The Mahooosive Journey from Nica to Guatemala (via El Salvador)..and Guatemala City

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So, as you can probably guess, this bus trip was pretty epic. We decided to get the later bus which meant we had to stay a night in San Salvador, mainly because we really didn´t want to be wondering around the streets of Managua at the wee hours of the morning after meeting 3 different groups of people who had all been held up by guns and machetes there. So we squeezed onto a little colectivo at around 8am from Granada and head off with our fingers crossed that nothing bad would happen. LUCKILY... we managed to get through Managua with little drama at all, jumping off the bus and getting straight into a taxi to the Tica Bus station (which, as usual, was in the middle of nowhere.) After an hour wait, we finally piled onto the big ´luxury´bus and set off bound for San Salvador.

12 hours, 3 border crossings (you have to go through Honduras too), and 2 fairly disgusting meals later, we finally arrived in San Salvador in the middle of the night. Thankfully, the Tica Bus company had their own hotel at their bus station. So, we crawled into bed exhausted, only to be up again in 5 hours for the connecting bus. Unfortunately, we got woken up at 3, 3:30 and 4 for various other buses that we WERE NOT booked onto, so it turned out to be a fairly restless night.

When we finally piled on to the bus to Guatemala, we collapsed into our seats and tried to get as much sleep as possible before yet another border crossing into our final destination. We got to the border bleary eyed and still half asleep, so when it came to changing money the hustlers could see we were the easy ones to take advantage of. We ended up being short changed by a whole 10 US dollars, which we only angrily worked out once back on the bus and half way to Guatemala city. Of course, there was nothing we could do but hope that the rest of Guatemala wasn´t as mean.

We finally made it to Guatemala City about 36 hours after we had commenced our journey in Granada, absolutely shattered, but we decided to plough on through the day and, with the help of the very friendly receptionist at the hostel, managed to book a doctor´s appointment to go and remove Poppy´s cast!! YAY!! No more blue arm! The doctors actually laughed when they saw what a bad job the doctor in Costa Rica had done at putting the cast on, and then went on to say that Poppy may need another cast because her hand should have been in the cast too. HOWEVER, thankfully, the doctor seemed pleased enough with the movement she had to let it be, and she finally had her arm back, allbeit slightly skinnier, a hell of a lot weaker, and a lot paler than it had been.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wondering around the centre of Guatemala City, including the huge indoor market and the main square where they had some mini concert going on. That evening we crashed, eager to move on to Antigua the next afternoon after some site seeing in the morning.

The next day we wondered round the centre again and had a guided tour of the palace, which was very grand at times, and not so grand at others. After lunch we decided it was definitely time to move on, so we jumped on a chicken bus - always fun - which eventually filled up so much that there was honestly no way they could have squeezed any more people in. We swear they would have had people sitting on the roof if they could have got away with it! We finally arrived in Antigua praying we could get away with not getting on any more cramped buses for a few days, but already excited about the week ahead.

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