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| Central America - The Journal |
The Problem With Borders
Day 19, Leon (Nicragua) to Tegucigalpa (Honduras)
On Jess' advice, we made an early start to get as far as possible towards the next place we wanted top go, the Bay Islands on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. The distance was pretty far, we needed to basically traverse the whole on Honduras. So, by 6am, we were at Leon's bus station, waiting for the bus for Chinandega, a major city near the border. As it was early in the day, the bus filled quickly and soon deposited us in Chinandega, we're we rushed to another bus bound for El Guasaule, the border town.
At the border, on the advice of the guidebook, we allowed one of the cyclo-rickshaw drivers guide us through the various checkpoints. Getting out of Nicaragua was straightforward, but then there was a very long trek, over a bridge in the boiling hot sun, to the Honduran desks on the other side...it was definitely a good job we had these rickshaws...even if I had to jump off and give him a push up the hump of the bridge.
The rickshaw driver and his friend (who swapped with him for half of the journey) were friendly enough, charging a reasonable price given the hard physical effort required and the time saved by taking us to the right windows, however, that didn't prevent them from trying to fit in a few sneaky tricks. On the ride, their friend, a money changer was brought up alongside to offer his services. I was dubious, confident we' d get a better rate when there more changers around of on the other side of the border. We'd actually done pretty well with our money, we had just enough Nicaraguan cordobas to pay our drivers, with a substantial tip given the unexpected physical efforts required by them, and only needed to change some of our dollars into enough Honduran lempiras to get us to the next major town where we could get to an ATM. I hesitated a little and rejected the offer, but the drivers insisted we needed Honduran money to pay the entry fee at the border. I doubted the truth of that as I was pretty sure from my reading and previous experience that US dollars would be the preferred currency of choice at the border. After the drivers and changer continued to press their story so I relented and changed $20, the smallest note I had. I rejected their continued attempts to get me to change more and we soon drove on to the border control.
As it turned out, the rate we'd received was pretty weak, 16 lempira to the dollar as opposed to the actual 18-19, but the loss had been minimal given the amount we'd changed. More annoyingly, the drivers hung around while we paid the border fees (they were to drive us right up to the bus we wanted for our onward journey) where dollars were the required currency. I can understand being "economical with the truth" if they'd be rid of us before reaching the boarder, but being brash enough to say it then accompany us to the border was almost unbelievable...especially when they were cheeky enough to press us for even more money after we'd paid the agreed amount with a tip on top (it was easier to get rid of all our Nicaraguan money rather than try to change the tiny amount left over).
Nevertheless, they did deposit us right by a coach heading to the tongue-twistingly titled Honduran capital city, Tegucigalpa. The bus waited around for 20 minutes as the passenger numbers slowly built up so we had a little time to explore the borer town. On this side of the border, it was literally a collection of dusty and dirty shacks and a few slightly more permanent simple buildings. Life was busy and noisy and it seemed like a popular crossing for central American locals. I managed to change a little more money for a rate of 17 to the dollar, better, but still not quite right.
The journey to the capital was fairly comfortable and problem free (especially given the clear evidence of a previous serious crash into the side of our coach) but long and slow; we pulled into the noisy and traffic packed capital at about 3.30pm...more than 9 hours after we'd set off from Leon.
Our first glance at Tegucigalpa wasn't very promising, matching with the tips that we'd received to avoid the capital altogether. Unlike Europe, the capitals here don't offer much to tourists, just being a political and economic centre to the country, and Tegucigalpa was no exception. We managed to find a gruff and unfriendly taxi driver to take us to the main part of town where he dropped us off by one of the main churches (he had no knowledge of our hotel nor the fairly major road it was on).
After some advanced map reading and navigation practice we managed to overcome the severe lack of pavements to find the simple hostel we had decided to stay at. Relieved to have finally reached our destination for the day we dropped our bags and set off to get a cold drink somewhere.
Tegucigalpa was a simple enough city with a fairly small centre but with very little to detain a tourist. The central square was nice enough for a few minutes of exploration, but that was about it. We did wander a bit further, but the lack of pavements and real attractions meant we soon gave up. We were even unable to find any decent restaurants (we did search for the area where they were meant to be, but after 30 minutes of walking away from the centre, followed by the sun beginning to set, we gave up). In the end, we had to chose between Popeye Chicken and Pizza Hut...
We chose Pizza Hut, despite the relatively high prices for this part of the world. The food was nice enough, as you'd expect, however, it turned out to be the most difficult meal we'd ordered since we'd arrived in Central America! My Spanish skills had been developing slowly but surely, and this was the first time we actually had any major problems! Our waitress didn't speak a word of English (not a problem), didn't understand any of my Spanish (a bit of a problem), kept repeating the same words to us, even though we clearly didn't understand (just annoying) and didn't even seem to know how the menu even worked (a real problem!). If you've ever eaten from Pizza Hut, you'll know you need to pick the base you want (deep pan, thin etc) then you pick the toppings. Our waitress didn't seem to understand this, making us choose something from the page with the choices of base on OR something from the toppings page. In the end, we gave in and chose something from the toppings page, only for another waitress to then come over to find out what base we wanted it on!!!
We eventually got our food, ate and paid but before we left I couldn't help notice our waitress's look which clearly indicated we were a few sandwiches short of a picnic...
By the time we'd finished our dinner and checked our e-mails, it had become pretty late, so we decided to call it a night...we needed to get up early again tomorrow to continue the next leg of our journey across Honduras...
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To know the road ahead, ask those coming back
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