page_title: Tourism in El Salvador
section_title: Ecotourism
hierarchical_section_title: Tourism in El Salvador / Ecotourism
context_page_description: Tourism accounts for a large part of El Salvador's economy. It offers many natural attractions including, beaches, a mild tropical climate and lush landscapes. It also offers an important archaeological and ecological heritage, with colonial and pre-Columbian vestiges, and national reserves.
  El Salvador also has an exceptional potential in the field of cultural tourism, with over 2,000 known archaeological sites, samples of Maya and Olmec cultures, mainly. They stand out for their importance the archaeological remains of the Pyramids of San Andrés, Joya de Cerén, Cihuatán, Quelepa, Tazumal and Tehuacán.
  While tourism is an activity that exploded few over the past two decades due to political instability in times of civil war, after the Peace Accords, signed in 1992, there were new expectations, although its development went slowly due to lack of infrastructure in rural areas of the country because the government of the day established other priorities in economic policy, as the maquila.
  A feature of the territory is that the extension is small.
context_section_description: El Salvador has a range of national parks of great importance, both for its quantity and its uniqueness. The most important ecological areas are, among others:
  The National Reserve Forest El Imposible
  The Cerro Verde National Park
  Montecristo National Park
  The Conchagua Volcano National Park
  The Walter T. Deininger Park
  The Jocotal Lake
  The Forest of San Diego
  El Forest of Nancuchiname
  The Forest El Imposible is located south of the department of Ahuachapán, on the mountain range of Apaneca, and covers an area of 3,130ha. It presents a difficult access, which owes its name, and offers shelter to many animal species (insects, birds, mammals and reptiles) and vegetables, including the Siete Camisas Rojo (Guapira Witsbereri) and Amarante Silvestre ( Parathesis Congesta), two tree species unknown to science until recently.
  From Cerro Verde National Park, located in the department of Santa Ana, there are views of Izalco volcano, Santa Ana volcano and Lake Coatepeque. In this area there are more than 127 species of birds, and other animals.
  Montecristo National Park, located north of the department of Santa Ana, comprises one of the last cloud forests of El Salvador, consisting of oaks, pines and cypresses, where it find its habitat howler monkeys, black shrews, anteaters, White tail deer  and pumas.
  Another exceptional faunal refuge constitutes the Walter T. Deininger Park, where the hunting ban has led to the population of coyotes, deer, tucanoan and iguanas. Waterfowl such as tree ducks, red-beaked redfish and charancuacos found in Jocotal Lake.
  The Trifinio is one of the great forests, which shares its extension with Guatemala and Honduras - rivers, and above all, its villages, where much of the Salvadoran culture is still present and day to day lives.
caption: Torogoz, national bird of El Salvador.
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