The best day trips from San Salvador are diverse and all within 90 minutes. To the west, Joya de Cerén is a pre-Columbian Mayan farming village buried by a volcanic eruption around 600 AD — the "Pompeii of the Americas" — and Tazumal is the most substantial Maya ruin in El Salvador. Both are on the same road and can be combined in a day.
Lake Ilopango to the east is a large crater lake popular for swimming and boat trips; the lake itself occupies the caldera of a volcano that last erupted in the 5th century AD, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Central American history.
The volcanic ridge of Cerro Verde to the northwest has three volcanoes accessible by hiking — Cerro Verde itself (inactive), Santa Ana (active, with a crater lake), and Izalco (the "Lighthouse of the Pacific," near-continuously active until 1966). The Santa Ana hike requires permission and is done with rangers due to volcanic activity. La Libertad on the Pacific coast is El Salvador's surf town and is about an hour south by road.
