From Antigua to El Salvador by Bus: Your Ultimate Guide (2024)

Note: This route and these prices are as of January 2024

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How to Get from Antigua, Guatemala to El Salvador by Bus

Forget fancy tours and tourist bubbles. This is a journey for the adventurous (and the budget-conscious) who are ready to embrace a ten hour travel day and four different chicken buses. We’re ditching the air-conditioned comfort and embracing the wind-whipped windows and bustling chaos of public buses, charting a course from Antigua’s charming cobblestones to the heart of El Salvador.

This guide will take you through everything you need to know when traveling from Antigua, Guatemala to wherever your story continues in El Salvador in the cheapest way possible! When we were first looking at this route, we were quoted between 40 and 45 USD per person for a shuttle between Antigua and Santa Ana, which we were certainly not ready to spend. Instead, we ended up paying a total of just over 13 USD per person by taking chicken buses!! We highly recommend going from Antigua to El Salvador by chicken bus; it’s long, but worth it for the amount of cash you save.

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Cheapest Way to get from Antigua to El Salvador — Antigua

Chicken Bus Route from Antigua to Sonsonate, El Salvador

When we did this route, we were traveling from Antigua to Santa Ana, El Salvador by bus. However, this route applies no matter where you’re going in El Salvador, as there are connections to pretty much everywhere in the country from Sonsonate. Therefore, we’ll cover how to get to Sonsonate, and then from there you will be set! This route has you cross the border at Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado/La Hachadura.

Antigua to Escuintla

Time: 75-90 Minutes
Cost: 20 Quetzales / 2.57 USD

The first bus ride is quick and easy. You’ll head to the bus terminal in Antigua (on the west side of the city), tell the locals you’re heading to Escuintla, and they’ll get you on the right bus. In Guatemala, everyone is very helpful when you’re traveling by bus, which makes things very easy!

Escuintla to La Frontera (the Border)

Time: 3.5 – 4 Hours
Cost: 70 Quetzales / 9 USD

When you get off the bus in Escuintla, ask where the bus to La Frontera (which translates to “the border” – you don’t have to use the town’s actual name) will be. They’ll point you in the right direction, which was just across the street in our case, and you’ll wait for the bus there. We only had to wait about 10 minutes before the bus came along. When you get on and eventually pay, you’ll get a ticket. Hold onto this – it ensures that you won’t have to pay again if you have to switch buses in Chiquimulilla.

The amount of time this bus ride takes really depends on how long the driver choses to stop along the way. When we first boarded the bus in Escuintla, we ended up stopping for about 25 minutes and people came through selling drinks and food. Then, we had a longer break in Chiquimulilla. It sounds like all the buses doing this route stop here, where you can use the bathroom and buy some snacks, but the length of the stop varies. We were there for just over an hour and did have to switch buses (but sometimes you’ll stay on your original bus), but eventually we got moving again and got to the border!

Crossing the Border

Time: 30 Minutes
Cost: 12 USD (ONLY if you’re from certain countries; for USA you will need to pay this)

The bus will drop you off right at the border, and you can hop out and start walking. Getting stamped out of Guatemala was nice and quick, and then you’ll have about a 15 minute walk across the border to the El Salvadorian side.

THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!: If you do not have USD and you will have to pay the $12 entry fee to El Salvador, you MUST exchange Quetzales on the Guatemalan side to have enough USD to cover those costs. There should be a guy wandering around the area where you get stamped out of Guatemala who will give you a decent exchange rate. If you cross the border and do not have 12 USD, you will be told to walk back across the border to get money (which you’ll have to exchange for USD because Guatemalan ATMs only dispense Quetzales). The El Salvadorian border patrol does not take card and there are no ATMs on the El Salvador side. You’ll also need USD for the bus to Sonsonate, so make sure to take that into consideration.

After getting stamped into El Salvador and paying the fee (if you have to), you’ll walk about 5 minutes to the bus station. It’s on the right, you can’t miss it.

Antigua to El Salvador Chicken Bus — ^{Beinvenidos a El Salvador!}

La Frontera to Sonsonate

Time: 90 Minutes
Cost: 0.90 USD

Once you get to the bus station, you may have to wait for a bit (but probably not longer than half an hour) for the next bus to leave. Buses from here only head to Sonsonate, so you can just get on whatever one leaves first!

The lovely thing about entering El Salvador is that transportation just got a whole lot cheaper. I don’t think we paid more than 2 USD per person for any bus ride the whole time we were in the country.

Onward!

From Sonsonate, you can get about anywhere else in El Salvador, though you may have to stay in Sonsonate for a night because you’ll get there later in the day. We headed right to Santa Ana, which we paid 0.70 USD for and took about 90 minutes. These buses run often, so it wasn’t an issue for us to get one at 5:30 PM. However, if you’re heading somewhere like El Tunco or La Libertad, the last bus runs at 3:30 PM and it’s highly unlikely that you’d make it to Sonsonate in time. However, I definitely urge you to check out Santa Ana and La Ruta de las Flores when you’re just entering El Salvador; they’re beautiful areas and very close to Sonsonate, and good starting points for your El Salvador adventure!

Recommendations when Traveling by Chicken Bus

Chicken buses are certainly an experience to be had, but you will want to be careful when traveling this way to avoid being ripped off or pickpocketed. Here are our tips for traveling by chicken bus in Central America:

Keep an Eye on Your Stuff: Chicken buses are a hot spot for pickpocketing (trust us, it happened to us in Guatemala!), but this is completely avoidable if you keep an eye on your stuff and hold onto your things with zippers. We were pickpocketed as we walked off of a super crowded bus because the thief was able to get one of our cross body bags unzipped without us noticing. Just be aware and always have an eye on your stuff and you’ll be fine!
Start Early: You never know what can happen along the way when you have to take multiple buses, so we recommend starting as early as you can. Especially for this route, where stops may take longer than you thought, we recommend starting as early as you can.
Try to Pay with Exact Change: If you pay with large bills, change may not be readily available for you, and that can also make you a target for theft.
Watch What Locals are Paying: When in Guatemala, try to figure out what the cost is for locals as the collector comes around and have that amount ready when they get to you. Sometimes they’ll try to up-charge you if you’re a foreigner, but having the exact amount ready will deter them from doing so. In El Salvador, this is much less of an issue.

Check Out Our Guatemala Posts

Check Out Our El Salvador Posts!

Our Favorite Travel Resources

Accommodations: We use Booking.com for hotels and HostelWorld for hostels. We also use VRBO or TrustedHousesitters for longer stays.

Flights: We recommend using Skyscanner to find the cheapest and best flights.

Ground Transport: We use 12Go and Omio for buses and private transfers, and rentalcars.com and Discover Cars for rental cars.

Activities: GetYourGuide and Viator are the best websites for booking organized tours.

International Medical Insurance: We highly recommend SafetyWing for Digital Nomads and HeyMondo for those not traveling full-time, or who frequently engage in higher-risk adventure activities.

eSIM: We recommend Airalo or Holafly for getting data internationally.

Check out our Travel Resources Page for more of our favorite travel-related products and services!