4 September 2026 · La Libertad → El Zonte → Mizata → Acajutla, El Salvador
The Carretera Litoral is the coast road, and for a day I let it decide where we went. West out of La Libertad the highway climbs into rock cuts and then drops back to the sea, over and over, with the surf towns strung along it like beads: El Tunco, El Sunzal, El Zonte, each one a turn-off, a cluster of palapas, a beach you can see from the road. Past Mizata the traffic thins out to trucks and the odd motorbike, the jungle closes in over the asphalt, and the road starts going through the hills instead of round them.
That is the part I had not read about. There are tunnels — old ones, cut straight through the rock, one lane of light at the far end and nothing in between. You come out of full sun into black, and out of black into a wall of green, and the road bends again. I have driven a lot of highway in my life and I have not driven one like this.
Then Acajutla, which is a working port and behaves like one. I missed the turn I wanted and spent half an hour in a grid of one-way residential streets that all looked the same — pastel walls, a chicken bus, a tuk-tuk that owned the intersection, people crossing wherever they liked. Nobody was in a hurry and nobody expected me to be either. I found my way out by following the bus.
A roadside stand on the way back sold dragon fruit at four for ten dollars, which is roughly half what the supermarket wants for it, and a plate of shrimp and calamari rice under a palapa over a point break cost about eight dollars a head with a lemonade. The lunch had a better view than most restaurants I have paid four times as much for.
The video is honest about how it was shot: a 360 camera clamped to the dash, midday sun, and a windshield I had not cleaned. Every frame came off the card milky, and I have graded it as far as it will go. Lesson learned. The camera goes on the outside of the glass next time, which is also the only way the ocean ever gets into the frame — pointed forward, the coast road never shows you the coast.
Ledger: fuel for the loop, four dragon fruit, lunch for two. The tunnels are free.