Buses and Borders


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Published: January 5th 2010
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Time to start our Nicaraguan portion of our journey hopefully. We were up at 7:00am to eat and head out. As we walked around the city we noticed billowing black smoke coming out of an apartment. Sure enough a few minutes go by and firetrucks are racing to the scene. There was a hole in the wall where an apartment room once was after the fire did it's business. We ate and walked for a bit while I tried to find a store that sold soccer jerseys. Bah, no Honduran one for me in my travels, they were so nice looking but I couldn't find one. The city was actually not as bad as it seemed, we were in a nice area and had no problems. We eventually left Teguc. after being scammed by another taxi driver. The elevation of Teguc. was about 1000m so it was a little cooler. When we got down into Choluteca, the heat was immediately noticable as we all broke out with sheens of sweat. From there we caught another bus to the border where we proceeded through the border scams again. The two worst scams in traveling are cab drivers (I hate almost all of them) and border people. The actual authorities at the borders are good but all the "helpful people" that exchange your money and give you rides are bold scam artists. The worst is that they all band together so you think you are doing alright. We were told it was 3km to the next place we needed to go. After 100m and 3 bucks each it was another 3km and more money. This happened three times at this border. After we finished getting scammed the guy was bold enough to ask for a tip. I almost lost it... Jeff is pretty strait forward with them so after he called the guy a liar to his face we left looking for a bus. We were finally in Nicaragua after quite the hassle. It was strait to Leon from the border on a chicken bus that, surprisingly, wasn't crowded. The others were a little cramped but I lucked out with a big seat to myself. In Leon we took a taxi to The Big Foot hostel and dumped our gear in a dorm room. Once we grabbed money we headed out for the customary Nicaraguan dinner of rice and beans. Because of the long travels, we all crashed early. Tomorrow we will start to check around.


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