Borders, Bureaucracy, and the Road to Choluteca

Day 27 Pines 2 Patagonia log

Santiago Nonualco, El Salvador

To

Choluteca, Honduras

We began our day thankful that Red’s bike La Fonda was still equipped with a fully inflated rear tire. Next we all did a once over on the bikes and the we hit the road.

Each new border crossing brings unnecessary worry and stress due to our lack of experience and the major lack of efficiency throughout the process. We are learning to stay calm, ask for help if we don’t know what to do next and have a little faith that it’s going to work.

Crossing into Honduras was nothing new, just more spread out. We got a little turned around and ended up riding around in the commercial truck sector for a few minutes before driving the wrong way along the endless lines of trucks attempting to find the exit / entrance we should have taken. This brought us to a loading dock where we would be canceling our El Salvadoran TIP and then moving to Immigration to be stamped out.

When we applied for our Honduran TIP for the bikes it was quite comical. It appeared as if we were back in the states… 3 older ladies and one older gentleman all playing games and watching videos on their phone while ONE young lady handled all of the incoming traffic. It was painfully obvious we were going to be there a long time. The “to be filed” pile took up 3/4 of the room adjacent where we sat.

While we waited & waited & waited, we met another adventure rider in the TIP office who told us that due to a change in regulations last week, we needed to give the next crossing, Nicaragua 7 days notice online or we wouldn’t get in… This started a whirlwind of messages to riders and riders groups and feverishly checking Overlander to verify its validity. We cleared the last few booths and were on the move again but now with a black cloud of doubt about getting into Nicaragua on time hanging over our heads. We were also told that our GoPros and Starlink would not be allowed to cross and must be shipped over Nicaragua and picked up in Costa Rica.

We rode for 3-1/2 more hours pretty much in silence as we all pondered what we would do if we got stuck here for a week and do we need to spend the time and money shipping our stuff.

We checked into our Air B&B, started a load of laundry and began to forage for food. We ended up in a second story, open air restaurant that we all agreed were the first white folks to ever be in. After the stares and whispers stopped a man from the table next to us came over and introduced himself. Valentine spoke decent english and told us he studied law in the states. He was a larger than life character who had fun over inflating his status and value to this city for the traveling Gringos.

Food was good, drinks were wrong but strong and we had made friends again. After dinner we walked back to our place and developed a plan to get into Nicaragua.