Well today turned out to be quite interesting. I had pre-arranged a taxi to the airport early this morning; my flight back to the US left at 7:30 AM. I carefully packed my bag and searched the bed to make sure I'd left nothing behind. The taxi showed up right on time at 5AM. I said goodbye to my friend (he was continuing onto Costa Rica). It was about a 20 minute ride to the airport, already there was quite a long line for checkin; the agents hadn't yet arrived. I had checked in online but didn't have a printer, so [View Full Entry]

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Today was finally a relatively laid back day. Our only plans were to check out Leon then head to Managua in the afternoon. I still woke up around 5:30 AM, used to early starts I guess. My laundry was getting stinky so I washed some clothes out and hung them to dry; I'd hoped to have some clean clothes for the trip back home tomorrow. Even better, we actually had time for breakfast this morning. The hostel offered a breakfast of pancakes, fruit and juice.. quite yummy. We set off and spent a few hours wandering around town. There are a [View Full Entry]

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Another long travel day today. We planned on visiting the Perquin museum this morning, then catching the bus towards the El Salvador/Honduras border. Our plan was to make Leon in Nicaragua today, but would be fine with just making it to the Nicaraguan border. The museum opened at 8AM, admission was $1.25. Our guide, Jose was a veteran of the civil war. He walked with a limp due to his fake leg he'd received from the Red Cross. The museum has 5 different rooms, showing the causes of the civil war, also showing photos of people who had been assassinated. Another [View Full Entry]

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What a brutal travel day.. We woke up at 5AM today to catch our first bus to the town of La Esperanza. There was only one bus a day so we were there early to catch it.. but we could have slept in. The bus arrived at 5AM but didn't depart until after 5:30. The bus was a newer one, Japanese microbus and nice as I finally had enough legroom. The road turned out to be good for most of the way as well; it is paved almost all the way to San Juan now and for a good distance to [View Full Entry]

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An early start this morning at 6AM to catch the 7AM bus. No time for breakfast today either, seems to be a trend with too many early morning starts. But I had brought along a supply of Cliff Bars to hold me over for the bus rides. The bus left pretty much on time for the 1.5hr ride back to the junction at La Entrada. When we arrived there we lucked out as a minibus was ready to depart to Santa Rosa de Copan, the next town where we would change buses to Gracias. The driver was a speed demon, zooming [View Full Entry]

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I woke up early this morning and caught a cab to the bus station in San Pedro Sula arriving at 6:45. Found out though the bus wasn´t departing until 8AM. The ticket counter wasn´t even open yet so spent awhile wandering around the bus station. It´s quite a large place and pretty new, it only opened earlier in 2008 I believe. Finally the ticket counter opened, 110L to Copan Ruins. I grabbed a bean quesadilla for breakfast then boarded the bus. It departed on time at 8AM but promptly parked and we sat until 8:30. Finally we got underway. The bus [View Full Entry]

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My friend S. was spending three weeks traveling through Central America, Guatemala to Costa Rica. When I found out I could get a few extra days off work I decided to join him for part of the trip, first flying into San Pedro Sula and meeting up in Copan Ruinas. We would then travel overland via El Salvador and back through Honduras to Nicaragua, where I would fly out of Managua 6 days later. This was a quickly planned trip, I literally booked the tickets two days before I left.. wasnt able to get tickets out of Austin so had to [View Full Entry]

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aug25 Flight: Denpasar (DPS), Bali, Indonesia, to Dili (DIL), East Timor; Merpati Hotel: Hotel Esplanada, Dili, East Timor, $110 Today was our last morning in Bali, we were sad to be leaving so soon but we will definitely be back here someday! Our flight to Dili, East Timor was at 10AM so it meant an early start, getting up at 6:30, quick breakfast, then checkout at 7. I paid a chunk of the hotel bill with my remaining rupiah, leaving me with just 150,000IDR each for departure taxes and 20k for drinks. We had arranged a car to take us to [View Full Entry]

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.May 28, 2008 Hotel: Hotel Svanen, 680SEK ($115) Today Dean and I planned to pick up our rental car and go out to Öland Island. Öland is a long island just offshore of Kalmar in southeast Sweden. The southern portion of the island has been denoted a UNESCO World Heritage site for its wildflower meadows and Stone Age sites. It's a very popular place with vacationing Swedes during the summer. There are also several hundred old style windmills scattered around the island, down from a peak of several thousand. Öland is connect [View Full Entry]

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May 24, 2008 Ferry: Stockholm, Sweden to Mariehamn, Finland Hotel: Stradnas Hotel, 63EUR ($100) The breakfast spread at the Sign hotel this morning in Stockholm was very good! We left the hotel and caught a taxi to the Viking ferry terminal. We were planning on visiting the Aland islands, an autonomous Swedish-speaking province of Finland. The Alands had passed between Sweden, Russia and Finland over the years. They have their own flag different from Finland & Sweden. Finns and Swedes take day ferries to Mariehamn to stock up on duty-free booze. We arrived almost an hour early [View Full Entry]

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