El Carmen Estate — Hotel in Departamento de Ahuachapán

My friend and I just spent the weekend in the Casona (big house) of the Finca del Carmen. The Casona is separate from the hotel. It is just as it sounds - a very spacious old Finca house still furnished as the owners furnished it decades ago. It is like stepping back in time. Our room was clean and spacious and the bathrooms have been updated. The house has wonderful character, and the climate was perfect while we were there, but you may want to bring a small portable fan during the hotter months. You have access to the large garden ( which would benefit from some garden tables). We spent the morning hiking the road up to the flower fields at the top of the mountain where they grow birds of paradise and have spectacular views, and then later settled into the garden to read. The price includes breakfast - the coffee, frijoles and bread were perfect, but the scrambled eggs were powdered and the plátanos were as hard as rocks and inedible. There is no dinner served so go prepared to eat out or bring your own food. We made ourselves comfortable in the living area with our own bottle of wine and snacks. The lighting is a dim and the effect of the old furnishings a bit spooky. The electric outlets look as if they may be the originals installed in the house and worried me a bit, but there is Wifi surprisingly. The only odd thing is that the caretaker leaves for her house around 6:00 and seeing as how we were the only guests that evening, it felt a bit like being guests in house where the host forgot to show up. Overall, a beautiful place where I would stay again, but bring more bottled water - the one provided was not nearly enough. For the foreign traveler, be forewarned, the housekeeper simply lets you in, gives you a key and a bottle of water, asks if you need anything and leaves. She does not speak English, and there were no brochures or maps of the area available. Since we know the area that wasn't a problem, but it could be for...

The drive from east of San Salvador to Ataco in the west of El Salvador took longer than we had anticipated, so we arrived quite late and long after dark. Would they open the gates to us or would we have to sleep on the bus? No worries, the night watchman alerted management to our presence and we were welcomed in. ||||Unfortunately our bus was too big to navigate the sharp turn and low gate at the entrance, so we had a short walk to our "cottage" from the bus, but having arrived, all was then smooth sailing. ||||The "cottage" - big enough to sleep our group of ten, with rooms to spare - is old-fashioned lovely inside and out, decorated in a sort of Spanish colonial style (no Danish modern here) featuring a small central room open to receive rainwater into an interior fountain when it rains, which it did that night. In addition to multiple bedrooms & bathrooms, the cottage has its own kitchen and dining room where we were served a tasty breakfast of comida tipica and local coffee. The grounds around the cottage and the main estate feature many gardens, flowering bushes and trees - great for a stroll and some casual birding.||||After breakfast we had a very interesting tour of their working coffee processing plant and then a casual lunch at the open-air cafe, from which we could see some kids returning from their horseback rides. The nearby gift shop includes a mix of some imported items, along with some products made by local artisans.||||We spent some of the afternoon in the main house - many rooms and bedrooms, along with an open-air area which served us as an informal meeting area. Altogether a charming stay, featuring polite and helpful staff and lovely...

This hotel is in the centre of a coffee-growing estate on the outskirts of the small El Salvador town of Ataco (famed for its colourful murals on houses), part of the scenic Ruta de las Flores. The hotel was built around the 1930s and has had wings added to accommodate more rooms; however, there are only 6 rooms and you may well have the place to yourselves. There seemed to be only one person in attendance, a very polite, reserved and helpful lady (the owner, I think). The building is of its time and has not been updated, which contributes hugely to its eccentric charm. The guestrooms are modest and functional, with reasonably comfortable twin beds, and rather wasted space in the form of empty anterooms or walk-in wardrobes (with nothing in them). We were allowed to inspect all of the guestrooms before making a choice: some reminded me of teenage bedrooms of the 1950s or old-fashioned public school shared rooms. In fact, there is a 1950s vibe about the whole place - in a nice way - which is redolent of those old British colonial buildings (boarding schools, hotels, governors' residences etc) found in former colonies. There is a bar but it was not functioning. Breakfast was served in a rather sombre Germanic dining room (there is a strong German connection in the coffee plantations of El Salvador) and was adequate and...