On our second-to-last day of this crazy journey, Nikk and I woke up super early – like, pre-dawn early. Our original plan was already that this would be a long day – we were going from El Salvador to Honduras, all the way through Honduras, and into Nicaragua. It was supposed to be a 12 hour day as is, with three hours for each border crossing planned in. But because of yesterday’s stop, we had to add another two hours to that and still be at our Air BnB before 6:30 pm (sundown). So as the sun rose, we were packing up the Jeep and hitting the road.
Happily, we drove through El Salvador without any problems. It was yet another beautiful country, and one that we would have liked to spend some more time in.
As we arrived at the border to Honduras, we were flagged down by a gentleman in an official-looking polo. He asked for our car’s papers and told us to wait there – all in English! This might be an easy crossing! He ushered us to pull over by the shack where some immigration officials were working, and handed them our paper. After a few minutes, he hopped in a tuk-tuk and motioned for us to follow him down the road. So far, everything he was doing followed along what our research had told us to expect for this border, so we thought it must be legit. We followed the tuk-tuk across a bridge where a uniformed guard was standing. The tuk-tuk pulled over, so we did as well. Our friend who was helping us got out and spoke to the guard. After a quick minute, the friend came to our window and said that the guard wanted to check all of the contents of the Jeep. “The whole thing?!” exclaimed Nikk. (Remember, we had all of our belongings in there, and it was a Tetris-like pack job to get it all to fit!) Our friend said yes, the whole thing, but if we were to give the guard a few dollars, he would let us go. So the guard came to the window and asked for Nikk’s drivers license, which he handed over, along with a $5 bill, and the guard took a quick look and then motioned for us to be on our way.
In our research we had read about “helpers” at each border crossing – local people who were not employed by the customs agencies, but who knew how to get travelers through the borders quickly. They always made it seem like you couldn’t do it without them, and only expected a small propina (tip) for their efforts. As we were starting to see with our friend, though, the propinas added up quickly.
Our friend took us from window to window, making sure we skipped a few lines, and always translating for us. It was going okay, but we felt a little uneasy with his “help” so we gave him one last propina and made the rest of the way on our own.
We finished up the exit of El Salvador and entered Honduras with no issues. The good thing about our friend was that he made this crossing a quick one, so we made up some good time, which we were very grateful for.
This section of our drive was taking us from border to border, across a very small section of Honduras, so it was only scheduled to be two-hours. About 45 minutes in, though, traffic came to a stop. Nikk and I were both thinking “not again.” But alas, we were stopped and who could tell how long this one would take. We sat for about 10 minutes, before we decided to take a route we could see through the town to our left. It wasn’t as rural of an area as the day before, so we were sure we could get around this one.
We drove through the town and the neighborhoods as Google Maps navigated us to another part of the highway, well ahead of where the traffic jam seemed to be. As we pulled out of the town and toward the highway, though, our worries were confirmed, and it was blocked there too. Our hearts sank. We didn’t have any leeway in our schedule to be stopped today, especially for three hours like the day before, and to be quite honest, on day 12 of our journey, we were running out of patience.
Just ahead of where we were stopped, a truck was pulled up next to a police vehicle and the driver was out talking to the officer. We could see the driver motioning up toward the road and gesturing toward the way we wanted to go. He then got back in his truck and Nikk said “I’m following him.” When in doubt, just act like you belong there, right?
We followed the truck up onto the highway and into a line of cars before there was no where else to go. Basically we had just “cut” in front of about two miles of stopped cars. Whoops. From this vantage point, though, we could see what had us all in a holding position – another protest. We resigned ourselves that we would just have to deal with however long we sat there, since there was no getting around it.
As we waited, people walked in the opposite direction on the highway. There was a steady stream of people – men, women, babies, kids, all walks of life. After about a half hour, the stream of walkers increased and it was clear the bulk of the protest march was upon us. All of a sudden the street was full of people, some with signs, some with bullhorns, and walking on all sides of the stopped cars. It was a tiny bit unnerving to be in the LITERAL MIDDLE of a protest in Central America. But shortly afterwards, the people all cleared up and the cars began to slowly move. We were so grateful to have only sat for an hour and a half this time!
Now that we were moving again, we headed toward the second border crossing of the day – Honduras into Nicaragua. We were still okay on time, but we couldn’t afford for this to be a long one. Luckily for us, it wasn’t too bad. The only “hang-up” we had was that as we entered Nicaragua, we had to take out a bunch of our luggage from the Jeep, haul it into their office and send it through an X-ray machine. They then opened one of our suitcases and examined our things. Among the examined items: a Cards Against Humanity game, a wind chime, a bunch of yoga books, and my essential oils case. I’m sure they couldn’t decide if we were weirdos or dirty hippies, or both! But they let us pack everything back up (another game of Tetris!) and we were on our way.
We were cutting it close, but we thought we could make it to our Air BnB in Managua. The drive itself was gorgeous. As soon as you cross into Nicaragua, you see two volcanoes in the distance. It was both of our first time seeing a volcano, so we were super excited!
With about 5 minutes of daylight to spare, we pulled in the gated parking of our Air BnB in Managua. It had been another really long, really hard day. We were both starving and saw that there was a Pizza Hut across the street… a bit ironic after seeing one that morning and taking a picture of it! It was another non-glamorous dinner, but a little taste of “home” was just what we needed, so we headed over. After years of working in restaurants where most of the kitchen team speaks Spanish, we were able to order our pizza in perfect Espanol!
With full bellies and exhausted minds, we went to bed, excited that tomorrow was our last day of driving and hoping that we wouldn’t run into any more issues.
One response to “Three Countries, Two Pizza Huts, One Day”
Hi, found your blog on the Wrangler forum and really enjoying it, hope your last days drive was safe, can’t wait for the update!