I finished the TEFL course Friday night at 7:30, 22 March 2013, after teaching three hours of English to local Mexican students. By 11:00 Saturday morning, laundry was rescued, bags were packed, and I heading to the ADO bus terminal and a ride to Tapuchula, MX, on the Guatemalan border. In Tapachula I learned that TicaBus, the only bus line that could could carry me all the way to Panama City was booked solid for several days. Semana Santa (Easter Week, and the busiest time for travel in Central America) was starting. Not smart on my part. A tour office, still open at 10:00pm, sold me a $40 ticket on a Galgos bus to San Salvador, El Salvador, leaving at 6:00 Sunday morning. The recommended hotel was $28 dollars, but walking two doors further lead to a decent $10-per-night hotel. The smiling front desk girl was back on duty at 5:00 in the morning as I checked out, still smiling, clean and freshly dressed. At the Guatemala border, policemen came on board and looked in a couple of bags, then we continued on. Guatemala is noticeably poorer than southern Mexico, but the land is much greener and the people display more artistic spirit. The bus stopped a couple hours outside of Guatemala City and a few passengers changed to a much older bus. In Guatemala City, I learned that my checked bag was heading to San Salvador instead, I should have jumped on the other bus. Spanish uses double negatives and I fumbled the translation. Fortunately, in another terminal clear across town an old Greyhound bus was loading passengers for San Salvador. Another $40 and I was on. A little jujitsu on the battery connections and the engine roared to life, quickly filling the terminal with diesel smoke. Off we went. At the El Salvador border, policemen inspected several checked bags, which left me feeling smug knowing that my checked bag was somewhere else. Arriving in San Salvador, I just happened to ask the right guy about my bag. After a short trip to another terminal, there it was. Well into the night, the bus station security guard told me to return at 2:00am for a King Quality bus to Managua, Nicaragua.
El Salvador to Nicaraugua - 25 March 2013
Three hours of sleep in another $10 hotel room and I was ready at 2:00am Monday for the next bus ride. Three of us rode a nice bus across San Salvador to an upscale bus terminal, where an entire bus load of people with reservations were waiting. I was kicked off to fend for myself in the middle of San Salvador in the wee hours of the morning, before the taxis were running. The streets were deserted, except for the lost gringo struggling with bags to some unknown, unlit destination. I hadn't eaten for 20 hours, so tears almost came to my eyes while passing a closed Tony Roma's American-style Barbecue restaurant. By 5:00am the taxis and city buses started running and some conductor drug me onboard an overloaded minivan. Hanging half-in and half-out of the door, with 70 pounds of bags, I almost fell off on some of the high-speed corners. Finally they took 25-cents from me, slowed down, pointed off into the distance, and threw me out. One more bus and a taxi brought me to the oasis called Transporte del Sol bus station. A bus was loading and one last seat was available. Another $40 and off we went. El Salvador is quite urban and Americanized compared to Guatemala. They drive many nice, modern vehicles and people were very helpful. Their currency is the US Dollar, to include Sacajewea dollar coins, which were such a failure in America that they must have been rounded up and sent to a banana republic to do hard time. Climbing some mountains then brought us to a rocky, dry, higher-elevation land that is Honduras. Crossing the border into Honduras was easy, two well-presented El Salvadoran officials checked our passports against a computer printed bus manifest and sent us on. The part of Honduras we passed through is tough, dry, harsh, rocky, and sparsely settled. Leaving Honduras and crossing into Nicaragua, a Honduran policeman made a show of searching the checked baggage. I got off the bus just as he picked my bag as the only bag to search. Seeing only clothes and books, he stopped searching and tried to put it all back. Several minutes later, struggling and sweating, his sunglasses fell off, but I decided not to laugh out loud. The Nicaraguans pretended to check our bags, but the main event was a three hour wait outside the bus, in the sun, surrounded by begging cripples, food vendors, and money changers, while they performed some sort of voodoo on our passports. In Managua, Nicaragua, the sounds of Afro-influenced music were prevalent and the people were much rougher than the El Salvadorans. Managua, late at night, is not nice. I finally let an aggressive cab driver take me to a hotel. It was $30 and the managers were slimy, so I left and the cab driver threw a fit, since he would not get his cut from the hotel. Another cab driver saw this and stopped. Now I was in the middle of two fighting cab drivers. Finally, I left in the second cab to a $20 dollar hotel run by an ancient lady. Quite hungry from not eating all day, I ditched the bags and headed out to eat. The old lady threw a fit because it was too dangerous, "no seguro, muy peligroso" she kept repeating. She claimed that she would have to go along to protect me. I wondered what an 80-year-old woman could do to protect a hungry ex-Marine, carrying a sharp knife, and ready to fight like a trapped rat over a morsel of food? She finally let me out of a locked gate and I found some food, and returned alive. Admittedly, Managua is spooky in the dark. At 4:30am Tuesday, the TransNica bus terminal was a madhouse and no seats were available. The TicaBus terminal was also crazy, but waiting patiently got me the last standby seat. This is where the travelling dregs of America were performing, referenced in the post "Ugly Americans."
Nicaragua to Costa Rica - 26 March 2013
Lack of sleep, little to eat, and three previous days already spent on buses made this a tough trip. Sitting on the sunny side of the bus, next to a hot window was pure torture. A chorus of three screaming American infants did not help, which led to the post "Babies on Buses." The border crossing was a simple visual inspection on the Nicaragua side, but the Costa Ricans made a big show of unloading all our bags and running them through an airport-style baggage scanner. The video screen was small and the bag pictures were even smaller, so they missed my knife. Finally arriving in San Jose, Costa Rica, was a true blessing. The next bus to Panama City was leaving at 11:00pm but was full, so I rented a hotel room in the bus terminal, ate, showered, and then tried for a standby seat at 11:00pm, but no luck. The next day's bus had one seat available. Another 40-some dollars and it was mine. With a good night's sleep I spent the morning walking around town, knowing that a seat was waiting for me at "dos horas" (2:00 pm). I decided to check in two hours early just to be safe and at 12:00 noon was in line talking to another passenger, when someone called out to him to get on the bus. He had made it on standby. A little more small talk and I asked him when he was leaving and he said, "Right now, for Panama." I had mistaken "doce horas" (12:00 noon) for "dos horas" (2:00 pm). I failed to check in on time and he got my seat. One more night in the bus station hotel.
Costa Rica to Panama - 28-29 March 2013
This time I made the bus on time and, interestingly enough, wasn't the only one that missed yesterday's bus, so maybe the time really was changed. We left the San Jose station an hour late and headed south for Panama. The scenery in Costa Rica was the most beautiful of the whole trip. The hills and greenery were amazing and for several miles we rolled along the western beaches. Traffic slowed us a little, so we did not stop for food, and still barely made the 6:00pm cutoff time for the border crossing. The Panamanian baggage search was the most thorough on the whole trip. At one point they even made a show of bringing a strange-looking dog around to sniff our luggage. But when we were re-loading the bus to continue, I am positive that I saw the "drug dog" walking around free, sniffing the street and licking up spilled tourist food. Street dogs are much cheaper than real drug dogs. Our first and only food stop was after riding for 11 hours. Early in the morning, we finally we pulled in to Panama City, after a 16-hour trip. As soon as it was daylight, myself and another passenger jumped in a taxi and saw some of the Panama Canal.
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