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Not feeling very friendly at Hedman-Alas bus station
4.30 a.m. after about 3 hours sleep. Looking forward to a 14 hour bus journey... I'm not a morning personThe hunt begins...
Missing out on the first week of a 7 month rtw trip, in reality, isn't that bad in the long run. But what made it worse for us was the fact that we had pre-paid for a 17 day tour through central america which started while we were stranded in London. Therefore, every day we remained in London waiting for the infamous ash cloud to surrender the skies we were missing out on a holiday we had already paid for and had no chance of a refund (act of God get out clause). On top of that, the longer it took us to land in Guatemala city, the further away our tour group ventured.
By the time we got to Guatemala city our tour was in a town called Comayagua in Honduras. So, after travelling for 16 hours and getting into Los Lunas hostel at around 9 p.m. we found out from Lorena that the quickest way to get to Comayagua was the 5 a.m. bus and would take around 14 hours!! Not what we wanted to hear, but that's
Guatemala - Honduras Border
Truck full of lovely bananas heading into Guatemala. life.
The bus company we used was Hedman-Alas, about 20 min taxi from our hostel to station, cost us $63 each. Probably the most comfortable bus we've travelled in so far in Central America though and food & drink included, so worth the hefty ticket price. Unusually, we got a Burger King cheese burger for breakfast at around 6 a.m., went down surprisingly well though!
Around 4 hours later we came to the border with Honduras. Pretty subdued border control, we didn't have much hassle getting our stamps. You must pay to fees though, one is a departure tax not sure what the other one is for but was only a couple of dollars.
The greatest stroke of luck we had was meeting two really nice American ladies who were on their way to Comayagua to work with the local children there. Kristen and Brittany were a God send! Me and Yvonne had about 3 words in Spanish between us and combined with jet lag and fatigue we were struggling to get by. These two spoke spanish and had done the trip a few times already so we got some great help and advice. They kindly
offered us a lift in the pack of their pick up truck from a bus stop before the one we would have got off at, cutting our travel time by about 2 hours. It was a great road trip in the back of the truck as the relief and the wind swept over us as we sped along the road to Comayagua. Pulled into Comayagua at around half 4, nicely refreshed after our open-air journey we began the arduous task of locating our tour group.
I'm not going into the details of the calamitous events that led to us being unable to find our tour group that night as I'm just getting over the intense rage that it caused me! Sufficed to say, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, USE 'INTREPID TRAVEL' FOR A TOUR AROUND CENTRAL AMERICA. EVER. After an extremely stressful night wandering around the horrid toilet town of Comayagua where you felt like you may be stabbed at any moment, we finally joined our group the following morning in their hotel at around 6 a.m. Although we were informed that the tour would be travelling for 8 hours to get to Granada
Free ride!
Me in the back of Brittany and Kristens truck on the road to Comayagua in Nicaragua, we didn't care. We were just happy to be able to sit back and relax for the first time in 48 hours!!
At last our holiday had began. And we really felt we had earned it!😱
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Heather
non-member comment
I really enjoyed your Guatemala post! Thanks for sharing such great details about your experiences! My blog is looking for travel reviews (like of Intrepid, or Las Lunas Hostel! ;) , photos, etc, to share. If you have the time, check it out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com, or email us at dirtyhippiesblog@gmail.com. Continued fun on your travels! Heather :)