Heading out to Honduras

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My next objective was to get to El Salvador which was the only country in Central America that had not been blessed by my presence. I would basically be retracing my steps through Nicaragua from Masaya via Esteli to the Honduran border so that part of the journey should have been relatively easy. It started out well because I remembered the way past Masaya and the turn to the north that would get me back to the Interamericana but I made a wrong turn after that which took me on a tour of beautiful downtown Tipiatapa which was another one of those experiences akin to driving through the inside of a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. I don't know how I got back out of there but I did. The going was easy after that and I made it to Esteli in a few hours. I elected to stay in the same hotel where I stayed the last time because that was easy and I was tired.

I drove on the the Honduran border the next day where I was met by the usual troupe of border coyotes offering to help me find my way through the bureaucracy. They were especially well organized here which is to say that they had quite a few good scams going. If you're a collector of official-looking stamps and receipts, this is the place to go! As if it wasn't bad enough that I had to pay more than $35 in official fees for the two days I would spend in Honduras on my way to El Salvador, I was told by unoffical officials that I would have to wait hours or maybe even days unless I paid $20 to have the police search my car before all of the trucks that were waiting. When I balked at paying and said that I would wait, this amount was mysteriously reduced to just $5 and then I was allowed to exit the border area without a search . Amazing! Since I was headed for El Salvador, they told me to be on the lookout for their associate "Ronnie" who worked that border. I jokingly told them that I would thinking that I would never bother myself to find one guy in the mass of vultures that I encountered at Central American border posts.

I'm couting myself lucky that I met one decent guy at this particular border crossing. An agent for a shipping company who was stranded there until the next bus asked me for a ride that I was happy to give for his company and a free Spanish lesson. I learned that he was a married father of two and a veteran of the Honduran army who had done a tour of duty in Iraq. It was a stark reminder that it isn't just Americans that are doing time in the sandbox. I ended up buying him lunch at the Wendy's in Choluteca because it seemed like the right thing to do and it was as good an excuse as any to eat a real American hamburger. I stayed the night in Choluteca in a dump of a room that wasn't cheap. It's only redeeming quality was that it had air conditioning. Ah... Coolness...

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