Honduras

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The roads in El Salvador were really good, so we drove accross the entire country in 3 or 4 hours. It´s not that big of a country either...

Before we get to the border, some 20 people came running around the car and screaming. They were tramitadores, which are people that help you get through the border since in most of these countries there is no information available on how to do it. Except that tramitadores were usually kids, these we adults. They were screaming all the time and we knew from experience that if we didn{t hire one of them to help us they were going to harress the hell out of us. Afterall, it only costs one or two dollars. So we got one to help us, and indeed we needed him. There was no information about where you have to go and what you have to do. Everything was going fine, quite slowly, but it seemed that we were moving. The last step was to get the documents of the car to get into Honduras. The tramitador takes the documents and goes inside some type of building. By the way, the buildings, even the official ones, had so signs saying what they were, which makes it impossible to do it yourself. After about 20 minutes he comes back saying that the system was down and the only way to do the paperwork was through this agency, and it would cost 20 dollars for this, 20 for that, another whole bunch for something else, and the total would be 120 dollars. Or we would have to spend the night at the border. It was obvious that it was a scam. I took the papers from him and decided to find out what i had to do myself. He tried to take me to an agency, then another one, Eloisa and I had an idea where the official buildings were, he and his "brother" followed us like hawks, they were obviously pissed that we were talking to all the people to find out where to go. They even said that the day before some Americans had paid 200 dollars to get through the border! The problem is that border officials themselves were pretty bad at helping us. Eventually we found the "boss" that signs the documents. He obviously was still going to take his share, but he said he would do everything for 40 dollars. I´m pretty sure the correct price was around 16 dollars because the documents we received had the prices stated on them, but at that time we had reached the bottom of the chain, we couldn´t bargain anymore. So we paid and left.

It soon started pouring, and when i say pouring i mean the type of rain that only happens in major tropical storms. Blue Thunder has always had an issue with water, it used to let a lot of water in between the roof and the windshield. I thought I had fixed it before I left minnesota for SF in february, I knew i was going to get a lot of rain in the bay area at that time of the year. But unfortunately my repair job wasn´t good enough. It got us all wet. Good thing it was so hot.

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