Honduras I

I had an week off again for Semana Santa (Easter Week) and I decided to visit Honduras. I left on Saturday early in the morning and planned to arrive in the city of Leon in Nicaragua by late afternoon. However the first day did not go very well. I arrived at the border and immediately noticed that there were way too many people there. The road was so crammed with cars and trucks that the bus couldn't even make it to the customs office and let us out about 2 or 3 kms away. There was a huge line at the customs office, so long that it snaked around the parking lots and stretched a couple of hundred meters down the the road. I knew that the border would be busy because all the Nicaraguans that work in Costa Rica would be heading back to their families for Semana Santa, but I didn't expect it to be this busy. It took about 4 hours sitting in the hot sun before I got to the front of the line and was able to cross into Nicaraguan side. The station on the Nicaraguan side was also pretty bad and it took another 2 hours of waiting to cross. I met two other travelers in line. One a surfer from New Zealand who had been surfing all across the world for the last 18 years and the other was a traveler from Minnesota. Neither were very impressed by their trip so far, partly from the horrendous line and partly from the high prices in Costa Rica. The surfer was also disappointed by the surfing in Costa Rica because there were way too many tourists and beginner surfers crowding up the waves. She said she preferred quiet solitary surfing and was hoping she would find better spots in Nicaragua and she especially was looking forward to a particular wave called La Libertad in El Salvador. She had spent so long surfing in remote places that she had caught malaria three times. They were both heading to Granada and I helped them get through the border and find a bus.

I continued on to the capital of Nicaragua, Managua, and due to the excessive time at the border I didn't arrive until after dark. I needed a taxi from one bus station to another one with buses to Leon in a hurry so I was glad that there was a taxi right there with another passenger heading to the station. It was only 20 cordobas which is about a dollar and a pretty good price. We were driving along and the driver engaged me in small talk. Then he asked for the 20 cordobas so he could get gas. I gave it to him and he immediately started heading down a side street and asked me for the rest of the fare, which including taxes was 400 cordobas. I was not impressed and started arguing that we had agreed on 20. He asked his "passenger" if she had paid 400 cordobas and she just nodded quietly. Finally after a lot of arguing and random driving through the night side streets he stopped the taxi and got my pack out of the trunk and demanded 100 cordobas for the ride. I refused and he dropped my bag and took off. He was at least nice enough to leave me on a fairly main road so I had no trouble finding a taxi, but I had to overpay 80 cordobas to get to the station. Another hour or two in the bus and I finally arrived in Leon and found a hostel at 10 pm. At this point I was not too thrilled about the trip and I had even lost my voice from the combination of a cold and arguing with the taxi driver. Luckily the trip got much better after that and I didn't have any more problems.

The hostel I found was really cool. It was only $4 and there was a pool table, movies and even an indoor wading pool. I met a lot of interesting people, a Japanese-American, a Basque from Spain and a group of eccentric Greeks who knew how to have fun and I managed to have a good time and forget about the rest of the day. I decided to stay an extra day in Leon because I got there so late and it was a very interesting city. The city had about 12 amazing cathedrals, including the largest one in Central America and it was the home of Ruben Dario, a famous Nicaraguan poet. The next day I took a bus down to the nearby Pacific beaches and I met a guy from New Orleans whose family was Cajun and had lived there for a long time. He was checking the waves out for surfing, but they were too advanced for his skills. There were two or three surfers in the waves and the rest of the people stayed right at the shore because the waves were so powerful. The guy from New Orleans was planning to stay the night at the beach because he had an itchy problem with his bed at his hostel, but he decided to go back to Leon when I told him about the nice hostel I was at. On the way back we waited for the last bus and it was crammed full. I didn't see how they would fit anybody else on, let alone the 15 people waiting for the bus, especially since the New Orleans guy was carrying all his stuff. But they kept cramming and cramming and we all managed to fit, despite hanging half out the door. And apparently it was going to get a lot busier the next weekend. That night I met some more interesting people, a guy from Brazil, a couple of Germans, a couple of Costa Ricans, and an American who turned out to be a friend of a friend in Bagaces.

The next day was a traveling day and I managed to get up at 6am after 3 hours of sleep for a bus. I took two buses to the border and got a bicycle ride across the border to Honduras. I managed to not get too ripped off by the money exchange people and the border guards failed to give me a stamp for my passport. I took two more buses to the capital city of Tegucigalpa, which was a pretty city in a valley from afar, but dirty and disordered up close. I then took one more bus to the second largest city in Honduras, San Pedro Sula. I arrived in San Pedro at about 9 pm and I immediately checked into the hotel across the street. It had a TV and a private bathroom for only about $7 and I even got to share the room with cat-sized cockroach.