How to Get from Santa Ana Volcano to Santa Ana, El Salvador

Last Updated on April 13, 2024 by Adam Watts

Getting back from Santa Ana volcano to the city could have been a case of hopping on a bus. Instead the Salvadoran police almost killed us and we hitchhiked and got a ride in the back of a local’s truck. Here’s how to get from Santa Ana volcano to Santa Ana. Story time!

To read about hiking the actual volcano, here you go.

Waiting for the Bus

It takes a little over an hour to get back down from the top of the volcano, back to the main road. There are five of us: me, Gio the Italian, Alex the Irishman, and two Germans whose names I’ve forgotten. One of the Germans, somehow familiar with public transport schedules of western El Salvador, knows that the bus leaves from here in an hour and a half. We sit under a small shelter just as long as it takes us to realize there’s a huge wasp nest above our heads (longer than you think).

We spot a building with a gated yard calling itself a hotel 100 feet up the road. “Hotel” is rather a grandiose term for two empty buildings, an outside bench, and a cooler full of beers. But beer is beer and we become the only patrons this place has had all day. There’s no better way to wait for the bus to take us from Santa Ana volcano to Santa Ana.

The Police Truck

A police truck pulls up outside the “hotel. Two people we recognize from the hike are sitting in the open back. They yell, asking if we want a ride. We leap up and pile in beside them. I’m perched precariously on the edge, beer in one hand, other hand gripping a metal rail for support. Despite being police officers, no thought is given to our safety as we careen downhill, my increasingly sweaty grip on the metal rail the only thing between me and serious injury.

We drive for what feels like hours but is probably around 20 minutes, then we come to a fork in the road. My fingers are screaming and my legs are cramped, but this is the end of our ride. We hop out and the police truck drives off.

The Animal Truck

I have no idea what the plan is now for getting back from Santa Ana volcano. I’m not sure anyone does. We’re far from the volcano, but further from Santa Ana. We wait by the side of the road for only a few minutes. Then an open-backed truck comes by and we wave it down. “Santa Ana?” we ask. “Congo”, the driver says, a town we passed on the bus on the way to the volcano, roughly halfway to Santa Ana. We climb in the back like animals volunteering to be slaughtered.

Our bar for a comfortable ride has been lowered dramatically thanks to the Salvadoran police, so standing in our cage feels like we’ve upgraded to Premium Economy. As we ride, other people also hop on the back, including some kids and some older people who shuffle to the front to sit on the business class seats, i.e. some tires.

This ride takes another thirty minutes, then we’re dropped off at Congo bus station, a litter-strewn yard with a few ratchety old buses. Disappointed that we’re now doing something so mundane as riding a bus, we file on and ride in silence back to Santa Ana.

And that’s really it. That’s how we got from Santa Ana volcano to Santa Ana. From the police truck to the animal truck to the regular bus, it was quite an adventure. And that was all after the hike to the top of the volcano in the morning. Whew.

For more info on Santa Ana itself, check out this post. And for more on El Salvador, read about Ruta de las Flores. And if you need a guide on getting to the volcano from Santa Ana, use this.