Central America overland, from Costa Rica to El Salvador

Central America is the kind of place that rewards travelling on the ground. Its countries are small, its distances short, and the changes from one to the next are sharp: the language stays the same, mostly, but the money, the food, the architecture and the feel of the place shift at every border. Flying between capitals misses all of that. The long road that runs up the isthmus, past lakes and volcanoes and through colonial towns, shows it.

The route is also, for much of its length, a line of volcanoes. Central America sits where several tectonic plates meet, and a chain of volcanic cones runs along its Pacific side from Panama to Guatemala, some of them dormant and green, some still smoking.

Costa Rica and the cloud forest

Most overland journeys through the region start in the south, and Costa Rica is the gentlest beginning. It is the most developed of the Central American countries for visitors, famous for having abolished its army in 1948 and for protecting a large share of its land in national parks and reserves.

Monteverde, in the mountains north-west of the capital, San José, is its best known cloud forest, a misty, mossy world of epiphytes, orchids and hanging bridges strung through the canopy. It is one of the places where the resplendent quetzal, the bird with long emerald tail feathers revered by the Maya and the Aztecs, can be seen. Further north, the Arenal Volcano rises in a near-perfect cone above the forest.

Nicaragua, lakes and colonial cities

Crossing into Nicaragua brings a change of pace. The country is larger and less visited, and its two great colonial cities, Granada and León, have long been rivals. Granada, on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, is a city of brightly painted houses and churches, founded by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century and one of the oldest colonial cities on the American mainland. León, to the north-west, was the liberal, university city to Granada's conservative one, and its huge cathedral is the largest in Central America.

Lake Nicaragua is big enough to seem like an inland sea, and it has an island, Ometepe, made of two volcanoes joined by a narrow isthmus of land. The lake also has the curiosity of freshwater sharks: bull sharks that make their way up the San Juan River from the Caribbean.

El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala

El Salvador is the smallest country on the mainland of the Americas, and the most densely populated. It is often left off itineraries, which is a pity. Suchitoto, a hill town of cobbled streets and white houses above the Suchitlán reservoir, is one of the best preserved colonial towns in the region, and the villages of the countryside, such as Cinquera, carry memories of the civil war of the 1980s that are told candidly to visitors.

From there the road crosses a short stretch of Honduras. At Copán, close to the Guatemalan border, are the ruins of one of the most important Maya cities, famous for its carved stelae and the long Hieroglyphic Stairway. Across the border, Esquipulas has the Black Christ, a dark wooden crucifix that draws pilgrims from all over Central America. The road then climbs to Guatemala City.

The two ways to make the journey

Explore Worldwide's Central American Highlights, fifteen nights, runs from Costa Rica to Guatemala. It starts in San José and Monteverde, takes a boat on the Bebedero River, crosses into Nicaragua for Granada and León, and continues through Potosí and La Unión into El Salvador, with Suchitoto and Cinquera, before reaching Esquipulas, Copán and Guatemala City. Its departures run from October to February, with one in April.

Explore's Central American Explorer, twenty-four nights, covers the whole isthmus from the Panama Canal. It begins in Panama City with the Miraflores Locks, goes on to Boquete in the highlands and the islands of Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean, crosses into Costa Rica for Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, the Arenal Volcano, the Monteverde cloud forest and the Rincón de la Vieja National Park, and continues to San Jorge and Ometepe Island in Nicaragua and beyond. It departs in February and November.

The dry season on the Pacific side runs from roughly December to April, and that is the most comfortable time for the journey. It is not a holiday for anyone who wants to unpack once. It suits people who enjoy the road itself, the queue at the border and the first meal in a new country, as much as the places at either end.