Like Laguna de Apoyo, Lago Coatepeque is an insanely picturesque yet not easily accessible lake. It is a volcanic caldera and was formed during a series of major explosive eruptions between about 57,000 and 72,000 years ago. The crater lake now found within this caldera is one of the largest in El Salvador and offers fantastic opportunities for swimming, kayaking and paragliding.
Oddly enough, despite all the prime waterfront property, the lake is seldom visited by us gringos. This might be due to the fact that it’s not easy to get there by public transportation or that there is little in terms of infrastructure once there. Most of the waterfront is taken up by exclusive looking private properties. Apparently one of the islands on the lake is privately owned by one of El Salvador’s ex-presidents. Those places which are accessible to tourists seem to have been constructed at some point in the 60s or 70s with little by way of improvements over the course of the last few decades. Yet despite the plywood walls, the very questionable electrical work, the saggy mattress that nearly touches the ground, and the virtually non-existant service, the place held some kind of charm.
The highlight of our hostel was a waterfront deck that extended past a series of steps, ladders, twists and turns right out onto the lake. We spent hours sitting on it, enjoying the breeze, burning our backsides on a scalding hot waterslide (I didn’t dare go off it in my bikini), tanning and star gazing at night. There was nothing more to do there aside for enjoying the waterfront.
The entire lake seemed to contain only 2 open restaurants, a pizza place, and 2 hostels both serving food. One of the restaurants seemed to be closed or else fumigating every single time we tried to eat there (whether at 8pm or at 8am); the other served a limited and non-exciting menu; whereas our hostel seemed to take 1 hour to prepare to orders of eggs and one order of toast with jam. In total I think we counted about 6 foreign tourists who were staying at the lake (3 of them being us), a group of tourists that seemed to show up just for dinner, and then some local El Salvadorian vacationers. Not that we were complaining, but with a few more visitors, the place might have been slightly better kept and had better service.
On our second day at the lake with decided to head to the nearby Volcano Park, home to Volcanoes Cerro Verde, Izalco and Santa Ana. An 11am tour departs daily to one of the latter peaks and on the day we showed up the tour was going up Santa Ana, El Salvador’s third highest peak. Accompanied by a guide and two armed policemen we started on the 2 hour assent. First we hiked through forest and some fields, and then as we slowly progressed higher and higher the scenery began to change to a cacti filed landscape eventually becoming completely barren.
The summit proved to be a huge surprise. From down at the lake, Santa Ana does not look like a volcano. Instead it simply resembles a big blog of a mountain. Izalco, on the other hand, has that classical conical shape and appears absolutely picturesque. And yet when we got to the top of Santa Ana, our jaws dropped and we stood amazed. On top of this unpresuming mountain were a huge crater and a turquoise lake at its bottom. It was simply beautiful!!! In addition we had a sweeping view of Lago Coatepeque, Volcano Izalco and Cerro Verde and a large chunk of El Salvador. There could not have been anything more rewarding than this view. I guess the saying of not judging a book by its cover also applies to volcanoes.
PS: Sleeping in most of these places is quite the chore. You have roosters that crow quite regularly every 3 hours. They start around 8 or 9pm, then repeat their choral competitions at midnight resuming them again at 4am and then topping it all off with a grand finale at sunrise. At to that the packs of dogs who try to out-bark each other as well as the roosters, intersperse this with the cat fights, the hundreds of varieties of birds, the roaming geckos and the endless array of insects and you get quite the cacophony of noise. Oh, I almost forgot. Depending on where you are staying you will also have to put up with the car, motorcycle or bicycle horns and the loudspeaker campaign and promotional announcements. Next time I come to Central America I will have to invest in better quality ear plugs.
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