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Published: October 27th 2013
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OcotepequeI arrived in Ocotepeque, Honduras from Costa Rica via Tica Bus as well as local buses in Honduras after a couple of days and was surprised at how beautiful this little town was, in a valley surrounded by beautiful big mountains and a local feel not a tourist trap. Well I guess you could make the argument that all of Honduras outside of the Bay Islands is that way lol. Anyway I used a taxi drivers cell to call Lemuel, the teacher who essentially gave me the job, at around 7am and he came down to meet me and showed me around the apartment. I also met the other teacher working at the private school Kristine. They were friends from the Philippines who came to teach there and Lemuel has been going back every school year to teach for the past 3 years. We would all have our own rooms and a very nice apartment paid by the school for us perched high above everything else so we had an amazing view. The school year didn't start for about 10 more days so I got situated and took a well deserved nap from the long bus ride.
When I got
to San Jose from Paraiso in Costa Rica the Tica Bus station was 24 hours so I just stayed there and met some other people who were traveling to different places, I sat and talked to a traveling couple she was from New Zealand and he was South African. They were headed to south America so I gave them some tips about things, stuff they might want to check out in Colombia and Peru. We chatted for close to 8 hours until there bus to Panama City was ready to go, my bus wasn't for another 5 hours or so, so we exchanged contacts to keep in touch. I caught my bus from San Jose to Managua, Nicaragua and arrived in the evening around 6pm, but the station there closed at 8pm so I needed to find a Hostel for the one night until my early bus at 4am to San Pedro Sula luckily within a stones throw of the station are about 5 hostels you won't find online like on hostelworld etc etc. I checked in pretty cheap too for a small private I think I paid like $7 for the night. I put my stuff in the room
1st Graders Dia Del Lempiraand headed out to the street to find some street food, I was starving! I found a small place selling chicken, potatoes, latin spaghetti and a few other things. I ate it outside the hostel on the street and met a girl from Belgium who was going to Guatemala to meet her friends and head back to Costa Rica so we chatted a bit had a couple of beers and it was time to hit the hay. I had to sell my Nikon underwater camera at the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica because my money got ripped off from my bag so I had to do what I had to do. I eventually got to San Pedro bus station late and got my ticket to Ocotepeque on the overnight bus.
School eventually started and I was happy to be starting something new, a sort of new chapter of traveling and teaching. It didn't take long to realize that these kids were absolutely not interested in learning. NO discipline at all! I had too many students in classes where they were basically clowns and spoiled by their rich parents. We were located on the tri-borders of El
Salvador and Guatemala so I would have to do my Visa runs every 90 days as every hardened traveler knows. It's a little funky the rules I mean with the CA-4 agreement ( Central American 4 countries Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua ) So much confusion on what the laws are specifically, then some countries have different rules etc etc. When it came time for my 1st Visa run there I researched everything and got 50 different answers to the same thing. I decided fuck it all I will just go to Guatemala and try to re-enter at the Aguas Calientes border and see what happens. After my 72 hours were up I was a bit nervous not knowing the rules etc so I exited Guatemala no problem and walked down the hill to Honduras and stamped in with my 60 Lempira fee no hassles no questions not even a blink lol so anyone who reads this IT IS SAFE TO DO YOUR VISA RUNS FROM HONDURAS TO GUATEMALA AT THE AGUAS CALIENTES BORDER! I don't know about the other borders, but I did this border the next 2 times as well and the only question I got was
the standard " Donde Va.." that's it!
I had been starting to get sick of Honduras, the work was not fulfilling, the pay was abysmal and I was just tired of Latin America overall. I had been traveling for so much time over these countries and wanted something new and exciting, not to mention something that paid good so I could save money for traveling. That was the whole point of this after all! So anyway I was beginning to post my resume online on ESL sites starting in July and all I kept getting was the scammers from China so I quit posting for a while and I actually got an email about my resume from a guy who has an IELTS language school in Uzbekistan. I automatically thought it was a scam, but he had told me everything about the job as well as the benefits. I sent a 1 sentence response to him asking for verification that he would pay for my flight there no strings attached and no "reimbursement" tactics. He said no worries about that he would be happy to do that. So we began to talk more about it and I
had to learn about IELTS for about a month or so studying it as he would skype me every week to see what my progress was and eventually I was offered a contract with his company and accepted it. This was the lucky break I needed as a traveler to get to Asia..FREE!! The benefits were great for someone in my position just starting out in this biz. I gave a months notice to the school in Honduras and prepared myself for a new chapter....
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