Soon after finishing our breakfast buffet, we headed outside to hail an Uber to El Boquerón National Park. The volcano looks like a stone's throw from the city, but considering it is a volcano, it is probably better if it is not throwing any stones back. The ride turned out to be a solid 15.5 kilometers from the Barceló, winding endlessly up narrow, steep switchbacks before finally reaching the park gate. I suppose, by their very nature, volcanoes are traditionally known for having rather steep sides.
Sorting out a ride back down meant working past a heavy language barrier. Our driver spoke no English and our Spanish was equally useless, so we resorted to smartphone translations and wild hand gestures. We convinced him to wait by promising that our hike to the rim would be fast, easily taking less than an hour. He agreed, which saved us the headache of trying to hail another car on a mountain where drivers rarely accept pickups.
The walk up to the rim was steep but straightforward. Paved paths, cobblestones, and sturdy wooden stairs wound through thick greenery, bringing us to the glass viewing floor in under twenty minutes. It got the heart pumping a bit, but it was far from an exhausting workout.
The crater itself has a wild history, with the volcanic complex dating back roughly 70,000 years to the formation of its ancestral structure. The current caldera stretches nearly five kilometers across, having collapsed and rebuilt itself multiple times over those millennia. The last major eruption was on June 7, 1917, kicked off by strong earthquakes that shook the capital. The heat boiled away a large lake that used to sit on the crater floor, setting off massive steam and ash blasts. That eruption left behind a neat little cinder cone called El Boqueroncito right in the center, while lava broke out along the northern slopes and wiped out the railway line to Quezaltepeque.
We snapped our photos, looked down into the crater, and headed right back down the trail. We reached the parking lot in well under an hour, finding our driver waiting right where we left him. We skipped the app on the way back, paying him straight cash: US$10 for the return ride plus an extra $5 for his waiting time. We were back at the hotel around 12:30 pm. When you are spending a week in San Salvador, an absolute must-see is going up there.
