A Long Day of Driving, and Crossing into Nicaragua

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After a good night of rest, we woke up and headed to the hotel restaurant for a caffeine fix and breakfast. We got on the road around 8:30, and knew we had about 8 hours of driving ahead of us, plus a border crossing, but were hoping we'd be able to make it to Leon before nightfall.

Today, the weather had cleared, it was sunny and beautiful, and the traffic was pretty light. We were feeling good about the time we were making. We did a short stop for photos by Lago Yojoa, and then continued on. We were getting near the border by around 4, and knew that Leon was still almost 2 hours on the other side, but were still hoping we wouldn't have to do too much driving in the dark. We had watched a short, helpful video that someone had made on the border crossing, so we knew it was a slow process, but hoped that it wouldn't be too bad. We had all our covid tests, photocopies, passports, photocopies, car papers, photocopies, so we thought we were set. As the border neared, there was a very long line of trucks in the lane, so the process (which we had seen in the video) was to drive up the line of oncoming traffic. We got to the spot to clear out through Honduran immigration. That was a straightforward process, just showing our IDs and doing the fingerprint scanner. Then we got back in the car and continued driving. There was a round about with a small building on one side, and on the far side a sign about immigration. We passed the building and started to drive around the roundabout but were quickly stopped.



An officer motioned for us to come back around, which we did, and then he had us pull over to the side. He said that we had drove past where we were supposed to stop, and that there might be a fine. I offered lots of apologies and smiles. Then he asked for our covid tests with copies and our IDs. He said he needed the receipt for the tests. I replied that we hadn't read anything about that, that we didn't have a receipt. He said we'd have to go back to Tegucigalpa and get it- I told him we hadn't done the test in Tegucigalpa, it was done in Roatan, and not possible to go back, but that I could have the lab send me a photo of the receipt through whatsapp. More smiles and thank yous for all his help. He questioned where we would print it. I was pretty sure he was trying to make things difficult to angle for a bribe, but didn't want to offer anything unless that was made very clear. He took our paperwork and said he'd see what he could do for us.

10-15 minutes later, he came back with the paperwork, and said that he was able to sort it out so that we didn't have to pay a fine or get a receipt for the covid tests, and maybe we could give him a drink? I offered some Lipton iced teas from the cooler, he said they were too heavy, and maybe we'd have to go back to Honduras to get drinks for him. At which point, I said maybe with some money he could get the drink he wanted? He nodded at that, and palmed a $10 that I passed over. This made him very friendly. We made a bit more small talk, he gave me his whatsapp number and then asked me to message him right then (I'm writing this entry a few days after the fact, and since then I've got several messages from him, just checking in on our trip).

Next stop was to clear immigration and then customs, and get the car permission for the country. Immigration was fairly straightforward (we had filled in our form online ahead of time and our entry had been approved). As Sylvia and I are residents of Honduras, we didn't have to pay an entry free, Cherry had a $13 fee for entry.

We each had to fill in a customs declaration form, and then normally we would have had to carry in all our bags to be x-rayed. However, the car permission system was down, so they were processing car permissions over in the trucking area, which for some reason meant that they weren't xraying bags. the agent just did a cursory check of our car, looked over the customs forms and put his signature on them, and then led us over to a long line to wait for the car paperwork.

Day turned to night. We waited, the line barely moved. We all used the bathroom. I chatted with the man in line in front of me. He was Nicaraguan, he had gone to El Salvador with his family for a few days, in order to get vaccinated, as they had a trip planned to the US, but the vaccination roll out was very slow in Nicaragua, and they were giving a type that wasn't recognized in the US. So he and his family had already spent 5 hours crossing from El Salvador into Honduras, and now several more hours waiting to cross from Honduras to Nicaragua. He told me his family had a little hotel in Laguna de Apoyo, so I got his whatsapp contact (and heard the joking remarks of Sylvia to Cherry about all the guys numbers that I kept getting).

Another hour rolled by, still waiting. We finally got our vehicle permission and headed back to the car. A moment of panic when I realized that I no longer had my customs document. I went back in side, and was relieved to find out that they took one of them when they produced the car permission paper, and in error had kept mine instead of Sylvia's, but that it was no problem. We got in the car, and headed out. We approached another round about, and knew we had to give the other 2 custom documents and show the car paper, but we didn't know exactly where, and didn't want to pass something by mistake again! We slowly went on the round about, and stopped to ask, then went to the building that we needed to, to show the documents and finally head out. The last step should have been to find a blue building for car insurance, which we had been told was at a round about after leaving customs, but we drove a few minutes along and didn't see anything. Sylvia had checked her policy before leaving, and it covered all of Central America, but as the Nicaraguan insurance wasn't very costly and we had heard that the police often target cars from out of country, we had planned to purchase it.

A few minutes along, and it was clear that we must have missed it, but we didn't know where, it was dark, and turning around would have meant joining a big line of cars going to immigration. We decided we should just keep driving, especially since we did have insurance coverage. A few minutes later, we got pulled over by the police, who were specifically looking for our insurance coverage. I really think they had it set up that way, with a very difficult to find insurance building, specifically so that they can catch people without it and issue fines. As soon as he saw we had insurance, it was fine, he didn't even really check the other documents. Then he asked if we had water, and I said I just had half a bottle, but would he like some Lipton iced tea? He was happy with that, so we handed over 3 cans for him and his buddies, and continued on our way.

By the time we arrived in Leon, it was already after 9pm. We checked in to the hostel, and headed straight for bed. We had planned to go volcano boarding the next day, but decided that we were too tired, and would need a more relaxing day to recover from the long trip.

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