The Nomads

beginning of the 1 km lineup at the border...poor truckers, we went right through to the front

Day 48 Tuesday May 27

Left Danli, Honduras 11:00 AM
Temp: 28 degrees C
Cloudy and Humid

Last night was an ordeal! The day before, after an early start with nothing to eat we made good time and finally decided to stop when we came across a little island of corporate fast-food America at Comayague and pulled into the “Dunkin Donuts”!

The place looked very clean and the food tasted great, super coffee!

But by six that evenng when we stopped for the night near the Nicarguan border I was really feeling bad and was curled into a foetal crouch and shivering like I had hyperthermia. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong because, apparently, I was the only one having any distress.

Not for long….Sue and Denis were joining me in the crabapple two-step all night and by morning we were very sleep deprived and couldn’t risk leaving till almost noon after a heavy application immodium.

By the time we got to the border I was still as nauseous as I had been all night and could barely stand. In this condition, seriously dehydrated and not able to eat or drink, I spent the next four hours hassling with a corrupt border official who wouldn’t let Sue into Nicaragua because the Guatemalan officials forgot to stamp her passport when we entered from Belize. They were processed all at the same time and all the fees were charged and paid at the same time, we were handed the three passports and told we were good to go.

Well now the official insisted that there was a $90 US fine for being in the Union of Central American States without the proper stamp. When I pointed out that there was no problem with her passport getting in to Honduras (a member country of the same “union”), he just shrugged. We were free to go but Susie would have to go back a six hour drive to the capital and get the right stamp from some government office. Or she could pay the fine and he would give her a five day pass to get through Nicaragua. When others tried to intervene he appeared to relent and said that if I gave him $5 US to pay for the phone calls he would contact the customs officials where we entered Guatemala and everything would be okay. He used the money to buy a cell card for his phone, spent three seconds on it and told me”sorry, you’ll have to pay the fine” so now I was out an extra five bucks! I finally agreed to write this off as the cost of completing the trip but had no US cash so offered to pay with the American Express checks I had stashed. No Problem.

Well, not really! The official wouldn’t accept them but suggested that I take them to the local bank for the cash; the bank wouldn’t touch them! What now? He found a local border money changer who was willing to change them for Honduran Limpiras at less than the going rate so it cost me over a hundred for $85 US. Now I had to make up the difference in Limperas I still was holding for the return trip but he insisted that since I wasn’t paying in US dollars he would have to add an extra hundred for the cost of exchange(no such thing) …..a fool could see the transparency of this scheme but he had us over a barrel, It would have cost us more than that to go back and get the “permit” so I bit the bullet and let him clean me out. Total cost to “smuggle” Susie into Nicaragua: $118 US.

Also, during this whole song and dance I suddenly realized that my bike registration and insurance had gone missing along with a folded $50 US that I had stuffed into the registration for emergencies. I was not having a good day! And to top it all off I was reeling from the dehydration and heat and was struggling all the while not to vomit or fall over.

I was thanking my lucky stars that I had made colour photocopies of all my documents and dug out them out.

So now, the only thing they would accept was the original! Sorry, don’t have it…. It’s lost or stolen…!

Whole new routine…

They finally did agree to take the copy and I bid them a less than fond farewell. The last thing was to present the passports, stamps and permits at the crossing.

Imagine how I felt when the guard looked at the receipt for the fine and the permit for Sue and shook his head, looked me in the eye and said the permit was incorrectly completed and invalid. I was about to go ballistic when he smiled and told me it (the permit I had just paid $118 for) wasn’t necessary, that he didn’t require it to let us in.

He suggested we could probably do something about it in Honduras but we weren’t in any mood to go back or waste any more time as it was past three in the afternoon by then and we had over 250 mountain road kilometres to do before dark which is at around 5:30 down here. Not much hope for it.

We were starting to panic when I found a decent hotel in a little town not quite halfway to Managua (where we were headed) just as it was getting dark and I headed straight to the bed and passed out.

As I write this none of us has eaten or been inclined to today and we’re hoping we feel better tomorrow.

Kilometers - Daytrip: 121 km total: 12,128
Gas: $ 20.10
Lodging: Hotel Panorama $75

# posted by Richard and Susie @ 5:31 AM 0 Comments