At the time I am writting, we are in the fast train on the way to Paris from Perpignan, my hometown… We are flying back tomorrow to Australia… That means that our trip is over and the 11 months have gone pretty quickly. Our TGV (french fast train) is having some performance issues tonight as we arrive one and half hour late in Paris. I guess we are quite used of this after 11 months around the world. It has been a open minded process and you get out of this quite different, So just one and half hour late is nothing… Let’s go back to our travel story…
Today, we are in Granada on the shore of Nicaragua Lake in Nicaragua. This post will get you across 3 different countries for us to reach Guatemala….
It is Friday 12th of July, and after more than two weeks spent in Nicaragua, it is time to go. We start our third but not last stop in Central America, Guatemala. After some discussions, we decide to skip Honduras and Salvador. This means that we will only cross these two countries. And we will arrive directly in Guatemala City. From there, we have two choices: an expensive bus ticket that brings us in Guatamala city in one day or the cheaper option to use local transport…
I am sure you guess which one we took…
Our journey is quite simple… on the map below
On paper, nothing more simple…
And in reality?
We leave Granada around 11am, a bit late, but one hour later we are in Managua… And leave straight away after we find a mini-van going to Leon. Our Lunch break takes place in the hyper busy bus terminal and a few minutes later we embark into a new mini-van (pretty loaded) to reach the little town of Chinadega. The travel takes 50min and we reach directly the bus terminal where our next bus is just there, ready to go.. So lucky. We run inside the bus (over packed) as outside it starts to rain. At the second to last stop, the bus empties itself.. Everyone goes out (it is still raining) and we are just 6 left in the bus, being the driver and two helpers, Caroline and I and another local woman. In order to get the bus to go to the last stop (at the border) we had to bargain, as they didn’t want to go there. I just can’t imagine ourselves walking outside during 5km with our bags under the rain…
The bus finally drops us at 500m of the border office. Still far enough to have to take a tricycle to ride us until the office. It is still pouring down and despite the roof (or the plastic cover) above our head, we get wet.. Ok, stop complaining, this is part of the trip!!!
The tricycle rider brings us to the Nicaragua immigration office where our passport gets stamped on it 18th or 19th page. Then, he rides us across the bridge between the two countries.. Arrived on the other side, we go to the Honduras border office to get the stamp again.
In Honduras, we look for a bus but apparently (I say apparently because you never can trust what the local says to you) . “It is too late”, they said us. “But you are lucky, because this collective (mini-van) is going until to Choluteca and there is plenty of room left inside” Ok, we replied. We discuss the price which was correct and load our bags inside.. There is two seats left inside… Ah, i was not sure, I couldn’t see them.. One here and one there… Are you sure these are actually seats? Caroline fits in the middle row, while I sit down at the back between two other guys… In an”normal” world, you would just sit here with another person.. We are inside a van from the 80’s which is design to accommodate up to 7 people.. Funny to say we were 16 inside the car…
Ok, this is only for 45min.. We have been in worst situations… But the car is not running properly.. Every 500m the car stalls.. And when the driver tries to restart the engine, it takes 5 more minutes. I let you guess that the drive didn’t last 45 min but 2 hours and half… 16 persons inside…
Once arrived in Choluteca, the driver asks us for more money to go into the centre. “My car is having trouble, it consumes more petrol and it has some problems, so I won’t go further without you paying more..” he says us.. “ouah.. That’s a special way of seeing things… Unfortunately for him, we left..
As a result, here we go, at night time, under the rain walking along the outskirts of a city we don’t know in a country we have been in for only 3 hours… Luckily, we meet a nice family of 6 Honduran who were driving in their black four wheel drive. They ask us what the hell we were doing outside in this area at this time of the day? Crazy people!!! Anyway, they propose to host us for the night which we accept! This particular night, it was soccer night as Honduras was playing against Panama and the father and son (keen soccer fans as they belonged to the national team in the past) were going to watch the game. But they still propose to drive us around Choluteca by night so they can show us their hometown.. So nice… They even take the opportunity to buy us some food… Even nicer (maybe we inspire pity? did we look so skinny, lol)
The next morning (saturday 13th of july), we leave early to take a bus until the border with Salvador… After 2 hours and 40min, we reach the border, get stamped, change some money back to US dollars and cross the border.
We got there early, but the bus to San Salvador doesn’t leave before 11.35am… We have some time to check on the special food they made and sell here.. As you see below, corn flour tortillas…
Once on the way to San Salvador, we got stopped by the army to inspect the bus and our luggage.. And there, they find a large cardboard box filled up with knives, cigarettes and other products that someone tried to smuggle between Honduras to Salvador… There, they asked us to split… On the left, women, on the right men and start to body search almost everyone.. Probably looking after a gang, as everyone who had special tattoo on the shoulder and the back got put apart… After the search, they couldn’t find the box owner, and decided that no one would leave until we found out… cool! we are going to spend the night here, and we will miss anyway our bus to Guatemala… But after 15 min, people starting to complain, they let us going.. We finally arrive at 3.30pm at San Salvador. The last bus to Guatemala City (we are saturday) is scheduled at 4pm and we need to cross the whole city to reach it. Almost missed it…
At 9pm we arrived in Guatemala City under the rain.. We are in Area 13, far away from area 1 and 2, more popular and dangerous and from where we can find a bus to go to Antigua. We ask for help to find an hotel but finally we find a taxi ready to drive us until Antigua for only 200 Qetzal, which is a good price. The driver, ‘Leonel” took even the time to find an hotel in Antigua. So if you are looking for a good taxi driver in the area of Guatemala City and Antigua, we highly recommend him. His name is Leonel Recinos and you can contact him on Facebook, before you arrive in Guatemala City.
We finally arrived after more the 40 hours of travel for 900km…
Blog you soon from Sydney about the next stories of our trip.
And because you have read the post until the end, here a short video of our ride from Nicaragua to Guatemala.
Jacques&caro
