El Salvador news: what matters to the diaspora
Updates on tourism, TPS, residency, bitcoin and the policy changes that affect anyone visiting, living in or investing in El Salvador.
Editor and founder
Lizbeth Sanchez
I grew up in Santa Tecla, and then I had to leave. That sentence covers about two million of us, and for a long time it was the only thing anyone abroad wanted to hear about El Salvador. Leaving was the right decision at the time — my family knew it, and I have stopped arguing with them about it. What nobody prepared me for was coming back to a country I had to learn again from the beginning, and finding it beautiful. I started this site because the El Salvador written about in English was still the one I left, not the one I came home to.
Based in Santa Tecla, San Salvador · writing here since 2019
Field NotesEl Zonte
The rainy season nobody photographs
Nine days of afternoon storms in El Zonte, an empty point break, and the argument for visiting El Salvador in the months the brochures skip.
El Salvador reports a record tourism year
Visitor arrivals passed 3.9 million in 2025 according to Ministry of Tourism figures, with the coast and the volcano circuit taking most of the growth.
FoodOlocuilta
The pupusa argument, settled on the airport road
Olocuilta makes rice-flour pupusas and has done since before anyone was counting. A morning at the highway stalls, and why corn is the wrong answer.
GuidesSanta Ana
The 11am rule on Santa Ana
You cannot hike Santa Ana volcano alone, the group leaves at eleven, and arriving at 11.15 costs you the day. What the hike is actually like.
Field NotesSuchitoto
A week in Suchitoto, in July
The colonial town everyone visits in February, seen in the middle of the rainy season, when the lake fills and the tourists do not come.