A Quick Overview of Santa Ana, El Salvador

Last Updated on April 18, 2024 by Adam Watts

Getting to Santa Ana

Many airlines fly to San Salvador, the capital, so that’ll be your first stop. At the airport you can take a bus into San Salvador itself, then there are buses from the bus station to Santa Ana (details here). For me, I just took an Uber directly from the airport to Santa Ana itself. I forget the cost but it was totally worth it for peace of mind.

Santa Ana, El Salvador is around an hour’s drive north west of the capital, San Salvador and has a population of 375,000.

Is Santa Ana Safe?

You might have heard bad things about El Salvador, or Central America in general. El Salvador has been described as the most-violent peacetime country in the world, but in recent years crime has reduced and it’s much, much safer.

And Santa Ana is often considered one of the safest places in the country, so as long as you’re careful and stick to tourist areas and tourist activities, you should be fine. When I visited in 2018, on the advice of the hostel, everyone avoided wandering the streets after dark. Now in 2024, I think even that advice is probably not needed.

The Bad Stuff About Santa Ana, El Salvador

I’ll be upfront here, and just say that Santa Ana was disappointing for me. I’d heard it was cute and had some big colonial buildings and a big cathedral, so I was expecting something similar to Antigua, Guatemala. And it’s true about the colonial buildings and cathedral: there is a big cathedral and a few colonial buildings but that is all there is. You can see the “sights” in a grand total of five minutes, since they’re all around the main square, Libertad Park.

The rest of the city has no appeal for anyone who isn’t a local. There’s a market if you need to buy market goods, but it’s busy and one section of it is just a massive pile of garbage bags.

The food is also, frankly, dreadful. I’m not the biggest fan of Central American food in general: rice, beans, platanos, and lots of cheese. On top of that, Santa Ana has a Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and a Little Caesars within a block of each other, and a KFC-style fried chicken place between them. Don’t get me wrong, I love pizza, but I don’t want it every day.

There’s not much to do at night. This seems to be true across El Salvador in general, but almost everything closes by 8 or 9pm. In the past there was a curfew on parts of the country so this is probably just a lingering consequence of that, but after dark don’t expect to be doing much.

The Good Stuff About Santa Ana, El Salvador

Okay, after all that negativity, before I get hurled abuse at in the comments, some positive things. Santa Ana has decent transport connections to the capital and around western El Salvador and into Guatemala and Honduras. So it’s definitely a good base to stay to see this part of the world, and there are things close by worth visiting: Santa Ana volcano and Ruta de las Flores especially are both beautiful.

I’d also strongly recommend staying at Casa Verde Hostel.

It’s the best equipped hostel I’ve stayed in anywhere in the world. And when the food outside isn’t great and there’s not much to do after dark, having somewhere comfortable to stay and cook your own meals among good company is invaluable. And since El Salvador doesn’t get many foreign tourists, being among the few there are is helpful in organizing day trips or traveling across borders together.

If you’re not normally a hostel kind of person and worry about cleanliness, Casa Verde is immaculate. And if you’re not a sleeping with 50 other people kinda person, you can splurge on a private room ($22/night instead of $11/night). They also have shuttles to major destinations across Central America. I booked the shuttle from Santa Ana to Copán in Honduras, which leaves three times a week. They also have day trips to Ruta de las Flores and the volcano, although the latter is very simple to do by public transport.

Santa Ana itself will not be high on your list of favorite places in Central America, but I still think if you stay at Casa Verde, you’ll have an enjoyable time. And the easy access to other parts of the country and the surrounding countries makes it more than worthwhile.

If you’re looking for a hostel in Santa Ana, I can’t recommend Hostelworld highly enough. In my younger days I used them everywhere I went to find either a cheap or a comfortable bed, and in rare cases, both — Santa Ana was one place with a fantastic hostel.