La Esperanza and into Nicaragua

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La Esperanza is a small town in Honduras whose name means 'hope'. We arrived on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 11 with the hope of - cold! After sweating it through the lowlands of Guatemala and Honduras, I wanted to feel cold again and to have some reason for the two sweaters in my backpack. At 1721 m, La Esperanza is the highest and coldest town in the country.

La Esperanza is actually composed of two towns, La Esperanza proper and Intibuca, an indigenous community of the Lenca people. Although our guidebooks suggested La Esperanza as a good place to view or experience Lencan culture, not too much cultural happened during our couple of overnights. Perhaps we would have seen more if stayed for the potato festival and the crowning of the 'potato queen'. What we got instead was a small, somewhat charming town set in a beautiful pine forest. And yes, we got a little chill at night. One small surprise was the discovery of a Chinese community in La Esperanza. We had Chinese food twice over two days. It wasn't the greatest, but a nice change of pace from the more typical fare.

By Tuesday Oct. 13 we had just 4 weeks left in Central America, with Nicaragua and Costa Rica as yet untouched. We were not so interested in the Honduras capital, Tegucigalpa, so we concocted an insane plan to make it all the way from La Esperanza, through Tegucigalpa, and into Managua, Nicaragua on the same day. We left from La Esperanza on a public bus for Tegucigalpa at 4:15 am, arriving behind schedule at 8:35 am due to morning traffic. We immediately flagged a taxi to take us to the Tica bus station for our direct bus into Nicaragua. We thought we would be late as this bus was supposed to leave at 9 am sharp. Fortunately it didn't leave until 9:30 am, so we had plenty of time.

The border crossing was unusual and little stressful, but not much problem at all. Before we stopped, an employee of the bus company collected our passports and customs forms. Then we debarked from the bus and paid a visit to a customs official sitting at a fold up table outside the office. We saw the official without our passports or any identification, but simply wrote our names and nationalities down in their register. In the meantime, the bus company employee went into the customs building with everyone's passports. We waited for about 40 minutes outside as locals offered to change money, sell us drinks and fruit, or simply begged. Finally, the employee returned to call everyone's name to get their passports back and we were allowed back on the bus. We pulled into the bus terminal in Managua at around 6 that night.

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