El Salvador - Volcanoes & Mayan Pyramids

Volcanoes

The country has 170 volcanoes causes the country to have up to 1,000 earth tremors every day (I was sunbathing when my sunbed suddenly started shaking with one of the bigger tremors!). Very little of the original city is still standing because it’s been destroyed 10 times by violent earthquakes. They don’t seem to be too worried about the volcanoes though having built factories, schools, botanical gardens and houses down the sides of the volcanoes and inside the craters.

El Boqueron

The volcano El Boqueron overlooks San Salvador’s wealthiest residential area, which would probably be wiped out in the case of an eruption. You can go right up to the summit of this volcano and see down into the crater, in the middle of which is another smaller crater from a later eruption.

Lake Coatepeque

Lake Coatepeque is also worth seeing – It’s in a caldera (giant collapsed volcano) and you can walk round the surrounding rainforest to get great views of the lake and the other volcanoes around that area (heads up, there’s a lot of snakes in this rainforest!). There’s also a bistro at the start of the walk with amazing views over the coffee plantations - I recommend the giant garlic prawns and the chocolate based coffee.

Mayan Pyramid Ruins - San Andres

The Mayans all suddenly disappeared around 900BC (no one really knows why). They left behind pyramid complexes such as San Andres which has 9 pyramids and forms part of the constellation Orion (the 3 main pyramids making up Orion’s belt, just like the Great pyramids at Giza). The jungle has overgrown the surrounding areas but they’re hoping to find the top of the Orion structure in the undergrowth. On the summer solstice, the sun is aligned across the tops of the pyramids and the structures were built on top of large boulders which would flex whenever there was an earthquake (acting like a hammock) to keep the structure standing (which is why they’re survived).

The complex also has a large flat courtyard made up of 500,000 bricks, which according to the current Shaman’s, is said to be a landing platform for spacecraft flown by the gods (watch the series Ancient Aliens for more on this, now on Netflix!). We were lucky enough during our visit to witness a shaman ceremony of surviving natives, performed in Nawat (this is a dying Mayan language that only 300 people still speak and they’re all over 75, although they’re trying to revive it). The Mayan’s in the film Apocalypto are speaking Nawat during the human sacrifices although apparently the scene wasn’t very accurate because the Mayan’s weren’t that violent – they’re few human sacrifices were volunteers (whilst the Aztecs and Incas were much worse). Incidentally, they were painted blue with Indigo, prior to being sacrificed in the film.

Mayan Pyramid Ruins - Tazamul

Tazumal (Chalchuapa) is another pyramid structure with 13 pyramids built in layers on top of each other (each son would build on top of his father’s pyramid and try to be greater than him). 13 is a sacred number for the Mayans (always 12 + 1) and shows symmetries with moon cycles, DNA helices, Jesus & his 12 disciples and the apocalyptic calendar and the 13th period. They had 13 divinities and 13 kingdoms. It has been noted that the positioning of Tazumal forms a perfect triangle with 2 other pyramid complexes in Central America (Copan and Cihuatan). There is also a statue of the god Xipe Totec who famously removed his skin and fed it to his hungry sons (he looks like he’s covered in scales in the statue). Shaman’s would skin enemies and wear their skin like clothes. Sick people also used to wear human skin for 3 days to try and recover from their illnesses.