LONG Bus Ride

Up early at 4:30am for our shuttle at 5:00am. Quick drive to the Guatemala border, easy customs and immigration getting out of Honduras and into Guatemala. It was so early in the morning, there's nobody at the border yet.

There was a girl from New Zealand on the shuttle as well, she's heading to San Salvador.

Getting into El Salvador was a bit painful. For some reaon customs and immigration were very keen on the Kiwi girls passport first, wondering when she got to Central America in April. She doesn't speak much Spanish, but kept telling them she didn't arrive in April, she arrived in May. After they got through hers, they were very keen on mine and dad's passports. They had them for a very long time, checked them against a list of some sort, made some sort of printed reports about them, ran around lots with them, was having everybody look at them, then some other guy (presumably a supervisor) signed the printed reports before we finally got our passports back. Must have took 15 minutes. Interestingly, El Salvador did not stamp any of our passports (including the Kiwi girl's passport).

We stopped in San Salvador, dropped the Kiwi girl off and picked an older couple from Australia. They are 62 years old, backpacking across Central America. They decided to "upgrade" to a tourist shuttle instead of taking chicken buses like the locals. They don't really speak Spanish either, but were getting along fine.

Then to Playa El Tunco aroun 9:45am, a backpacker surf paradise, where we got off our small mini-van shuttle and waited about 30 minutes to get on a larger 20 seat bus. Lots of other backpackers also joined us on this bus. The half an hour allowed us time to check out the beach, a black sand beach, here. I stuck my feet into the ocean in El Salvador.

The bus left around 10:15am.

Exiting El Salvador and entering Honduras went ok, a bit slow as it's midday, lots of customs and immigration traffic.

Once we got to the Honduran/Nicaragua border (around 7:30ish pm, I guess), things went sideways for one person on the bus. There's a woman from China travelling with us, along with her son (8-10 years old maybe), who's American born (travelling on an American passport). She's married to an American, but only has her Chinese passport. When leaving Honduras, the immigration people said that Nicaragua will not let Chinese into the country (i.e. they won't stamp a Chinese passport), but they said she could try, but if not, she'll have to come back into Honduras. So, across the bridge to the Nicaragua side and sure enough, they will not let her into the country. So the bus had to take her back to the Honduran immigration point, where presumably they gave her a place to sleep (with her son) and our bus will pick them up tomorrow morning and their way back. That really sucks for her, she didn't know that Nicaragua wouldn't let Chinese into the country. This whole thing took over an hour, everyone else had to wait at the Nicaragua immigration building while a tropical storm raged otuside.

Finally, over an hour late, we were on our way to Leon.

Arrived in Leon late, like 10:15 or something, at ViaVia hostel. Holy crap! We pulled down the street, and there are two big hostels across the street from each other, ViaVia and Bigfoot. Both were overflowing with drunk backpackers, partying it up like it's 1999, loud music blaring from both, drinking games happening. Party central.

No rooms were available at either of them nor at a another smaller hostel just a few buildings away, but the guy at that hostel pointed me in the direction of another hostel a block and a half away. We trudged there and they had a large room with two beds for $23/night, Calibri Hostal, owned by a Belgian guy.

We immediately went to bed after over 17 hours of travel.