Cycling from Santa Ana to Lago Coatepeque in El Salvador

By Dave Briggs · Published 2010-03-16 · Last updated 2026-07-18

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On this day of my bike tour from Alaska to Argentina, I cycled from Santa Ana to Lago Coatepeque in El Salvador. Here's my bike touring blog post.

Cycling from Santa Ana

(Blog post written March 16th 2010)

So, after a couple of days off in Santa Ana, it was time to move on.

Thanks to Google maps (which is making life a little easier considering my general mapless state), I had worked out a route from the city.

That was good, because as I discovered, road signing in both Guatemala and El Salvador is an art form yet to be discovered!

Lago Coatepeque in El Salvador

My destination was Lago Coatepeque, a lake set in a volcano crater. Getting there was fairly straight forwards, even with a puncture to contend with.

For anyone else considering coming this way, you will need to take the right fork at the service station into El Congo, and then later, take the right fork when approaching the lake before beginning the descent.

I may have made a slight error in judgement, because i thought that the road carried on from the lake, but it does not.

This means that tomorrow, I will have to cycle back up what was a glorious fun filled descent. I somehow think that I wont be feeling the same sensation of joy in the morning as I sweat back up it.

Still, the lake is beautiful, ringed by the second homes of El Salvador's elite, with a small strip of accommodation options.

They wanted too much to stay in most of them, but I managed to come to a deal at Rancho Alegre for 5 bucks to camp.

Camping at Lago Coatepeque

The lake is big enough to have a noticeable tide, and when a helicopter hovered close by, landed on water wings, paused as the occupants gave a wave, and took off again, someone said it was the El Presidente.

As always, my piss poor research couldn't even tell you who the president is, so I will just go with what they said.

This is the first night in tent number three since buying it in San Cristobal. Third time lucky !!!!

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Dave Briggs
Dave is a UK travel writer living in Athens since 2015. With 20 years of firsthand travel experience and over 80,000 km of bicycle touring across six continents, he's been blogging at Dave's Travel Pages since 2005. Every guide is based on places he's actually been.

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