From the border with El Salvador to the border with Nicaragua is just 130km. Because the road should be flat most of the time it could be done in one day.
One day cycling???
When we wake up in a small cheap ass hotel 5km before the El Salvador/Honduras border Kim feels bad. She slept bad last night and has diarrhea. She slowly starts her day. We discuss if we gonna cycle at all today. Since the hotel is hot and crappy and isn’t in a town or so Kim wants to move on. We will see how far we can make it today.
We take off later than usual and head to the border after had some breakfast at a gas station opposite the road. The road is not to busy, has a good shoulder but is full of rubbish. When we arrive at the border a line of trucks are standing there already. We pass them and go straight to the customs office. A lot of fixers come to us and try to point us around to make some money or to exchange money. We don’t contact them and find out our own way.
The customs goes pretty fast, they ask us some questions, stamp our passports and $3 and 5 minutes later we are free to go again. Honduras here we come.
Into Honduras, feeling bad.
The road is smooth and a little hilly. It’s nearly 40 degrees and the landscape is dry. It feels like desert. Kim still feels bad and we make a lot of stops in shady places under trees or in bus stops. We move slowly but most important, we’re still moving.
It’s hot, really hot!!!
Kim: “Please let me lay down for a minute.”
(Along the Pan-Am Highway)
For sale: House on the river bank.
Horses just walking along the road. Nobody cares about them.
After we cycled 40km we arrive in a small village and have the opportunity for a hotel. It’s nearly 3pm already. Kim decides she wants to do another extra 20km to the next town so we probably can make it tomorrow to the border with Nicaragua in one day.
We have a break at a gas station and go again. The winds are powerful and against us and Kim cycles straight behind Arjan to get rid off them.
When we arrive in the next town we check in at an air conditioned hotel. We drag our bikes into the small room and Kim jumps in bed.
Finally a bed… Still feeling bad.
We don’t leave the room till the next morning. Kim still feels not that good but better than yesterday. We kick off with 85km to go.
The winds are still strong and it’s gonna be another struggling against them. The scenery isn’t that different from yesterday’s. Dry grass, sometimes with animals on it who try to eat some of it. Most animals look skinny and not too healthy. We even see a dead horse along the road eaten by vultures. Most animals have a hard life in Central America. Dogs, cats, horses, cows, sheep, ect..; people don’t really care about them.
Long roads. Hot sun.
Between 35 and 40 degrees celcius.
Ice cream makes feeling less sick.
From left to right: Big Truck – Small Truck – Horse & Carrige.
We pass a mountain which looks it’s on fire. From where we take a rest, a few kilometers away from it, we can hear the fire burning down grass and trees. Nobody seems to care about it, no firemen in the wide area. Some houses are close by and even there no one to see.
Mountain on fire, no fireman seen.
In one of the last bigger towns before the border we eat some fresh melon in a park that looks like it’s in Russia about 50 years ago. Vitamins are good for you and Kim also feels a lot better after eating the melon.
USSR bridge.
USSR park.
Eating vitamines. Fresh melon.
It’s 3:30pm when we arrive at the border. The usual long line with trucks is also here present. We pass the waiting trucks again and go straight to the customs gate.
To the Nicaragua border.
At the gate they ask us if the bicycles are ours. Of course! We answer. “You have fill in a form for that!”
We fill in the forms and are directed to the customs office, a hundred meters away.
Fill in forms at an “office”?
In the office they ask us if we asked permission to enter the country. “Euh, no… how should we do that and who should we asked?”
The lady looks a bit annoyed and answers that we should do that online before showing up at the border. We answer her that we didn’t know that.
She directs us to the opposite of the road to another office to make multiple copies of our passports, including the stamps of visited countries.
We do what bin told and return to the customs office with the copies ten minutes later.
The same lady shows up and starts asking questions about the countries we visited before Nicaragua. She also wants to know when we crossed all the borders.
After that she asks where we gonna stay in Nicaragua. Not just the first night, no she wants to know all addresses from all nights. Of course we really have no idea where we gonna stay. We never know that. She still wants to know!
“Hmmm ok…”
We take one of our phones, start a navigation app and dig up seven random hotel names and address in cities we logically will pass if we cycle the common route to the border with Costa Rica. With a lot of patience she all writes it down on one of the passport copies. When done she starts typing all this information in a Whatsapp chat. For our feelings it takes hours.
When finally finished her Whatsapp conversation about all our data we disappears in an office for at least half a hour. We guess she types all data in a computer. Outside the building we see the sun going down, it’s gonna be dark outside soon.
When she returns from the office she points us to another desk to pay $12 per person for all the hassle.
After paying we finally free to go into Nicaragua. Yeah… a new country again??? (After being in the customs office for 2,5 hours ?)
Finally we can cross the border after 2,5hours of useless paperwork.
Hi Nicaragua!!! ?