March 8 Honduras Border Crossing 1
Lots of driving today as the plan is to cross into Honduras, drive across (2.5 hours) and get into Nicaragua. We had not heard about much to see in Honduras and with the opportunity to skirt through it we made that our plan. The plan was going well as we breezed through El Salvador customs and crossed the river into Honduras. As we parked and headed into immigration there was a power outage – so none of the computers necessary to process vehicles into the country were working, nor the AC in the immigration building. The heat and humidity hit epic proportions (think 95 degrees and over 85% humidity and n0 breeze) so our plan was to gather all our paperwork, find an expeditor and make the crossing into Honduras as quick and as painless as possible. To make matters worse, the air conditioner condenser in Queenie the Defender blew so no relief from the heat was in sight any time soon. There were hordes of people, expeditors, vendors, and folks trying to get across the border. Distracting and confusing to say the least. We found one expeditor that spoke perfect English and he seemed rational and communicative so we aligned with him. We were stuck at the border for hours waiting for the paperwork to get expedited. Matt and John literally bought out all of the water that was available at a local store. We consumed and shared liters of water with our expeditor team while we waited in the heat and humidity. After about 5 hours, the paperwork came through. There was a money exchange and payout for our team – about 3X what it should have cost us – much later than expected but before others who got to the Honduran border after us.
The other side of Honduras should have been quicker at the border as it wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t. Just slow. One funny thing did happen as we were trying to find the way from Honduras across into Nicaragua. Big truck traffic clogged the bridge and you have the normal chaos of the border with people waving at you to this or that. Tracy was driving and all of a sudden a guy hops off his bike, stops the truck traffic and waves her across the road towards the wrong side of the bridge. This made no sense as truck were blocking the approaching lane – well – even the truck drivers started waving at Tracy and so she cuts across all the traffic lanes and up onto the SIDEWALK of the bridge! It was awesome – and it turns out the “normal” way for cars to cross – unbelievable. Check out the video.
After this we meet 2 customs agents who approach the car. Things are a bit surreal at this point and Tracy decided the were not “real” customs agents and as the one was talking to her she said, “I don’t think you are real agents” and rolled up her window and started driving off. We thought this guy was going to have a stroke as he started yelling for us to stop. Anyway – we all had a laugh and proceeded to finish off the rest of the border process very…very…very…very slowly. So when it was all said and done, we spent 11 hours crossing Honduras and only 2.5 hours was driving – the rest was border stuff on a thoroughly miserable weather day.
But we did run into Emily and her parents again and she entertained us by using her body as a broom on the floor of the customs building – yeah – that girl needed a shower. We’ll see you in the Nicaraguan section!
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