Travelling from Antigua to Santa Ana (El Salvador) on Chicken Bus
The Route
I’m gonna be real here, this journey was incredibly tough, it took us about 10 hours from start to finish. But I strongly believe if we were to do it again, we could’ve done it in 6. There was very little information online on how to complete the trip, and stupidly we decided to wing it and ask around on the way. So I’ll tell you first the way we did it, and the way we should’ve done it if we had the knowledge.
Antigua to Guatemala City
This bit is ridiculously easy, they have constant buses running from the main bus terminal in the east of Antigua to Guatemala City. You can find the stop marked ‘Bus Terminal’ on google maps just east of the Mercado Central, I’ll link it below:
If you walk there from your hostel along any of the main roads, you will probably see a bunch of buses flying past yelling ‘Guate Guate’, so just wave them down if you can and check with them if they’re going to Guatemala City and jump on. If not, just walk up to the terminal and ask around until you find one, they’re very frequent so shouldn’t be much of a wait. Keep in mind our Spanish is very limited at this time, all you need to know is how to ask ‘Going to Guatemala?’ and ‘How much?’ when they collect the money. This bus for us was 20Q in January 2024, I believe that’s the standard price right now but it might be cheaper on certain buses.
Guatemala City to Cuilapa
Keep your eye on the map when you arrive in Guatemala City, as you’ll want to get off at this massive cloverleaf intersection, I think the name is Trebol. There is a bus stop marked there called ‘Buses hacia Occidente‘, so the bus should stop around here anyway but if it doesn’t get off close to here because it’s the closest spot you’ll need to be to get an uber. Ubers are ridiculously cheap in Guatemala City, this one was under 20Q for us which is nothing if you’re in a group. Walk to anywhere an uber can stop for you and catch one to the bus terminal in the Zona 4 Mercado. The buses going in the direction of the border are not actually in the main terminal, we found ours on 2A Avendia. We caught our uber to this mechanic shop, and walked towards the buses until we saw what we needed.
Now here’s where I would’ve done things differently – we were aiming to get to Las Chiminas Frontera, or Villa Nuevo on the Guatemalan side. We had read online that there were direct buses, but we saw a bus that said ‘Cuilapa’ on it, which is a town about half the way to the border. We thought we could catch a bus to here and then catch another to the border, but we quickly realised that it wasn’t that easy. We get to Cuilapa after a long time slowly moving through towns along the way, and walked down to the square, but there were no buses to the border. We asked locals and the tourism office, and they informed us that there were no direct buses to the border, and we would have to catch one to Jalpatagua first and then catch another bus. The buses to this town are not as frequent, and we ended up waiting in Cuilapa for nearly an hour before we could catch the next bus, which was packed to the brim.
If you catch a bus from Guatemala city, absolutely ask around the people working at the terminal to try and find a more direct route. At the very least, there should be buses that go all the way to Jalpatagua, which is only twenty minutes from the border. In Jalpatagua it’s pretty easy to grab a shuttle, ours was waiting in this spot, but if you just ask anyone they will point you in the right direction. The whole town is basically on one main road, so just walk down it until you find the shuttle, and ask the driver if they are going to the Frontera (Las Chimina or Villa Nuevo). This drive takes 20-25 minutes in a small van, and with that we were finally at the border. If you do find yourself in Cuilapa and there is no direct bus, just wait at where they drop you off in front of the burger shop until a bus for Jalapatagua comes past. For us, the total cost to get to the border was 85Q over four buses, but it definitely could be closer to 50Q if we tried harder to get a more direct route, and the driver of the last bus initially quoted us 10Q but charged us 20, but we were two tired to fight over 2 dollars at that point.
The bus drives you right up to the checkpoint on the Guatemalan side, so walk up to it and avoid all the people yelling at you to exchange your money, unless you’re happy with copping the bad exchange rates or you desperately need USD. In El Salvador you will need max $15USD to get to Santa Ana, including a snack or drink on the way. The Guatemalan border side is pretty simple, just walk to the left of the building and enter the immigration office and hand the person working there your passport. It took about five minutes for the four of us to stamp out of Guatemala, and then we were out of the building. After this you need to walk across the bridge to get to El Salvadorian immigration. This one’s a bit more intense, near the end of the bridge a lady asked us to look at our passports, and told us to cross the road to the immigration office. This process was pretty slow, they only had one person working the booth for immigration into the country, so we had to wait for alot of paperwork for the family in front of us. But the airconditioning after sweating for hours doesn’t make it so bad. We found out we had to pay a $12 USD entry fee for Australian citizens, but my partner who has a New Zealand passport didn’t have to pay anything. I’m not sure of exactly which countries have to pay, they had a list on the wall and it was only twenty or so, but the U.S. and Australia are included in that group. New Zealand obviously isn’t, and from what I can remember British and Canadian citizens should be safe from the fee. But look it up if the information is online, because there were some rouge nations on the list that had to pay.
Las Chiminas Frontera – Ahuachapán
Once you get past immigration, it’s fairly easy. El Salvador actually has numbers on their Chicken Buses, so it’s far easier to find out where you’re going. If you walk up the hill after immigration for about 200 metres, there is a shelter with a lot of people waiting there for the bus. I’m pretty sure only one bus runs from here anyway, but to be safe the correct bus is the 11AH Micro to Ahuachapán, but be aware sometimes the bus numbers are wrong or nonexistent so just ask for Ahuachapán. This one is only 50 Cents US. After a 20 – 30 minute drive to Ahuachapán, the bus will drop you at the General Francisco Menendez Park.
Ahuachapán – Santa Ana
You will have to walk two or three blocks to get to the buses to Santa Ana, in this spot on 12A Calle Oriente. If you’re not sure, just ask anyone working with the buses, they are always happy to point you in the right direction. There are relatively frequent buses to Santa Ana from here, we caught the 210 but I believe you can take the 238A-1. Find one of these and check for the big ‘Santa Ana’ written on the front, and jump on. This one is 80 Cents US, and can wildly vary in time taken. If you arrive late in the afternoon like we did, it can get stuck in the evening traffic and take over an hour. Ours took over an hour and a half to get to Santa Ana, however there was an accident on the road and we were stuck in gridlock traffic for the better part of an hour. It’s about a 45 minute drive direct, so expect 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. Once in Santa Ana, there is Uber available for very cheap to get to your hostel or depending on where you are staying you can probably walk. In the daytime definitely, if you arrive at night as we did it can definitely feel overwhelming to walk the busy streets with the big packs on. But as we have found in El Salvador, you will probably be safe, even if the locals all stare. This country was incredibly dangerous just a few years ago, and the tourists are just starting to come in, so people are often suprised to see a few gringos walking the streets with big bags.
So that’s it, you’re in Santa Ana, El Salvador. I know it sounds incredibly intense, but realistically we saved something like $30USD not booking with the shuttle companies, and realistically they would face the same traffic issues as we did that day, so it probably wouldn’t have been that much quicker to take a shuttle. And if it was done more efficiently than we did it this route could have 3-4 hours knocked off the journey. Please don’t just pass over here in Santa Ana, I’ll write a blog that i’ll link here about all the fantastic things you can do in this city and it’s surroundings. And as of 2024, it’s far easier to find cheap places to stay here than it is in the east of the country or the beach towns.
Summary
- Antigua to Guatemala City West Terminal – 20Q and ~1 hour
- Uber from West Terminal to Zona 4 Mercado Terminal – 17Q split between four people and around ~10 minutes depending on traffic
- Zona 4 Mercado Terminal – Jalapatagua or Frontera – 25Q and ~ 1.5 hours, could be 2.5 hours depending on traffic and how slow the driver wants to go
- Jalapatagua to Las Chimina Frontera – 10 to 20Q and ~20 to 25 minutes
- Frontera to Ahuachapán – 0.5 USD and ~25 minutes
- Ahuachapán to Santa Ana – 0.8 USD and ~ 45 minutes to 1.5 hours
So all in all we spend a total of 17.50 Australian dollars on our journey, plus the 18 AUD immigration fee into El Salvador. We spent about 10 hours, but by bypassing Cuilapa I think it could take less than 7, especially since we were massively slowed down by traffic and confusion. Try leave as early as possible, like 6-7am if you can, I think we slowed ourselves down by leaving around 9.30 and it made everything a lot more stressful. Also if you can find a direct route to Las Chimina, you should save about 5 AUD more. Compared to the $52 AUD cost of the cheapest shuttle we could find, I truly think the public bus route is the best way to do this journey, considering that you have to pay the entry fee regardless and you will still lose most of your time dicking around at the border. Not to mention that all the shuttles only go to El Tunco or San Salvador, and you will completely miss one of the best areas of El Salvador if you use the shuttles.
We saw other blogs tell people to travel south to Esquintla and through the Frontera further south, but that didn’t seem logical to us as it diverts the journey three hours, not to mention you enter El Salvador far further away from Santa Ana.
This is the first blog post I’ve made, so thanks for reading and please leave any comments if you did this route and there’s a better way to do any of it.
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