What could be a better place than a casual travel journal than Stacker News?

I arrived in San Salvador today. It's my third trip, but the first time outside of a major Bitcoin event. I'm quite passionate about using Bitcoin (rather than just talking about it, or hodling it), and I feel genuine first hand information about El Salvador can be hard to come by, so I decided to share this with you all.

Trip preparation: ✈️ Booking flights with Bitcoin isn't easy! There's practically only Travala now (Future Travel shut down), and they didn't have a lot of choice regarding flights. I was able to get a much better deal directly through United, but that required me to take out a Bitcoin debit card, which i would have preferred to avoid. 🛏️ Booking hotels directly isn't easy! Even if you write them directly and know they take Bitcoin, they often reply they only take Bitcoin in person, or are otherwise unable to send you a Lightning invoice or payment request by email. One hotel kept sending me invoices with a 15 minute expiration date over Facebook Messenger, and by the time I received it it was already 5 minutes old. Booking through Travala is a lot easier, and I can still pay with sats, but the hotel will not know that I did. 🚗 Local public transportation isn't great, so I book a hotel transfer. I can pay with Bitcoin, but I also might be overpaying quite significantly over other alternatives. 🛜 I got myself a Silent Link and a Bitrefill eSIM. The Silent Link card doesn't work at all, and the Bitrefill card has frequent connection outages, which can make paying with Bitcoin very awkward.

San Salvador: The city feels so much nicer than the last two times I went (~1.5 & 2.5 years ago). There are cycle paths now, pedestrian crossing, there isn't an trash lying around anymore and far fewer cars blocking the road. It's also noticeable more lively, which is really great to see. The construction sites I saw on my previous trips are largely completed, and actually filled with businesses and people. They feel much more friendly and open than the older buildings, have glass on street level and aren't gated with concrete walls in the same way. At least developers seem quite optimistic that the current peace will hold.

Bitcoin: You still can't just walk into a business and expect them to accept Bitcoin. Even many places I've asked that do have a Bitcoin-related logo by the door say they don't accept it. Using BTCMap helps a lot, but even some of the businesses listed there say they don't take Bitcoin. Card payments seem to be quite widespread and preferred. There's some variety in payment processors, and they all work well. Blink, Ibex and Chivo is what I have encountered so far. There are some Strike logos on businesses but all say they don't take Bitcoin, when asked. The McDonald's Lightning integration was one of the best user experiences around, and it's a shame to see it broken. I hear it's been like that for months. It's quite clear that Bitcoin is not popular among young, well-off locals, and there are likely not enough foreign Bitcoiners living in San Salvador.