AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The San Salvador Volcano is the looming giant that towers over El Salvador's capital, its summit crowned by the enormous El Boquerón crater—"the big mouth"—and a tiny cone that rose from its floor after the last eruption more than a century ago. Reachable in well under an hour from the city, it is the country's most visited national park and an easy, rewarding escape into cool, flower-filled highland forest.↗↗↗
A paved road climbs the volcano's flank to the rim, where marked paths lead to a series of miradors looking down into the crater, across to the capital, and out toward distant lakes and volcanoes. Most visitors spend a leisurely morning walking the viewpoints, reading the interpretive centre's volcanic history, then finishing with a coffee at a roadside café above the valley.↗↗↗
A crater shaped by catastrophe
Locals call it Volcán de San Salvador, or by its older name Quezaltepeque, and the great crater that gives the park its name, El Boquerón, was born of an eruption roughly 800 years ago that split the original mountain and left the peak known as El Picacho standing beside it. The volcano has erupted repeatedly through recorded history—in 1575, 1770, 1876 and most recently on 7 June 1917—and sits among the world's "Decade Volcanoes," closely monitored because of the millions of people clustered around its base.
