Instead, we decided to stay in Nicaragua an extra day, heading to the beaches of Las Penitas for a night. The views were amazing (of course). We enjoyed a $5 dinner at a beach front restaurant and watched the sun set over the Pacific.
And we saw this poor little guy...
The next morning we were up at 5 to start our journey to Honduras. The trip to the boarder was fairly routine: chicken bus to Leòn, taxi to the other bus station in town, shuttle to Chinandega, bus to the boarder. This is where the real fun began...We were met off the bus by loads of pedi taxi drivers going on and on about how long the walk across the boarder would be. We decided to "splurge" for once and go for it...Of course, they said they worked for tips only...but we agreed on a tip of 20 cordobas (less than $1) each before loading into the pedi taxi. After barely making it up a small hill, our driver (bike rider?) quickly enlisted the help of one of his friends, splitting us into 2 seperate pedi-taxis. The guys took us (very slowly) to the first office where they waited outside while we got our exit stamps. We climbed back in and they peddled us across the boarder to the next office. Overall, this could have gone faster if we had walked...but let's be real, it was only $1. We got our entry fees and stamps taken care of and we were off again. As they were peddling us to our bus, Sean's driver mentioned something about us giving a nice tip. Sean gave a nod and mentioned the 25 again...Then this guy says "yeah, 20 dollars"....
"20 dollars??? NO! 20 cordobas"
At this point the guy has stopped peddaling, I am somewhat comprehending the conversation taking place in Spanish, and Sean is getting into it with this guy. We hop out of the taxis and grab the bags..while the guy is still going on and on about how we owe $20 each. (Has he seriously gone mad??) Sean yells some not nice things at him, tells him he is crazy, and puts the money we agreed to on the seat and we walk off. They try to follow us with the pedi-taxis, still shouting about 20 dollars, but their bikes (ahem, physical condition) stands no chance against our speed walking. And so...we made it to Honduras with a little more trouble than usual.
We hopped on a 2 hour bus to Tegucigalpa (the capital), and another to San Pedro Sula (google that now, please), where we would be spending the night. Now, if this is where the story ended, I'd call that a fairly successful trip...but of course, it gets better (worse?). As I've mentioned in previous posts, the bus drivers in Central America are a little....fast. We were sitting in the last row of the bus, elevated slightly above the rest of the seats, giving us a perfect view of the passengers in front of us and the scenery outside. The mountains off in the distance provided a scenic landscape as the sun went down and we made our way through more windy roads in Honduras.
The darker the sky got, the crazier the driver got. Eventually we pulled over and the driver hopped out, with a new one replacing him. That explained it...it was the end of his shift and he was in a hurry to get home, right? About 30 minutes down the road, Sean actually mentioned that the new driver seemed much more sensible. True. At that point. Not long after, he gradually picked up speed...weaving in and out of lanes, passing in no passing zones, hardly even tapping the breaks. I'm convinced that we were up on two wheels at several different points in time. The bus started swaying from side to side as we changed lanes, and people...LOCALS...started to get a little nervous. These are people that ride these buses on a normal basis. These buses don't phase them. They were nervous. We felt like the bus was losing control! Passengers started yelling out for the driver to slow down. One lady yelled "VERY FAST"...The driver slowed, putting everyone at ease. The rest of the ride (thank God) was a little less frightening. Although he still occassionally whipped around blind corners, the wheels never left the ground and we arrived in San Pedro Sula with semi-clean underwear.
We caught a taxi and went to our hostel. We were hungry, and tired, and glad to be alive. We dropped our bags in our room and ventured out into the night rain to find some food...Wendys....then went back, showered, and relaxed before bed. As we were sitting in the dorm, browsing the web, Sean told me to google San Pedro Sula...so I did. And that's how I found out that we would be staying the night in the murder capital of the world. Good. Luckily we were at a nice hostel in a nice neighborhood, with plenty of barbed wire and security cameras and guard dogs. We survived the night...got a shuttle (THAT was another rip off) to the bus station in the morning and caught a 3.5 hour bus to La Ceba.
Sitting on the bus...stopped in a small town on the side of the road...passangers get on and off. I ask Sean how much longer we have, he says it's probably no more than 30 minutes. 20 minutes down the road, one of the "bus helpers" comes by and asks where we were going....then informs us that La Ceba is the town we just passed through. HAHA! Awesome. We get off the bus in the middle of nowhere and within a minute, were picked up by a bus going the opposite direction. We made it to the Ferry called Princess iv...AKA...the vomit commet. Last year, Sean actually witnessed a man projectile vomit into his wife's face on this thing.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you how crazy this ride actually is, so I will leave that to your imagination...but we survived, vomit free. AND NOW...FINALLY....we are in Utila. A backpacker's paradise.
~Jac
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