We had decided on a couple of sights to visit in San Salvador - El Bosqueron volcano crater and Joya de Ceren archaeological park. However our one day in San Salvador was a major public holiday for the city, it was San Salvador day to honour the city's patron saint, so the archaeological park was closed - just our luck!
We knew it wasn't safe to hire a taxi off the street and another passenger on the bus had given us the number of a trustworthy driver in town but he didn't answer his phone (it was a holiday). The woman at the desk of the hotel was very helpful and arranged a driver who would take us up to El Bosqueron and wait for us. El Bosqueron is a huge cylindrical volcano crater with another small, perfectly symmetrical volcanic crater inside the other crater, not too far from town and easy to walk around.
We were surrounded by Salvadorean families enjoying their day off, the place reminded us in some ways of the Dandenongs on a Sunday - lots of day trippers, some nice looking restaurants with great views along the road that led up the mountain, plenty of souvenir shops, etc. We were the only gringos there but felt completely safe, families having a day out are pretty much the same all over world, it was good to go and see something with a real "local" atmosphere.
We made it back to the car just as the rain started. Our driver told us it was related to the cyclone from Hurricane Earl that had been crossing Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. We have been keeping an eye on this hurricane and hoping it will have done its thing before we arrive further north in the next week or so.
After arriving back in town we decided to visit some of the holiday festivities. First though we went back to our hotel and removed anything that could be possibly be stolen from us. We walked the few blocks through the crowds and it felt quite liberating walking through that large amount of people, not needing to worry about being pickpocketed. From what we could tell there was a huge fair on, something like the Melbourne Show but without animals. It was packed, so we decided we didn't need to go in. We spent some time wandering the area near our hotel (the area was known as the Zona Rosa) which we had been told was safe, as long as we didn't move too far from the hotel, and ended up at a nice bar overlooking the main road to have a couple of drinks.
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