Original post date: October 16, 2008
This is dedicated to all the last minute planers, the fly by the seat of your panters, the I’m sure there will be a bus we can takers. In Central America…nothing… ever… goes according to plan…. EVER
And when the trip notes say a 10 hour travel day, it really means 12+ hours, Central America time.
The day started in Leon in the pouring rain, in a gravel parking lot with about a dozen Chicken buses facing me. The buses are painted all different colours, none labeled with the name of the city we need to get to. As one of the boys absconds with the luggage, you hope A) you are going where you need to go and B) that you see your bag again.
The bus, aka the ‘Cram-inator’ chugs along and fills up with more people than you thought humanly possible. 20 or so school children scramble onto an already packed bus, filling the aisles like an overstuffed down pillow with feathers busting out the sides. Arms and heads appeared out from behind bags, in between seats, lost in a sea of crisp white uniforms and laughter.
I continued to be squished into the side of the bus, windows closed and fogging up, rain seeping in regardless, ending in a not so steady drip pattern I can only describe as Nicaraguan chicken bus water torture. The 2 hour bus ride turned into 4 as we heaved, squeaked, wobbled and splashed our way to San Isidro. There were more puddles than road and every new person that we picked up by the side of the road was progressively more soaked.
The nice thing about Central is that someone is always willing to help you figure out how to get where you are going. The not so nice thing is that most of the people have no idea where you are going. If you ask 6 different people, you will get as many different answers.
At the back of the bus, as we debated the quickest way to make up for lost time, the last bus that we needed sped by, and along with it, the last hope of getting to Tegucigalpa, Honduras that night.
Determined to get as far as we possibly could, we took a taxi, followed by another 2 hour bus ride (where a very savvy 15 year old pursued me for the larger part of the ride) to end up at a deserted bus station in the dark. Totally creeped out, I figured an hour ride to the border would be a safer bet than camping out at the bus station (if you could call a few benches covered by a tin roof a station)
We arrived at the Nicaragua-Honduras ‘border’ which was not unlike a truck stop with semis parked along the side of the road, a small restaurant with little children dancing to music inside, and a small rope between two posts marking the entrance to Honduras.
As tumbleweeds rolled across the border, I knew there would be no taxis on the other side, and we would go no further tonight. The small security man in the Florida Gators jacket took my passport, and sensing my dismay, encouragingly said that maybe I would be able to get further by ‘El Rae’ – the Central American equivalent of thumbing it. As I stood there in my tank top and Shorty McShort shorts, I wondered if that would be a good idea.
As I sat with the customs and immigration guys, the security guy stopped every semi passing through and asked if they would mind taking on an extra passenger or two. The best offer we got was a ride out to Tegucigalpa at 5 AM. I settled in for a night on the floor of the immigration office – there would be no spooning tonight.
In the morning I picked up some snacks and scored a ride to the next town – in the back of a slightly bruised pickup truck. As I slid back and forth in the flat bed, the fruits in my bag mercilessly squished, with every sharp turn I thought of math class: If a pick up is traveling at 100 kms/hour and makes a 30 degree turn, how far will Michelle be ejected?
12 white knuckle, hair frazzling, OMG I’m going to die Kilometers later, dumped next to the middle of nowhere at 10 pm, I found a nice lady who rented rooms out of her house for $6 a night. No bathrooms, but having just shat myself on the way over I figured I’d be ok.
With 12 action packed travel hours behind me, I prayed the travel gods would be nicer to more tomorrow. 4 AM start. God I love my job.