Suchitoto is what people mean when they say El Salvador has a colonial town. Cobbled streets, a white-fronted church on a square full of trees, low houses with tiled roofs, and below it all Lake Suchitlán — a reservoir, in fact, made when the Cerrón Grande dam flooded the valley in 1976, which drowned the farmland and left the town looking down at water instead.
The lake is now a Ramsar wetland and one of the best bird sites in the country: boats go out from the landing below town to the islands, and between November and February the migratory flocks are extraordinary. Hawks, egrets and thousands of duck.
The town's other subject is the war. This was contested country, emptied and then resettled, and the surrounding villages — Cinquera among them — keep their own memorials. Suchitoto itself has an arts scene that grew out of the return: galleries, a festival, and enough decent cooking to make it a place you stay rather than pass through.
It is under two hours from San Salvador on good road, which makes it the easiest of the country's real detours.