Long Ride South

I rose early, and left Levi sleep in. Went for a walk in town. I tried, in vain, to get some local currency – I have been having a real hassle getting my ATM card to work. That has been a big problem. I don’t think the problem is on the US end, because it works sometimes. But not often enough.

After Levi got up, we went to a Peruvian restaurant for breakfast. They had pictures of Matchu Pichu everywhere, and we talked a bit with the Peruvian owner. Back at the hostel, I got to exchange one of the books I had finished for another free. Good deal.

After a very late start, we high-speeded towards San Jose, which is a huge, scary city.  Saw rainbows and volcanoes, again.  Beautiful countryside and mountain vistas.  We crossed dozens of rivers, many with lots of people just hanging out wading or sitting in them.  Nice way to spend a very hot Sunday.  We passed several police road-blocks, often going pretty fast or passing multiple cars/trucks, but we were never stopped! We realized we were lost when the highway we were on just sort of ended in downtown San Hose, and we had not seen the turnoff for Puerto Limon.

We were both  hungry, so we turned into the huge McDonald’s that was there, and had crappy American-style fat, with Mcflurries for dessert!   The place was packed!

We wandered around San Jose, trying to find our way north to the Caribbean coast;  with some help from people we asked, we finally got on the right road and started up into the mountains that separate the Pacific side from the Caribbean side. But we had lost too much time, and it started to get dark as we climbed steadily into the national park outside of San Jose.  Soon it started raining, first just a sprinkle, but then increasing to a downpour;  as darkness fell, we entered the cloud forest, and now we were in fog that limited visibility to practically zero.  What followed was some of the worst, scariest, and most dangerous driving conditions I have ever encountered.  For the next 25 miles, we drove in fog and rain, in the pitch dark, often with only the road-edge reflectors to help keep us on the pavement.  We saw downed trees, and stalled and overturned semi-trucks.   The rain on our helmet shields made the lights from oncoming traffic nearly blinding, and I was simply terrified most of the way.  We struggled along,  going 20 miles an hour or less.  At one point we caught up to a long line of cars behind a slow moving truck,  and that was an improvement, because we could see the path of the road ahead, and we were more visable than when we were alone;  but at one point, the truck slowed down to a crawl, and I slipped off the roadway onto the muddy shoulder.  It  took me a while to get back on the road after that mis-hap, but soon after that we decended out of the cloud forest, and back into civilization.  We stopped at the first open business we could, which was full of travelers taking a  break from the rain and fog, and caught our breath.  It had taken nearly an hour and 1/2 to go those 25 miles, and we were very fortunate to have made it safely.

After recovering somewhat from the terror of the trip through the cloud forest, we continued on looking,  for a place to stay.  We stopped at the first hotel sign we saw, Hotel Casa Blanca, and another strange adventure began.  As I have said before, security is a big deal here in Central America.  The hotel was gated and locked with steel doors and high walls, so we had to ring a bell outside to get the owner’s attention.  The person who responded to our ring was suspicious, and did not seem anxious to let us in, until he discovered that Levi spoke better English than Spanish.  It turned out that the hotel was owned by an US ex-navy man and his Costa Rican wife.  He normally will not let motorcyclists in after dark, but since we were grigoes he opened up, and not only let us stay, but made us very welcome, and had his wife cook us a wonderful dinner, as well.  Tomorrow’s post will elaborate on what a great host ‘Pistol’ Pete and Kattia turned out to be!  A hard, dangerous day, but with a very happy ending.

So I’ve already said my $0.02 on crossing the Honduran border. But aside from the complete lack of national pride evidenced by our first perception of the place, it didn’t get a lot better. I have a tendency to wave to pretty much everyone on the highway. Bicyclists, truckers, motorcycle and scooter riders, pedestrians, and people just hanging around, I wave at pretty much anyone who makes eye contact. An amazing thing about most of Central America, is nearly everyone waves back! The gruffest of individuals sometimes undergo complete attitude transformations, going from vacant or unhappy to beaming and waving like school children. Truckers who we’ve passed on the highway will often go by honking and waving 15 minutes later after we’ve pulled over for gas or a drink. In Honduras, nearly no one waved. Most stared blankly, seemingly confused as to why my hand was in the air. It was night and day from El Salvador.

We arrived in Choluteca, not nearly as far along in Honduras as we hoped to have been. CA-1 was poorly labled through the city, and a stroke of luck dumped us on the main road out of town, where we spotted a bank of hotels and found an overpriced dump that we settled for. On my way out of the lobby after paying for my dinner, an Honduran woman who spoke English fluently asked if we needed help. It was the only random act of kindness we experienced in the country.

We found an ATM in the Wendy’s parking lot, and ended up settling for food there as well. At least there was no risk of Honduran food adding to our list of issues with the place. We had a couple beers and smoked cubans on the unfinished roof deck in a feeble attempt at forgetting the border insanity. After some reading, I went to the only bar I saw in the area, which happened to be across the street. Somehow, nearly everyone there was a male to female transgender, and it ended up being at least an interesting night of conversation. Though not really my goal, I did at least seem to be the most popular person there that night!

The next morning, we sampled our only Honduran food… Perhaps breakfast was the wrong decision? We picked a small family restaurant near our hotel and ordered two orders of their “breakfast.” This consisted of a scrambled egg (my Dad’s had egg shells), uninspired beans, a slice of fried bologne, and some awful cheese. Our coffee was about 1/3rd sludge. The ATM had given us a bill worth about $25 USD, and no place had been willing to take it. Out of sufficient currency in any other form, we gave it to the people at the restaurant, who after making sure we couldn’t possibly pay any other way, went searching around the area trying to find change. After 10 minutes of searching without a solution, the bank across the street opened, and they managed to make change. Later that day, my Dad felt sick to his stomach and blamed the meal.

We got an early start out, with dreams of our escape dancing in our heads. Nearing the border, we climbed to incredible heights, the temperature dropping from very hot to very cold, and the houses rising from hovels to mansions. Finally, as we began our descent to the border, we were stopped by our first truly corrupt cops (again, read about it here), and proceeded to the Nicaragua border.

First up in El Salvador, we went in search of a bank, which gave us a chance to explore the border town, Metapan. With most border towns being pretty lousy, we were pleasantly surprised when Metapan revealed a pleasant old-style downtown, and friendly people. When we finally found a bank with an ATM, I realized I had no idea what currency they used in El Salvador. The prompt came up asking how much I wanted, and only offered 3 options: $20, $50, and $100. I decided to get the biggest listed value, and the screen displayed “Please take your cash” with an image of a stack of American $20 bills. I was surprised by their choice of icons, but was in complete shock when a beat up stack of US $5, $10, and $20’s popped out of the machine. They used US Dollars!

We found a decently cheap hotel where we could keep our bikes inside a garage, and even had laundry done for us for $1.50 (not including drying the clothes, which I got to hang up on the lines outside – no big deal). It was dinner time, and I’ve had a thing for pupusas – a Salvadorean dish – ever since I first tasted one in SF, and had really high hopes. I asked the “receptionist” (aka the owner’s daughter) at the hotel where I should head for the best in the city, and she, seemingly confused by the silly question, informed me there was a street vendor hawking pupusas just across the street.

We went across the street, but had somehow come in too late for the “best,” and were pointed to the next pupusaria street vendor… not even a block down the road. Another short jaunt in the warm Salvadorean night, and we were sitting at a community table at an incredibly jumping street vendor. We ordered a mess of pupusas, I had 4 to my Dad’s 2, and a couple cokes. For me at least, it was a feast. Piping hot pupusas, dripping with cheese, and stuffed with beans and vegetables. All told for the meal with the cokes totaled $2.20, and I was home. Cheap, delicious, and no converting currencies in my head? It’s hard to beat that… though I still have to say, San Francisco pupusas win for taste.

Plus everyone at the pupusaria seemed enthralled with us. I was joking around with them in no time. I can’t imagine El Salvador street pupusarias get too many gringo clients, at least not at 9:30pm on a Sunday night. When we finished our meal, I asked the guy who seemed to be the owner where I could go to get a beer, and he pointed across the street. I stood up and started walking where he’d pointed, and he started walking with me. I smiled and asked if he was coming with, and he said yeah. Silly ignorant American that I am, I had no idea why, but when I showed up at the store and asked for beer, they said they couldn’t sell it to me because of the election. Huh? But the street vendor argued with him, and convinced him to sell me some regardless. I asked for 3 of each of the two local brews, and the shop keeper went up to a closed garage door next to the store, unlocked it, and went in, closing it behind himself. He came back with my beer in a black plastic bag, and made sure I understood that I had to go to the hotel to drink it, and to now show anyone.

As it turned out, we’d entered El Salvador on the 2nd(?) day of their elections, during which, for three days, the entire country is dry. Amazed I’d managed to, without trying, score booze in a foreign country that speaks another language, I carried my bag back to our hotel room, and the country seemed to show their enthusiasm for my success by treating us to a spectacular election fireworks show, with everything from roman candles to giant professional-style mortars going off in the air for hours. Viva whoever won!

The next morning, we headed to the capital, San Salvador. Exiting Metapan, we were quickly awoken to the sad truth that garbage was just as much trouble here as in previous Central American countries. El Salvador has 3 states, a Western state, and Eastern state, and the capital. The dump for the Western state we were in was just outside of town, and trash was everywhere. There was a line of dozens of dump trucks backed up along the highway leading to the dump, and heavy machinery pushing it from place to place, with much of it, as usual, on fire. There were cement structures near the dump that had been stuffed with garbage and abandoned, not necessarily in that order, even if it looked that way. For several miles of our trip to San Salvador we were behind a dump truck that constantly sprayed plastic garbage onto the freeway, contributing to the neverending pile of old plastic littering the roadway.

Entering the capital proper, the city seemed to go on forever. Tons of traffic, scorching heat, and endless, new-looking city. It doesn’t seem like a stretch that El Salvador is the densest country in Central America. The first Hotel we stop at is fancy, has guarded parking and wifi, and appears to be right downtown (to our untrained eyes), and though it was near the highest price we’d payed, it was still pretty reasonable, so we took it. Faaaancy! We parked inside and a bell hop helped us carry our luggage… to the working elevator! The wifi didn’t work in our room, but I managed to finally catch up on uploading my pictures by hanging out in the Lobby. Next to the lobby was a nice looking bar that refused to serve alcohol. Another day of elections!

Across the street, my Dad found a place that could get him replacement glasses by the next morning, and I found it to be a pretty cruel joke the universe was playing on me for staying centrally in a huge jumping city on the final day of prohibition. I stuck around working on blog catch up, personal email, and relaxing while I built up hunger. We went just down the street, no Pupusarias in sight, before spotting an American-style diner right on the main drag, and decided to try it… Oh well, I guess it’s good to get the worst meal out of the way early, right? I ordered a club sandwich, which curiously is on the menu of 90% of the restaurants we’ve been to regardless of the country, and had some sort of horrible, dripping concoction with a fried egg and some sort of sweet mayonnaised beets in it. While enjoying our meal, various beggars tried to approach us, only to be expressly escorted out of the restaurant by shotgun-toting policemen who apparantly weren’t keen on the tourists being bothered. Hoping there was at least something going on on a Monday night, booze or not, we continued a little ways up the main drag, only to realize the bustling neighborhood our hotel was in during the day had turned into a busy bus stop surrounded by streets lined with strung out homeless and not a lot of streetlights. Finally, something to rival the Tenderloin! Needless to say, we were back before too long.

The next morning, we went to the little cafe in the hotel for some decent brewed coffee, and a small breakfast. When we asked for the bill, the waiter dismissed us and said “Nada.” I guess breakfast was included? We planned on staying one more night in El Salvador, just heading to the next (and last) decent sized city, San Miguel, and so we took our time getting out of our swank place, which included finally having a legal beer at the Hotel bar. Then it was back on CA-1 for a ride out of the city.

Well, it became pretty clear this place wasn’t the tenderloin by day. Traffic was insane, and only about 3 blocks from our Hotel, the road we were on, which we thought was the primary East-bound road through the city, became a full on street market. The 4-5 lanes of one-way traffic – primarily large buses – quickly was taken over by shops, people hawking trinkets from carts and wheelbarrels, bicycles, and simply massive crowds of foot traffic. The traffic worked it’s way down to one lane as buses narrowly avoided death and massive property destruction by seemingly luck alone. We passed through the landmarks you’d expect of the downtown of a large capital city: big open plazas with massive statues and flanked by large stone and concrete government buildings, big impressive churches, and swarms of people dressed in business formal. The gridlock slowly backed off and we were presently back on a main highway out of town, watching the shining city of San Salvador slowly fading in our rearview and being replaced again by impressive mountain vistas overlooking volcanos towering over vast fertile plains.

Volcano East of San Salvador

We were on our way down the mountain when I decided to search once again for a pupusa to rival those back home, but struck out again, finding only day old excuses. At least they were cheap? We arrived in San Miguel early in the day after a pretty short ride, and once again ended up in a classy hotel, complete with an armed guard, walled plaza lined with barbed wire and containing a pool (with the filter turned off, leaving an understandable layer off scum and debris along the top), and enough lush potted vegetation to give it a distinctly Miami feel.

We walked the town and picked up oil for a morning oil change, and treated ourselves to some cheap licuados. It still feels good to be spoiled by all the fresh tropical fruit floating around down here! We rounded up our day with a dip in the pool and a great dinner of cheap carne asada. Somehow, now that it was legal, I didn’t feel like going out on the town and had another relaxing night.

In the morning, we did our oil changes, under the watchful eye of the heavily armed guard, who practiced his dirty look library as we made a mess in his parking lot, but never said anything. We walked the warm dirty liquid down around a mile through the pressing heat to an auto shop willing to accept used motor oil, cleaned up as best as we could, and hit the road. It was a short ride in the oppressive sun to the Honduran border, for the fun described here.

We both got up late, took our cold shower, and went looking for breakfast, which we never did find.  We settled for some bad coffee and sweetbread at a panaderia.  It was noon before we were loaded up and on the road to the border only 30 miles or so away.

At the border, it took exactly one hour just to get the paperwork done to leave Nicaragua!  Is that nuts, or what?  Then, when we were attacked by the maggots claiming to be ‘helpers at the Costa Rica border, our pre-arranged answer of ¨No ayuda¨ actually worked, and they left us alone.  Again, Levi did all the work at the windows,  while I stood guard of the valuables,  and it took us an additional 2-1/2 hours to clear the border.

When were finally done, and had all the papers we needed to leave, we discovered that the exit road from the border station had become completely blocked with a simply un-imaginable and indescribable snarl of cars and trucks.  Somehow trucks had blocked both the exit and entrance roads, and then cars had tried to get past and blocked up the shoulders and everywhere else into one big gridlocked snarl. When they saw us waiting patiently for the mess to clear,  some of the truckers started signalling us to go around the mess.  So we started to thread our way, between the stalled trucks and cars, then over curbs and ditches, across sidewalks and driveways, around buses and pedestrians, and through spaces with barely inches to spare,  until we did finally get out!  I can’t imagine how they ever got that road cleared after we left!

Soon into Costa Rica,we noticed hot the scenery changed – from dry and brown to lush and green.  Really beautiful countryside.  We passed two police checkpoints, and were not even stopped for papers. What a change!

We were greeted by rainbows and volcanoes!  Very dramatic;  very  beautiful.  After 77 kilometers we reached Liberia,  a decent medium-sized town, and located a hostel with safe off-street parking.  Weather was perfect.  I had chocolate cake for dinner, and got a few mosquito bites while sleeping in the worlds worst bed.

When the usual road and rooster noise  got up me up the morning, I went out front to see if I could find some stray parts that we had left outside. The security people had actually saved our stick and oil can for us! They custom made us a breakfast in the hotel kitchen, and then we spent an hour re-tightening and replacing loose nuts and bolts.  It is incredible how these bikes shed hardware!

We got out of town easily, and made good progress until we were about 10 miles from Masaya.  Then we were stopped by three traffic police.  The stop was completely un-warranted.  They stopped us just because they could tell we were tourists, and expected to shake us down for some easy cash.  We made the mistake of not just giving them the mordida (they asked for $40, we probably could have negotiated for $20), and getting them angry with us for not doing so.  They took our US driver’s licenses, and told us we had to drive into Masaya and pay the fine ($12.00 USD) at a certain bank downtown. I will not repeat the whole  story here, as Levi did a great job explaining how the whole business went down, but the 2-1/2 hours that they cost us prevented us from getting to the Costa Rica border before dark.

After we finally left Masaya, with our driver’s licenses, we managed to get lost TWICE trying to find the road to the border.  We passed several more traffic stops, and expected to get stopped again (we had been stopped and asked for ‘our papers’ at every roadblock so far, without exception), but instead, the officers saw us coming, often way too fast, and just looked away and let us pass.  Either we had suddenly become lucky, or, as Levi suspects, the captain in Masaya had put the word out to let us pass.

Just as dark was closing in, we discovered that a town on our map, La Virgin, was not a town at all, but only a beach on Lake Nicaragua.  We got a glimpse of incredible volcanoes looming over a brooding, gray, windswept  lake,  and then it was dark.  We had to backtrack to the resort town of Rivas, where we lucked out finding a cheap hotel, and a great pizza dinner.

It was a stressful day, but Levi and I came through it in good shape.  We kept our spirits up, didn’t let it get too us, and ended the day by toasting the adventure with a few shots of tequilla.

A Tale of Three Cities

I now interrupt your regularly scheduled chronological programming to bring you a tale of intrigue, greed, and my complaining. Before this trip, I’ll admit to being a complete stranger to blatant corruption of public officials. Sure, I’d heard stories, and had always been prepared on my previous visits to Mexico to shell out some pesos if I got pulled over and was threatened with some sort of BS. But, despite going there a few times, the most recent of which (this trip) spanning nearly 3 weeks and 2,000 miles, I was neveer so much as pulled over by Mexican cops. The last few days, however, have been a wakeup call that the corruption is still very much alive, but it may have just flown south for the winter (or hopefully: permenantly).

Welcome to Honduras

And what a welcome indeed. Every border since Belize has had people milling around, offering to help you for a fee or tip, but the border between El Salvador and Honduras was different. So different that miles from the border, people tried to flag us down, and when we didn’t stop, they jumped in a truck and layed chase. Upon reaching the first border checkpoing for leaving El Salvador, things really got… intense. No longer was it a few people kindly offering to cut through the border BS, it was a full-on assault. Running along our bikes, pushing through a crowd of one another, dozens of shouting, waving, over-the-top “helpers” faught for our loyalty. Some had friends vouching for them, some had badges, some spoke english nearly fluently, some sounded like cartoon characters, but all were highly interested in our business, and none of them would accept our insistance that we weren’t interested in any help.

We made it though the exit steps in El Salvador without much trouble, and proceeded to the first checkpoint in Honduras, crowds of flailing men running to catch up in our wake. While we waited in the hut for the border official, who in traditional central-american border official fashion was spending about 1/10th his time doing his job, Joe began to crack. “Maybe we should hire one of them so they’ll just leave us alone!” he remarked. My frustration with having to deal with both border bullshit and “helper” bullshit leaving my resistance sapped, I finally agreed we could hire one as long as he promised to dislodge us from the mob. You won’t hear me say it again, but in this regard he helped, and away they went.

It started with a typical ridiculous claim: we were supposed to have the titles for our bikes. Oh, we don’t have the titles? Seemingly a “big deal,” and not something they must deal with every day, the first guard insisted he needed to speak with his boss. Our “helper” assured us this was serious. “Another American who tried to enter without a title got worked up and they said ‘No!’ and he had to turn around,” he said. Then he added a phrase he’d use a dozen or more times throughout our ordeal: “I speak for you.” This sounded warning bells in my ears, but I’m afraid it was too late.

The border guard went to speak to his boss at some unspecified location – with all our papers – and our “helper” rushed us to another parking lot to wait out the forthcoming fun. At this point, I got to assume my role of trying to sort shit out since I can handle myself with Spanish a bit better than my Dad. We park, our “helper” runs off to “speak for” us with the guard and his boss, and once we get settled, I take my radio, leave Joe with the bikes, and try to find the guard, our papers, or our “helper,” in hopes of not being stuck forever. Now inside the border zone, I really got to take in the sights. The immigration building, which had two inside structures on either end with a covered road through the center connecting them, had been turned into a shanty town. Hundreds of people milled around. There were women cooking food, trinkets hawked, money changers shouting, children demanding coins, people on phones, passed out on the floor, begging and bustling around in every direction, most obviously not actually trying to negotiate the border. I managed to spot my “helper” off to one side outside a building.

He assured me he had everything taken care of. He’d speak for us. He didn’t strictly tell me to leave, but he told me not to talk. More warning bells. Eventually the guy came out, gave us whatever ridiculous paperwork we needed, including our passports back, and we’d jumped through our first hoop at the border. So far so good.  We proceeded to ridiculous window number one for some unknown document processing. Ridiculous window one worked as follows:

• “Helper” and I arrive at a building with a sliding window that’s closed. Inside is a desk with no one at it.
• “Helper” opens the window and shoves our paperwork onto the empty desk.
• A woman shows up at the window, and a mass of people who’d been sitting around jump up and rush the window, waving papers and yelling. “Helper” is part of this mob with our passports which he hasn’t, thank god, left unattended on the desk.
• “Helper” says he’s going to go “speak for” us to the police so we can get past the border despite not having our titles and leaves me at the window. We’re beyond warning bells at this point. There’s no trust between me and “helper.”
• The window opens and closes every 10 minutes or so, each time with a mass of people shouting and waving. A guy tells me the woman has told him that by some stroke of luck, we’re next in the non-existent line.
• “Helper” comes back and, like the guy said, she ignores the masses and processes our paperwork for a fee of $11USD per set of paperwork.

We’re through hoop two. At this point, we’ve been at the border a good 2 hours. I believe the paperwork we’ve processed now would get us through the border if we didn’t have vehicles.

“Helper” rushes me towards a bank where we’re supposed to pay for the enterance fee for the bikes. He stops at a money changer and tells me to change $70 USD to Honduran funny-money. I ask why and he says the bank won’t take dollars. I say I want to see for myself and we go to the bank. He speaks rapidly to the woman behind the counter. I can’t figure out what he’s saying, but she shakes her head and he practically drags me back to the money changer to change the money. I oblige, we return, and we get two receipts by giving them the result of all the $70 worth of funny money. Three hoops, and the fun has just begun!

Next to the photocopy place to get copies of the receipts. Then to a window inside the shanty-town built into the customs building where we process the receipts to receive our vehicle permits. We get to the front of the line (an excrutiating 20 minutes), and we’re still somehow, in my stack of photocopies and papers an inch thick, missing some relevant document in triplicate, so I run back to the photocopy hut, and back to the window. Despite the fact that the window has taken our documents, among them copies of our vehicle registrations which, everywhere else in the world are adequete for bringing one into a country, “helper” insists he’s spoken to the customs agents to “help” us get through without titles. He abandons the window with an armful of our documents, and we head to the back of the customs office, to a window facing the parking lot, and opening to the office behind the window we’d left. He attempts to shove our papers at the agents inside, and they brush him aside. We wait. 30 minutes or so pass. They then take the documents and tell me to bring the bikes to the office.

Off to the parking lot our bikes our in. I grab my dad and we ride back to the office. They check the VINs against our documents and stamp some more random paperwork and give it to us. “Helper” pats himself on the back, regaling me with how he’d “speak for [me]” and made them let us through. We photocopy the latest documents because that’s what you do when you get an official paper in Honduras. Hoop number four is done, and I’m now quite certain we had everything we needed to exit the border zone, “proud” tourists of Honduras, but “helper” disagreed. He insisted the he’d spoken with the jefe for us (go figure), and we needed to go see him for our passage criteria to finally be met. Foolishly, I complied and we were off to another building off to the side, and without any labels. Staffed by people in border patrol uniforms, a man at a computer proceeded to retype the information from the paperwork from hoop four into a computer, in seemingly-official fashion. His price upon completion? $25 USD per document – $50 more down the drain. This time, there was no receipt, and obviously no point. Further internet research has proven this is a very common scam. Hoopfive completed, the bonus hoop.

I briefly get to speak with the Japanese man riding a Honda to Argentina. He’s been swindled out of all the money he has in his attempt to negotiate the border, and I have no idea what he was going to do to escape. Meanwhile, “helper” is insisting the customs agents we’d handed documents to through the back window had done so because he’d spoken for us, and they needed their share of the bribes, which he listed as $20 per officer, of which there were two. He’d also attempted to raise his price, originally negotiated at $5, to $10 per bike. We gave him $10 because we’re idiots, and no money for his guards. He protested briefly before accepting. What choice did he have? We finally entered Honduras with our stamped, signed, ridiculous permissions slips in hand. Our reward for nearly $160 (including photocopy fees)? Paperwork granting us literally two days passage in Honduras, and a bad impression of Honduras that will last a lifetime… or at least until
Let us out of Honduras!

After our 3.5 hour border crossing, as I’ll explain later in standard chronological order, we had no choice but to give up on passing through to Nicaragua the same day. After a night in Honduras – the only one granted us by our paperwork – we proceeded to the border. Throughout the country, we were subjected to random, silly, spot-checks, whereupon police standing on the road with a traffic cone for a marker would pull over every motorist and ask to see their “papers.” We passed through these with no incedent until we were less than 10K from the border. There, we the policemen who stopped us took my license, took no interest in our supporting documents, and insisted we were in violation of one of their most critical of laws: we didn’t have fire extinguishers.

Mind you, we were never asked where our fire extinguishers were. They seemed quite keen to the knowledge we were without such a requisite adventure motorcycle riding item. But, they’d taken my license, and insisted they wouldn’t return it until we’d returned with fire extinguishers. To emphasize the point, they showed me their ticket template, where code 037 or so corresponded to the lack of a fire extinguisher (obviously a necessary item for all motorcyclists, most of which have no baggage at all). Given they’d taken my license, and we were but minutes from the border, we were up the proverbial creek. They attempted to take Joe’s, but he protested, and it was obvious they could care less. Why make a stink over his when they had mine?

To make the cherade complete, these officers had been provided a small hut in which to conduct their business, and invited me into it to straighten matters out. There, I had the honor of paying them the equivalent of about $15 to return my license. They then insisted they wouldn’t let us by without our fucking fire extinguishers, which they insisted could be obtained at the last town for around $3 at the local hardware store. Disgusted and incredulous, they eventually backed down and told us we could get them in Nicaragua, which we couldn’t get to fast enough, both of us then being thoroughly disgusted with Honduras.

Our Nicaraguan Welcome

Again to be more fully explained in future posts, we’d had a decent time in Nicaragua. Things were relatively cheap, the people were friendly and waved, and we expected to be on our way out on day 2, after leaving Esteli. With an early start and what seemed like an easy path, we’d grown accustomed to regular spot-checks by officers waiting on the side of the road pulling us over and asking for our papers, hearkening to cliche world-war era Germany, when the cops suddenly didn’t content themselves with a cursory inspection of our permission slips. South of Tipitapa, we were in a mass of cars, the car in front of us waving at the police at the barricade, but as was the usual for us, we were stopped by the officers.

Unlike in other incidents, they began by showing us the number on a radar gun, which despite the fact that we may have been speeding, was very very likely not from a measurement of our speed. Next, they told me we hadn’t been maintaining proper distance from the car in front of us – the one in front of us that had been far closer to the car in front of us. Once again, they took our licenses, and one of the three officers even went so far as to say it would cost us $400 Cordobas ($20 USD) to clear up the situation.

By then though, we were sick of corrupt officials. Instead, we decided to go the insane route of blatently defying them, and copied down their badge numbers. Needless to say, hey weren’t pleased. One of the officers – one Roxana Tellez, Nicaraguan Transit Police number 8983, and who’s information I plan on repeating throughout the remainder of this article in hopes that it comes back to haunt her one day – in response to our defiance, began writing us tickets. We quickly regretted our decision to stand up for ourselves and our desire to no longer be cheated by such graft when Roxana Tellez, badge number 8983, placed our drivers licenses into marked envelopes corresponding to tickets for not “guarding” our distance she’d written for each of us. The tickets amounted to a fine of $200 Cordobas, or half the bribe they’d originally solicited, but the added bonus was that they were keeping our licenses. The tickets were numbered, and thus prevented them from ignoring them once they’d been written, and so we were thusly required to go to the next town to pay our illegitimate tickets, and were instructed by the cops to return to the scene of the “infraction” to retrieve our licenses, insisting they’d be there when we came back.

We managed to find the bank at which we needed to pay our fees, about 12 miles from the scene of the lack of crime, and proceeded back to where the’d promised they’d meet us. The policemen who’d stolen our licenses were, of course, nowhere to be found. Beginning to be discouraged, we continued back to the town and parked a block from the Transit Police Headquarters, where once again I was put in charge of straighening out the situation while my Dad watched the bikes.At the front of the weathered blue building, people were plastered up against one another in a line that stretched out the door. An officer intercepted me before I’d waited long, and asked me why I was there – ah, the occasional joys of being a tall pale redhead in Central America. I explained to him about our licenses, and he motioned for me to follow him.

Through the line we went, squeezing into the building. There I saw the extent of the insanity. Inside the two sets of doors was a single large room utterly jammed with people, most of which were a part of a single line that wrapped from a window around the room in traditional zig-zag patterns. There was another window in the far corner, and I bumped and squeezed my way through the sweating masses after the officer to this one. I was labled “Infraciones and Licensias.” The cop departed, and I surveyed the window. Unlike the long line, this one made no attempt to look orderly. People were jammed up against each other, though no one was at the window doing anything. I waited there about 10 minutes, and a woman showed up at the window asking for receipts for people’s licenses. The mob then surged to life, arms waving identical stapled receipts in the air, pushing to get them into the hands of the woman. The guy in front of me helped me get to the front, and she gave me a weird look when I tried to pass her two forms. She shook her head and said she could only handle mine. She disappeared into the back, where I had little hope she’d find my license. Another 10 minutes later, she was back. She called one other name and gave back a license, then she called mine…

I came forward and instead of handing me back my license, for that would be far too easy, she started asking me questions. Where did the infraction occur? When did it occur? I answered her and she once again gave that old familiar slow official head shake. No, she didn’t have my license. I’d have to speak to the Jefe. She pointed a finger vaguely and moved to the next name. I followed the finger to the office next door and asked for the Jefe. They said next door, and I went outside to an open office filled with policemen in the building next door. Jefe? Oh no, she was in the closed door at the end of the other building. I just had to go over a knock. I knocked on the door, a few times before it opened a crack, someone inside said some hurried Spanish I couldn’t make out, and the door shut again. The cops from the last office tried to be helpful and, somehow missing that I’d already done so, kept making knocking motions at me while I tried to reason out how to tell them I had. As I puzzled through what to do next, another guy waiting outside the office explained to me that someone was in the office, so I just had to wait. Well, I was getting pretty good at that, so I took a seat.

Another 10 minutes passed, and a throng of people walked up to the door, a couple in plainclothes and a couple in officers uniforms. The guy who’d explained to me that the office was occupied started making ridiculous gestures at me, grabbing his chest repeatedly and waving his eyebrows. Then he put two fingers on each of his shoulders and I figured out he was trying to tell me the woman in the uniform with two bars on her epaulets was the Jefe. I guess occupied didn’t imply she was actually inside! I stood up and loomed at the edge of the crowd trying to make eye contact with her, and hoping my ability to stick out like a sore thumb might come in handy. Thoroughly trained in the art of being the Jefe, she carefully ignored even casually wavering her eyes from her circle of conspirators. It was in this looming stage that who I suspect to be the second in command (he had one bar on his epaulets, whereas everyone else had some number of different symbols) came up to me and asked me what my issue was.

I explained to him about the tickets, where they happened, when they happened, and that our licenses weren’t in the office. He told me to wait while he went off to the license window to confer. Then he came back and had me follow him into another building, down a strange hallway, and to a room filled with radio equipment. This was what I’d been waiting for. He got on the horn and spoke some Spanish I couldn’t decipher, and a familiar voice, not one Miss Roxana Tellez, badge number 8983, but one of her crooked accomplices, badge number 11666 (yeah, I got his too! Unfortunately without his name…). Second in command asked where they were and all I could make out from badge number 11666 was something about Managua. There was more back and forth, most of which was over my head, but it was obvious that the thrust of the conversation was “get the fuck over here.”

Back out of the radio room, the officer told me to grab my Dad and bring the bikes over to the station – our buddies would be back in about 15 minutes. I went back, we grabbed the bikes, convinced the guard to let us bring them into the police parking lot, and waited till our friends the corrupt cops showed up again. They went straight to the Jefe’s office, where they stayed for a little less than 5 minutes, I can only hope receiving new assholes. Roxana left holding the yellow envelopes she’d put our licenses in, had us sign them, and traded us them back for our receipts. I thanked the second in command and asked him his name. Awkwardly, he said his name was “Nicaragua.” I guess for the only cop I’d dealt with who’d made it above grunt level, he was too concerned with his job to let me post his name here in connection with such scandal.

Awakened early by the crazy road noise on CA-1 outside our hotel.  Of course no water so we settled for a very bad breakfast at a nearby comidor and hit the road.  Bad roads, several military road blocks where they checked our ‘papers’, and even one stop near the border where we had to pay the police a bribe just to get Levi’s drivers license back!  Honduras sucks.

Long, steady climb into the mountains.  Some nice scenery, and passed through an area where the Honduran rich must have their summer homes in the mountains.  Good for them!  Finally atthe border, it took another hour of senseless bullshit just to get OUT of Honduras.  Good ridance.

Once we reached the Nicaraguan border station, the atmosphere was completely different.  No craziness, these people were there to help, tried to make it easy, and were kind and friendly.  I was in tears when we left the border station,  just being treated like a human being again.

We made it to a nearby border town, where we got local currency and a coke.  Nice to see open, friendly faces again.  Gas here $4.00 USD a gallon!  Ouch!

I was tired from little sleep last night, so we stopped early in the regional capital Esteli.  Caught up on blogging and email, had a very good dinner for $4.00, and Levi went out to see what kind of nightlife he can find.  I plan on sacking out early, and am very glad to be out of Honduras tonight!

Had the complimentary continental breakfast in the hotel, and then went out into the parking lot to do the oil change and chain maintenance on the bikes.  Had to work under the glaring, scowling scrutiny of the security guard, who was definitely offended by our using his parking lot for motorcycle maintenance!  Glad he didn’t shoot us!

Then off to the border.  What we found there was a nightmare of unbelievable proportions.  I am not going to attempt to describe it;  I will leave that to Levi, who suffered through the worst of it while I stood guard by the bikes, for 3-1/2 hours of bullshit.  Levi summed it up best when he said ‘ the Hondurans have no national pride’.  We agree that Honduras does not deserve to have tourists, and I certainly will never be one, again.

As a private aside to Isaiah;  do you remember the line of trucks waiting to cross the Serbian border when we got there?  Well, that was what the approach to the Honduran border was like.  Seemingly hundreds of trucks lined up, and not even moving.  Only the bullshit we went through getting into Honduras was even more demeaning and worse than we experienced in Serbia.  Never go to Honduras, is my advice.

While waiting for Levi to finish bribing the border officials, I did meet a fellow motorcycle traveler on his way to Argentina – a fellow from Japan riding an old Honda and traveling alone.  He was getting shafted, too. After wasting those hours at the border, we had to stop for the night in Honduras, even though we had planned not to.  We found a shithole hotel in the only town on our  route.  It was filthy, full of bugs, noisy, overpriced, and had no redeeming features.  Sometimes the water was on, sometimes not.  The people did not smile, were not friendly, and we had very bad attitudes, as well.

We had dinner at a Wendy’s,  drank rum and cokes in our room, and smoked cigars on the roof.

After a restless night, we had  a decent breakfast in the hotel, and I walked a few blocks to a farmacia for more pain stuff.  At around 11:00 we turned on the TV and watched the Obama inauguration, and then I went and picked up my new glasses.  Perfect!

It was a wild and crazy ride to get out of San Salvador;  we had to pass through the main market area on CA-1, and it was a nightmare.  Four lanes of busses and cars crunched down to one lane, passing through a thousand market stalls with vendors hawking and shoppers running and people pushing farm carts and wheelbarrows and ice-cream carts and hot-dog wagons and you-name-it!  Too many blocks of just pain craziness.  Just something you have to see to believe!

Then a good road east.  We stopped at a wide spot in the road for a disappointing pupusa lunch, then continued through some very beautiful country-side.  Crazy drivers, very bad traffic.  We stopped early in San Miguel, 70 K. from the Honduras border.  Another first-class hotel, with no hot water!  Here in El Salvador every large business, and every hotel and restaurant  has an armed security guard on its premises. After checking in, we jumped into the unheated, unfiltered pool just to cool off from the 100º F heat.

We walked around and found excellent steak dinners for $4.50 USD.  We bought oil and supplies to do an oil change on both bikes in the morning.  Cigars and cerveza by the pool finished off another good day.

In the morning, we collected our clean laundry off the line, and loaded up.  Good roads, gas only $2.19 USD.  Along he road we passed the largest, weirdest garbage dump I have ever seen.  Dozens and dozens of trucks lined up, and trash everywhere.  Not just in piles, and in the trees and ditches, but even buildings, some of them partially destroyed, filled with trash of every sort. Seemed to go for miles.  Weird, and sort of scary.  Levi said he saw a sign saying that it was the Salvadorian national landfill;  if so, it was a national disgrace.

San Salvador is a huge city;  as we rode in it seemed to go on forever.  We finally reached what we thought was the center (on Roosevelt Ave!), and stopped at a very swanky hotel.  It had busboys to carry our bags, an elevator (that worked!), enclosed parking, hot water, A.C., a pool, the works!  I was in a lot of pain, mostly my ribs and shoulder from the first fall, and I needed some quality rest. One of the drugs I had gotten at the farmacia in La Ruidosa had caused some severe intestinal problems, and that only made matters worse. There turned out to be an optical store next to the hotel, and when I inquired there, they told me I could get glasses made by 11:00 AM the next day!  Needless to say, I jumped at that one!

We tried to find some decent food, but we failed in that.  The dinner we had was terrible.  And because of the Salvadorian election, there was still no alcohol sales, so it was a ‘limited fun’ night. The city had thousands of busses;  the streets were clogged with them, flying down the streets three and four abreast.  Many of them had been customized and tricked out, with lighted shark fins and spoilers on top, fancy custom paint jobs and logos, chrome exhausts, etc.  We did manage to get better caught up on picture uploading and blogging and email, and I was able to make some Skype internet phone calls.  I had a very hard time sleeping due to the shoulder and side pain.