¡Qué Buen Trip!

Planchimalco is a town located about 17 Kms form San Salvador. We arrived there without actually planning it, we were heading to Puerta del Diablo (Devil’s Gate) but we decided to go to Panchimalco instead.
About 5 minutes after we arrived, a parade started, we were surprised because we didn’t know but once we saw it, we stayed there. It was commemorating the Pupusa National Day and they were presented the Historiantes, a group of old men with costumes, representing parts of the history of the world. The most obvious one is the one when they represent the Christians and the Moorish. There are 2 groups of 7, the Christians are the ones with crowns and the Moors are the ones with animal masks.
After the parade we visited the Colonial church, the Casa de la Cultura and a Paining Studio.
The Colonial Church was originally constructed in 1725 and it’s the oldest colonial structure surviving in El Salvador. The Church consists of a single nave covered by a roof supported by 16 wooden beams. It contains an altar reredos done in the French Baroque style, but its most well-known feature is its bleached white colonial façade.

 The second highlight of the trip is the visit to the Paining Studio; it is actually worth visiting Panchimalco just to see the Studio and the Church.

The Studio belongs to artist, a Salvadorian painter who lived in Australia and now established his painting academy in Panchimalco his name is Miguel Angel Ramirez. One of the students was kind enough to give us a tour trough all the paintings and the history of the studio.

It was noon already and we were planning to go to Olocuilta to see the World’s largest Pupusa, but we were hungry, so we stopped at Los Planes de Renderos, there is a Site Seeing place, very nice with handcraft sellers and stuff like that.

There is a big restaurant in front called Carimar but to be honest, I rather eat at one of the smaller places on the street. The restaurant was big so it took some time for the waitress to see us even when it was empty, the food was ordinary, a little expensive (relative to the prices on the street) and the restrooms were definitely not clean! =( and for the size of the restaurant one would expect that they take credit cards, sadly, they don’t. Tourist advice: do not eat at a place that is empty.

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