town, we finally pulled into one of the fancier-looking ocean-facing cliffside restaurants we’d been passing on our daily drives. One called Tomadulu Restaurante was open for breakfast, and it was a lovely morning sendoff, high above the sea: fruit smoothies and coffee, a nice “completo” that added bacon to the usual spread, pancakes and fruit for the kids.   

Back in our car, we headed west along the coast and turned north, inland, on CA12S. Once we turned northwest at Sonsonate, we’d officially entered the Ruta de las Flores, a scenic 22-mile route with colorful towns, coffee farms, volcanoes, lakes, and—between November and January, typically—lots of flowers (we didn’t see many in mid-February, but it was still beautiful). We had a few stops to make, and up first was the pueblo of Nahuizalco.

Nahuizalco is known for its night market of indigenous arts and crafts, but also interesting local foods like river snails and rabbit tacos. Alas, we stopped by rather early in the day, but we found some tasty snacks on the streets nevertheless. The boiled yuca with chicharrón, a more roadside version of what we tried during dinner in San Salvador, was absolutely delicious. Afterwards we tried a sweet, tasty atol de piña, and got back in the car.

Farther north, we stopped in Salcoatitán, first to see the great ceiba tree in Parque Ceiba—the massive 300- or 400-year-old landmark tree is just stunning—and then to find another bite to eat. We stumbled on an open-air food court of sorts, and at Yuquería La Original, we tried our first riguas, popular Salvadoran corn snacks that reminded me of buttery arepas, served with cheese and crema. From another stall, Piña Mix, my husband and I split a big carved-out pineapple piña colada, rum and all.

We found our house in Juayua, with incredible views of the volcanoes ringing this area, and we didn’t want to leave. (So we didn’t: We cooked the emergency pasta and smoked trout we’d brought from home.) We had just two nights here, and we wanted to make the most of it, so we set out early the next morning to hike the 7,800-foot Santa Ana (Ilamatepec) volcano. It’s the tallest volcano of the 23 in El Salvador, and last erupted in 2005.

Santa Ana is a popular hike in El Salvador, and though it felt a little chaotic when we arrived to Cerro Verde National Park, specifically to a hotel called Bosques del Tibet, to find and pay for a guide, it otherwise runs like a well-oiled machine. (A guide seems to be required for this hike, though you can choose from a private or mixed-group guide. We could not tolerate moving at the slow pace of a large group, so we paid a little extra, a few dollars per person, for a private guide.)

The hike is an absolute must, moderately challenging, three to four hours long, and with gorgeous views at every turn once you emerge from the leafy forest at the base. At the top (where it was verrry windy) you can look down into the crater to see a light turquoise lake, flanked by loose black gravel and rocky, lava-stained walls. There are some fees, a few dollars each, to enter the park and the volcano area itself, and an opportunity to buy snacks before you enter—I recommend bringing plenty of snacks, water, and sunscreen! (See this post for more tips, including getting there via public transport.)

Post-hike we drove over to Lago de Coatepeque, another popular place to base oneself out here, to have lunch with a view, and we found it at Restaurante Vista Lago. This is volcano-lake-coffee country, and it is gorgeous. We had sweeping views of the lake, itself formed via a series of volcanic eruptions many thousands of years ago, now ringed with lush vegetation and flowers. The coffee was great, but the parrillada for four—a parade of mostly fried or roasted meats and seafood and vegetables—was just OK.

There’s one other essential natural feature to take advantage of in this part of El Salvador: the thermal hot pools. It was getting late, and we arrived to Termales de Alicante with just over an hour before it closed at 5pm, but it was still worth it. For $7 per person, you can access 13 natural hot pools. Our favorites were the ones set in natural environments a short walk away, through a bamboo forest (just watch out for the terrifying-looking spiders on the rocks around the natural pool!).

We ended our day of highlands exploration in Ataco, a charming colonial pueblo with cobblestone streets, colorful street murals, and 16^th-century roots. Wandering the bougainvillea-lined streets, we popped in and out of shops, including the groceries—we were hunting for marshmallows to roast at our house’s fire pit that night (eventually we located some!). At Los Portones de Ataco, a cute café and promising-looking hostel, we found a steal of an edible souvenir: a large bottle of local honey for $10.

Our last dinner in El Salvador had to be the one we started with: pupusas. We drove back to Juayua, another well-loved colonial town very close to our house (and about 30 minutes from Ataco), and found Pupusería Esmeralda on a dead end street in the north of town. The basic pupusas cost 75 cents to $1 each, and they were delicious. We ordered far too many, but the leftovers worked well for breakfast the next day, paired with fruits we’d purchased from roadside vendors: reddish-orange mamey sapote and sweet nisperos, or loquats.

Before driving back toward the airport the next morning, we spent some more time in Juayua, which is locally famed for its weekend food festival. It was a Saturday, when the festival runs from 11am-5pm (Sundays too), so we figured we’d better check it out while we could. But first, one last round of local coffee and fruit smoothies at Bourbon Coffee Roasters.

The festival took over a few streets, vendor after vendor setting up outdoor tables and kitchens à la Smorgasburg or the Queens Night Market. We tried more buttery riguas, a delicious nuegado de yuca (fried yucca fritter in honey), and a giant michelada bedecked with tamarind, celery, and a huge handful of Takis. I only wish we’d had more time to explore this market, as the platters of seafood, various meats (including wild rabbit and local sausages), and soups looked so tempting.

Our time in the highlands felt incredibly full, but if we’d had another day or two, we might have visited a coffee farm (like this one, or at El Carmen Estate), hiked the Seven Waterfalls (to be fair, it didn’t seem like the safest excursion with kids), zip-lined the canopy in Apaneca, or visited Café Albania in Apaneca, a touristy outdoor amusement park with activities like zip-lining (including one on a bike and one on a surfboard), a labyrinth, a mirror maze, and one of the two viral rainbow slides in El Salvador (the other is just outside San Salvador; each ride costs $5 to $10 plus park entry, and our kids weren’t that interested).

El Salvador didn’t disappoint. We loved our week, the various changes of beautiful scenery, the beaches and volcanoes, the nice people all around us—and overall we ate very well, and at very low cost. I wouldn’t hesitate to return.