Thursday, 10 February 2011

Crossing over

Time to head out of El Salvador and brave the border into Honduras. We headed south early and hit the border at around noon. Thinking maybe a bigger border crossing would not give us a hard time about the registration, ha! As we got to the border, we were again mobbed by men wanting to help us. We said " no nessicito" and kept going. No problem on the El Salvador side, so into Honduras we bravely went. This is where thing went south, pun intended. Getting ourselves in was easy, just another stamp on the passport. Then we got to the car; "where is the registration", "we don't have or need one", "oh yes you do". We need to get to Nicaragua! It took us about 3 hours of haggling, pleading and going from one office to another and paying $150 US dollars. We were then allowed to enter Honduras..... for 7 hours. Good thing the border to Nicaragua is only 150 km down the road.
Unfortunately, there are police stops every 30 km. When we got to the first one, we realized Sean' s license was missing, has his passport and money but no license. That took a little palm greasing and me hopping into the driver' s seat. We got stopped 3 more times, after giving us a hard time about not having a "triangle" (the thing you put on the road if you break down), trying to tell me my license was expired, because we put the month before the day, which is the opposite from here, a little more palm greasing took place. You can imagine how hard this was to figure out with our limited knowledge of Spanish. By this time it's getting late and dark and we still have another crossing. To the border we go!
Viva Nicaragua!! Getting out of Honduras was simple, thank goodness and getting into Nicaragua even easier. No registration needed here, just the title. We headed into the nearest town, as it's now dark, not so good. Found ourselves a "auto-hotel" and that, my friends, is a story for the next blog!


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Location:Honduras

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