Mizata, sv
Mizata is a small little town in the northern part of the country. Well, I am going to say northern part because it is up by the top of the country if you are coming down from the northern countries in Central America, but if you look at it on the map it is technically to the west. For the purposes of this I will refer to the country in terms of north and south rather than east and west. It makes more sense to me at least. Anyways, Mizata. It's the first of the small towns that you will encounter on your way down the coast of El Salvador after crossing the border with Guatemala, — if this is what you are doing. But it's really in my opinion where the little towns worth visiting start. Mizata is a little place, with nothing more than a few streets and a bunch of restaurants and hotels along the large sandy beach. This is actually pretty unique for El Salvador. In this part of the country, most of the beaches and towns have rocky shorelines, so Mizata is one of the exceptions in that manner. Mizata is an up and coming place. It's home to probably the most luxury hotels, restaurants, clubs — what have you, in the entire country. It looks like something out of Bali, and it's a popular place for people to come to. Especially those who have money. I heard while I was here that Mizata is actually the favorite beach town of the new young El Salvadorian president, 'Nayib Bukele'. So this place is likely going to continue to change more and more as El Salvador's modernization continues and accelerates. I really enjoyed Mizata though. It has a cool feel to it and is at least for the time being, more a place that is traveled by locals from El Salvador as compared to the backpacking scene that is more centralized in El Tunco. Mizata is a nice place to come and see for a few days. The waves here are also really good. There's a beach break out front that can get really heavy, and also a river mouth reef break that is going to be one of the lesser crowded spots in the country. The waves are good here, and not many people come. There's not a whole lot going on here in Mizata, but it's a great place to visit for a day or a few. One of my favorite little hotels and surf houses is here, and is owned by an amazing Chilean couple. Also come here to enjoy some sandy beaches. It's not the easiest thing to find in this part of El Salvador. Also, if you can sneak into the luxury hotel here it's a pretty cool spot.
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Mizata is located in the north-western part of the country of El Salvador. It's really the first town of any size that you would want to visit along the coastal part of Route 2, which zig-zags along the coastline between La Libertad and, well... Mizata. If you are coming down from Guatemala, it's about a 2-hour ride from the border crossing at Hachadura. None of the international — or for that matter, national shuttles are really going to take you to Mizata. It's not the most popular tourist destination here for foreigners, and as a result the easy transport just doesn't go through here.
So it's not the easiest place to get to. But that being said it's really not that hard to get to at all, especially if you fancy yourself a pretty good traveler. Most backpackers who end up in El Salvador probably do, though you will likely have to pay up for a shuttle. The bus system here in El Salvador isn't as good as some of the other countries from my experience.
There are a few places you may be coming from to get to Mizata if you are already in El Salvador. Either San Salvador, El Tunco, or the El Salvador airport (which is nowhere near San Salvador).
- From El Tunco, which is where you are going to be coming from if you are shuttling in from another country, you will have to hop on a local bus or a chicken bus on its way up the coast to Mizata. The ride should only take about 45 minutes, and cost less than $5. Alternatively, you can obviously take a cab. It's going to be more expensive, but certainly easier.
- From San Salvador, the ride is going to be longer. — About 3 hours, and the best and cheapest way is chicken bus. It will go through the northern town of Sonsonate. It's not going to be the easiest ride, and will include a transfer. One of the bus operators is here. I wouldn't recommend a taxi from San Salvador it's going to be expensive. Honestly, I would be shocked if many people are coming from San Salvador anyways. You're going to be coming from El Tunco, most likely.
- From the El Salvador Airport - This is assuming that you are flying into the country. First things first — you need to get to El Tunco. To get to El Tunco from the airport you should probably get a shuttle if you think that will be easiest for you. You can book here, — it's going to be kind of expensive at $50. This company will also transport you to the nearby beach towns, Sunzal, El Zonte, etc. If you want to save money, you can take a shuttle to the bus-line near the airport. But that's going to be a tricky journey. The shuttle is just kind of a price that you have to eat.
DRIVING - To avoid all of the kind of hassle loaded travel in El Salvador, you can just drive. Or rent a car at the airport. If you are overlanding it's easy enough, just follow Highway 2 down from the border of Guatemala and you will arrive there eventually. If you are coming from San Salvador, I would recommend taking Route 4 down into La Libertad, and then up the 2 all the way to Mizata. The drive is beautiful.
HITCHHIKE - Probably one of the more common ways to get around in this part of the country is to hitchhike. Locals are extremely nice, and will pull over and let you hop in the truck- bed, or right into the car and they will take you up or down the coast as far as they are going. If it were me — and I found myself in El Tunco and needed to get to Mizata with no car, I would hitchhike. I wouldn't necessarily recommend a hitchhike all the way from the airport. But do you?
HOSTELS, CAMPING, AND HOTELS (IF ANY)
Mizata is a really small place so there isn't an endless amount of places that you can stay. But there are a handful. The lodging goes way up and down the spectrum here, and the quality goes from great, to honestly pretty shitty for a little fleabag hotel. But it might be worth it if that's your budget.
A few recommendations are below. For once, I will actually include a hotel. It's a cool spot, but it will be way out of the budget for any self-respecting backpacker.
This is my favorite place in Mizata. It's owned by an amazing young couple from Chile, who have been in El Salvador for some time at this point. It's a large converted house, and this place is really a home for surfers. It's a surf-house more than anything. It's really laid back, they have a great pool, the rooms are really comfortable and luxurious and the price, starting at $40, isn't terrible. It's a step up in accommodation, and the people staying here are going to be awesome.
— Nice restaurant and little bar right on site. #1 recommendation here.
This is the closest thing that you are going to find to a hostel here in Mizata. They have a few basic rooms and a cool, hippy kind of vibe restaurant in their spot right along the river. If you want some cheaper accommodation in town with a good vibe, this is probably the spot for you. They have good food, and specifically good pizza.
So this is the luxury place that I was describing. They are really two separate places. 'Nawi Beach House' being the day-club, restaurant and bar, and 'Mizata by Antiresort' being the luxury hotel next door. It's really, really nice, and if you have the $100-150 per night to spend on a room, you're really going to enjoy it. — Right on the water, right in front of the wave. Certainly check out the beach club at a minimum.
This is where I stayed when I was here before I knew the guys who owned Casaola. It's a budget hotel at the entrance of town with pretty shitty rooms, but for a good price. It's not going to have much of a vibe at all, and the rooms won't be anything special, but it's a place to lay your head and won't break that bank. I also loved their pizza, but I might have just been drunk.
EATS
Being such a small town, the eating and dining options are going to be pretty limited. Most of, if not all of the hotels are going to have food options, and they will all be pretty good.
I also found that the street food options were good here, and really affordable. So you have that as well. Keep an eye out for that.
Restaurants
Cool restaurant here over on the river. They have great pizza — especially for dinner.
Good little restaurant here inside of Casaola. It's going to be priced mid-range.
Really good restaurant with great prices in the hostel that I mentioned above. The pizza was my favorite thing here, but they also have lots of good local offerings.
Little local restaurant spot, right on the beach. Serving up seafood and other local dishes.
The fancy beach club will have good but very, very expensive food. — Will be very westernized if you are looking for those creature comforts.
Little cafe spot with smoothie bowls and other health food options. Great for a healthy and tasty breakfast from a cool little spot.
NIGHTLIFE
Mizata is not a nightlife town. There's not really much at all to speak of. There are plenty of places that you can sit around and have beers or whatever, but from a nightlife perspective it doesn't really exist here. Not much of El Salvador has a nightlife scene to be honest outside of El Tunco.
If anything here, what does happen is that people will day-drink at NAWI beach house. It's usually pretty crowded on the weekends, but it's expensive and they typically have a cover to get in. You can try and sneak in and sit at a table and just order beers, which is what I did but they won't let you in the pool without paying the cover.
SIGHTS
The things to do and see in this part of El Salvador are not going to be unique based on the location. Everything in the northern part of El Salvador is so damn close to each other that the sights and touristic things to do here are pretty much identical.
Outside of exploring the individual towns that each page is already outlining, the things to do will not really — if at all, differ. But there is loads to do here in this part of the country. It's all mentioned below. Well, most of it.
The Tamanique Waterfalls are a series of waterfalls that are located really close to the beach towns in Northern El Salvador. It's pretty accessible from all of the towns. They are located in the town of Tamanique and you first need to get there, which is about a 25 minute drive from El Tunco, El Zonte, or Sunzal. When you get to town there is about a 30-minute hike down to get to the waterfalls. There's great pools to jump in and swim around. It's a really nice thing to do on an afternoon, and doesn't take that long. — Isn't very hard, either.
Most people do a tour here to make the transport there and back easy. As with everything here, I will recommend going with my friend Rivas. He's great, and knows El Salvador like no one else I met. He'll even take you to some other waterfalls that are local secrets.
His Instagram is here, you can reach out directly there. He can help you with anything that you want to do in the country.
One of the best cultural things that you can do in El Salvador is travel throughout the Ruta de Las Flores — or in English, 'the Route of Flowers'. It gets its name from the stunning flowers that bloom seasonally along it. There's a number of amazing towns that lie along it, and each is unique and worth visiting. More on this on the 'Ruta de Las Flores' page.
A great day trip from the beach towns is to go up to the Volcan de San Salvador. It's not the world's most impressive volcano, but it's a great way to spend an afternoon. You see a lot of cool little spots in El Salvador while you do the drive up as well.
— Best way to do this is through a tour. As with everything here, I will recommend going with my friend Rivas. He's great, and knows El Salvador like no one else I met. On this trip you will make a few other cool stops as well.
His Instagram is here, — you can reach out directly there. He can help you with anything that you want to do in the country.
El Salvador is right smack dab in the middle of the Central American coffee belt, which means they produce and export some of the best coffee in the world. A great activity in El Sal is to go visit, and tour a coffee farm. It's fun, informative, and you get to see an interesting part of the country. Not to mention have some good coffee.
— Best way to do this is through a tour. As with everything here I will recommend going with my friend Rivas. He's great, and knows El Salvador like no one else I met. On this trip you will make a few other cool stops as well.
His Instagram is here, you can reach out directly there. He can help you with anything that you want to do in the country.
LEARN TO SURF
Surfing is one of the main attractions in the country. Many of those who come to El Sal already surf pretty well, but if not it's a great place to learn. Sunzal especially is one of the best learning waves in Central America. There's places to learn how to surf all over the place, depending on what town you are in.
The Santa Ana volcano is El Salvador's main tourist attraction. Without a doubt. It's a stunning volcano that's unique in the fact that it has a lake in the middle of it. It's one of the cooler-looking volcanoes, and certainly one of the most unique I have ever seen. If you are coming from the beach towns, it's quite a trek. — About 2 hours. There's more info. on this on the 'Santa Ana' page, and if you plan on spending time there, or 'Lago de Coatepeque', then I would recommend going on a tour or busing yourself to the volcano from there.
The hike up the volcano isn't a short one. It's about 2 hours up, and 2 hours down. It's a pretty steep hike as well. So if you're really out of shape it might be hard, but you should be fine. More detail on the hike is here at the Alltrails.
This is going to be specific to El Zonte, but even if you aren't staying in the town it's one of my favorite spots to spend an evening. The local skaters here are rippers, and it's a very cool, fully graffitied skate-bowl. It's fun to just go hang out, watch the locals skate, and drink a few beers as the sun goes down.
A beautiful lake here in El Salvador. Something that surprised me entirely, and I didn't even know it existed. But I really enjoyed it — there's a very cool hostel, and a bunch of beautiful restaurants on the lake. Just a great spot that's relatively unknown. More on that on the 'Lake Coatepeque' page.
So this is a pretty weird recommendation, but it could be fun if you want to do something weird and local. There is a ferris wheel and small amusement park on the malecon or boardwalk in La Libertad. It opened recently as a part of the 'Surf City' national development campaign. It could be fun to go for an evening. Ride the weird rollercoasters and ferris wheel, oddly reminiscent of Venice Beach.
One of the stranger things that I did in El Salvador to be honest. There's this restaurant that is more of an amusement park up in the mountains on the way to Volcan San Salvador. There is this colorful slide — pictured here, that has become something of an Instagram-famous spot. People ride down it for $5. It's weird, random, and the place is also full of a bunch of animatronic animals like elephants and such. It's weird, but people seem to flock to it.
SURFING
The surfing sections for Northern El Salvador are pretty much going to be the same. All of the individual wave recommendations below will be the same, but here I will go into a little more detail on the specific wave that exists here in Mizata. All of the waves in Northern El Salvador are pretty close to one another, which is why I will just include them all on every page.
A little on El Salvador surfing. Quickly. El Salvador is one of the most wave-rich places I have ever been. — Such a small country, so many waves. If you like right-hand-point breaks, this is one of the best places in the world for them.
The photos below are specific to Mizata.
MIZATA -
Mizata is a multifaceted wave. On the one hand, it's one of the only beach breaks in the northern part of El Salvador, but there is also a river-mouth that breaks as a reef break here. So there are a number of waves you can surf on here. The wave at the river-mouth is called 'Mizata Point', and is a great right-hander that can handle size. It also breaks left, but the right is better. It's a little bit more powerful than some of the other right hand point breaks here in El Salvador. Some of them are on the mushier or softer side, but the one here is fast and holds size well.
Additionally, Mizata is probably one of the most consistent waves in this part of the country. Other than Sunzal, it's going to break all year round, and have size when other places don't. If you are looking for bigger waves when everything else is flat, this is your spot. However, when it gets big, it's also going to be bigger here. The beach break maxes out at about head high and a half or so.
Probably the biggest benefit of Mizata is going to be the crowd factor. It's going to be super-small. The town itself is the hardest to get to from the popular hotspots of El Tunco, El Zonte, or La Libertad. Just the simple difficulty of access here is going to keep people away. So in essence, come here for consistent, empty waves along with a cool variety, all in the same place.
Photos courtesy of Sunzal Surf Co.
Suchitoto is one of the coolest-looking places in the entire country. It's a small little town that is about an hour-and-15-minutes from downtown San Salvador. It's a cobblestoned street, red brick roof and white painted houses 'magic town' on a lake. It's such a cool spot to check out. More on this place on the 'Suchitoto' page.
