The mysteriously ruins of El Salvador Beach

3 min read

3 years ago Robin

One of the last things you would expect to find washed up on a tropical beach is a concrete abandoned villa, and yet that’s exactly the kind of bizarre discovery that beachgoers at the picturesque La Puntilla Beach in Costa del Sol, El Salvador, are treated on these days.
It’s unclear how the building ended up there, but it seems to have been there a while, as it is covered up with what appears like recent graffiti.
One of the most popular theories is that the villa was the victim of a powerful hurricane that hit El Salvador over two decades ago.

The history itself of this derelict structure is shrouded in mystery, but a local newspaper recently shed some light on its past, relying on accounts from locals living near La Puntilla Beach.
It seems that, around 28 years ago, the so-called “villa” was actually a hotel called Hotel Puerto Ventura. To make it more appealing to tourists, the owners decided to build it several meters into the sandy beach, but that proved a terrible idea because it made it more vulnerable to the elements.
Some suspect it ended up there courtesy of the very powerful Hurricane Mitch, which was notorious for its copious rainfall and blamed for more than 9,000 fatalities, in 1998.
But It’s unclear whether the hotel became a victim of the hurricane or if it was just the advancing ocean and the salty air that caused it to be abandoned.
Apparently It later became the headquarters of a Christian church, which explains the large star of David on the ceiling of the first floor, but as the structure continued to deteriorate, it was once again abandoned.
Either way, it seems that numerous people died in the former hotel and more recently among the ruins.

“They built too deep into the beach, that’s what happened,” one local fisherman weighed in on the tragic fate of the hotel. “Before, official permission was not requested to build, and that is what happened, they went too far.”

Today, the building remains on the beach, just at the point where the waves hit the sand. It’s more accessible during the morning hours, when the water recedes, but it returns with a vengeance in the afternoon, flooding the place and creating pools of water.
Despite the large cracks in the walls, and the obvious crumbling danger, toursista venture inside the abandoned structure, and some even climb on the top floor to take some photos. Locals, on the other hand are more warry, with some admitting that they have never even come near it because they are scared.
A local woman even said that kids in the area have told her that at night they see a very tall black man hanging around the derelict building, which is why she always keeps her distance….