First Night

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Ok, staying in big hotel on a world class water park. At least it´s supposed to be. We are just staying the night and heading out tomorrow morning for Oaxaca, the first stop.
Well, now that it´s over I guess I can talk about our first big excitement--at least we got it out of the way on the first day so we can do an after action review to prevent a repeat occurrence.
Anyways, approaching Acajutla in El Salvador which is on the Pacific Coast and about 15-20 minutes from the border with Guatemala there is a turn-off to the highway that goes to the border. It's a pretty well-marked turn with a big sign that says to the border crossing. Lucky for me I´m not traveling wtih small children making a nuisance in the back that can distract you when you´re moving at 75 mph. But Dave wasn´t so lucky. He blew right past the turn and continued on towards Acajutla, a nothing town with a small port. We were talking on the 2-way radios then nothing, he was out of range. I pulled over but figured he must have not seen me and went past me because I didn't think there was any way he could miss the turn. I decided to keep going figuring I´d catch up to him, he´d probably be waiting at the border for me. I got to the border and they weren´t there. I couldn´t call back to Honduras for some reason on my phone--which has a Honduran number--and now I´m running out of pre-paid minutes. I made a call to my connection in El Salvador who then called Dave´s office and they got hold of him, telling him I´d continued on. I was incommunicado for the entire afternoon till I arrived at the hotel around 5PM, about 6 hours after losing contact with my travel buddies--more excitement than what I wanted to deal with on the first day. Calling Kris and asking for a cell number she didn´t have and then going incommunicado when I ran out of minutes didn´t help.
Lessons learned: always have more pre-paid minutes than you think you´re going to need--worst case scenario is you get rid of the sim card wtih minutes left over; always have the cell phone number of those traveling with you in case you're out of 2-way radio range; always know how to make international calls to the countries you´re most likely to call from the countries through whcih you´ll be traveling; have local numbers and people you know will help you if you need it when you´re in a foreign country--for those who don´t have those connections, the US Embsasy is always you´re friend.

For those keeping scare: we departed at 5:20Am and I arrived around 5PM, almost 12 hours, to travel approximately 420+/- miles and cross 2 international borders.

Ok, that´s it for now. Time for a beer and a cigar to celebrate a happy ending to Day One. Sorry, no pictures from the road today--although the view going through mountains from Tegucigalpa toward the turn-off to El Amatillo, which is one of my favorite views in Honduras, was especially nice this monring with the mountains all shrouded in early morning fog.

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