After enjoying the food festival in Juayua (including a brief respite in the ice cream store to stay out of a thunderstorm), we decided it was time to leave our lovely hostel and head for the coast.

We had hoped to stay in Playa Los Cabanos, but the camping options left a lot to be desired. We opted to continue on, finally settling in at the surf town of El Tunco. The campsite was a little rustic but had a very friendly owner, a friendly one-eyed dog and perhaps the ugliest chicken I’ve ever seen. The beach was rocky and the waves, while perhaps tempting to people that know their way around a surf board, were way too rough to swim in.

With not much to hold us there, we hit the road again the next morning and drove to Laguna de Alegria. The lovely blue-green lake is situated in the crater of an extinct volcano and is surrounded by lush green hillsides. We spent two nights there. It felt great to truly be “camping” again and we enjoyed having the place to ourselves – for the most part, that is. There was an elementary school nearby and during school recess, we became a bit of a curiosity for the kids (Kristel’s edit: by this Dave means that the children would sit in the tree beside out camper and proceed to stare at us).

After this, we decided once more to try for some beach time and pointed the camper to El Cuco. We found nice hotel and, although it stretched our budget, the location couldn’t be beat. We took full advantage and enjoyed some long beach walks and played in the waves. Best of all, we had a pleasantly cool air-conditioned room to sleep in.

Next up, we headed to Perquin – a mountain town that saw extreme violence during the Salvadoran Civil War. It now houses the powerful (though severely underfunded) museum of the revolution. Though sometimes difficult to look at, this visit provided a sobering reminder of the atrocities seen here in the relatively recent past.

We spent our last night in El Salvador in a little hotel in San Miguel. As border crossings are inevitably exhausting, it has become our practice to treat ourselves to a real hotel before and after each crossing. We were expecting the next couple to be even worse than usual as we were aiming to complete two borders in two days. We wanted to spend just one night in Honduras so the plan was to cross into Honduras on day one and Nicaragua on day two.

We were up early and made it to the border by 10:00 am. Things started smoothly; we cleared the procedures in El Salvador relatively quickly and were happy to find a good English speaker at the Honduran customs office! Our hopes were high. She requested three copies each of my passport, the truck registration and my driver’s license. We were well prepared and had all this in hand. She then requested copies of the cancelled El Salvador permit. As the official had only given us one original, we needed to find the nearest the copy shop and return with the requisite copies (copy shop visit #1). When we returned, the pleasant woman then told us in perfect English that she also needed copies of our stamped passports and Honduran tourist visas….so it was off to the migration office. After a mercifully short lineup, we got our visas, stopped in at the copy shop (visit #2) and returned to the customs office.

Apparently this latest batch of paper required more processing…so we stood aside and waited, watching as other people worked their way through this same convoluted process. It was at this point that Kristel decided to take a selfie to document the painful process. This seemed unwise and I had visions of us being interrogated by heavily armed officials…perhaps being thrown into a Honduran prison.

We decided to split up. I knew that we would need some Honduran Lempiras (cash), so while I negotiated with the money changers, Kristel headed off in another direction to see about getting a permit for Chester. After some intense, bargaining I managed to change money and sat in the hot sun waiting for Kristel. No sign of her anywhere and no clear sign of progress on the vehicle permit. After 20 minutes, I went looking for her and found her sitting in an air conditioned office waiting for forms to be filled and fees to be paid. As I walked in, I noticed a live chicken (and a few small uprooted palms) in the corner. The quarantine officer laughed at my surprised reaction and replied with a smile something to the effect that the chicken didn’t have the right paperwork. With great patience and no real problems we managed to get a permit for Chester. This process took about 30 minutes and cost the equivalent of about $25. We realized that although they had spent a great amount of time filling in forms, and providing various copies of his vaccination and health certificates, nobody had even looked at Chester to see whether he matched the dog described in the paperwork.

After this, we headed back to customs to see how our permit was progressing. It looked like we were almost there. There was a fee for the permit but we could not pay her directly. Instead, we were directed to the bank around the corner, which she warned us would be closing for lunch any minute. We made a mad dash and we got there only to realize we didn’t have enough Honduran currency and they would not accept US dollars or VISA. Kristel dashed out the door looking for money changers while I stayed in the bank hoping they wouldn’t kick me out to close for lunch. Luckily, an over eager money changer noticed our plight and sprinted across the parking lot just to sell us a few more Lempiras. Kristel came back quickly and had even managed to get a better exchange than the rate I had bargained hard for. We paid the fee; got the receipt; stopped by the copy shop for 3 copies (visit #3); and headed back. When she finished filling out the triplicate form she gave us the top copy of our nearly completed form and informed us she needed three more copies of the stamped top form. Really, did I mention that this person has a copier sitting beside her? Apparently it was only to be used for official government business or perhaps not at all? Back to the copy shop again (visit #4…by this time the copy shop guys just gave us a broad grin when we walked through the door). When I handed it all back to the customs lady, we watched in horror as she stapled all the copies of everything we had provided into one big package and dropped it into a bin full of stacks of other paper… doubtlessly to be never looked at again.

There was one last stop to for someone to review all our paperwork as we exited the border area and entered Honduras…perhaps the administrative overkill is just an overzealous job creation scheme? In any case, we had succeeded: 2.5 hours in intense heat; 4 trips to the copy shop; at least one dead tree for all the paper used; and no inspection of either Chester or our truck.

We had read lots of stories that we would be subjected to numerous police and military checkpoints as we drove through Honduras and could expect some hassles. This wasn’t the case. Although we saw a few stops, we were always waved through. We stopped at a rather posh looking hotel where we thought that we would be allowed to park and were pleasantly surprised when they were willing to accept Chester (in spite of the no pets sign). We got a room and spent a nice evening getting ready (i.e. drinking beer) to repeat the procedure the next day to enter Nicaragua.

The next day, we again we got to border by 10:00 am with hopes of beating our previous day’s times. Today, we were prepared with lots of copies of everything and even had our portable printer copier set up in the truck. We were prepared.

After fumigation we were directed to Quarantine for a permit for Chester. This required a permit fee and inspection fee which needed to be paid at the bank. When we got there, the lineup was long and not moving. I suggested we go to migration, which was just next door, and get our passports stamped. We did this only to return to an even longer line. It was over 30 minutes before we were able to pay the fees and get the receipt so we could return for Chester’s permit. To our surprise, the officials actually inspected Chester and even advised us to have a vet look at him as he had an eye infection. We had noticed some excess discharge in his eyes the last few days and had been concerned and the fellow happily gave us the number of a vet in Leon. Kristel went in the adjacent office to get the paperwork done while I waited outside with Chester. This was mistake as the fellow filling out the forms was apparently infatuated with Kristel (told her she was beautiful and invited her to stay with him). I suspect this was at least part of the reason it took almost 45 minutes to complete the paperwork. We were almost 2 hours into the process, still needed the truck permit, and I didn’t think there was much of a chance we were going to beat yesterday’s time. As we got to the customs counter, I handed over my passport, truck registration and driver’s license. I smugly stood there with a pile of copies under my arm only to watch the officer place my documents on the copier beside him and make a single copy and return them to me. He typed out a form, printed it, stamped it, signed it, copied it, and handed it to me. I stood there in disbelief as he told me that was it. But…..I have all these copies….our portable printer is at the ready in the truck… and it’s only been 5 minutes…are you sure?

We were in Nicaragua and only about an hour from Leon where we thought we had a good lead on a pet friendly hotel. Well, the road was a little rougher than we expected and one hour turned into two (though Kristel swears that I elevated my pothole dodging skills to a new level). As we pulled up to the address though, there was no hotel to be found. We tried one more address (Google Maps had shown it in a different location) but we again came up empty. There was nothing resembling a hotel there either. To add to the frustration, we had no internet connection. Our El Salvador plan was invalid and we’d not set up our phone for Nicaragua yet… this had been the only pet friendly location we had identified the night before. We wandered aimlessly around the center of the City and checked a few hotels we came across but either it had no parking for our truck or would not accept Chester. I mentioned that I had seen signs for a hotel on the outskirts of the City. Despite its sketchy name, the “Lady M” had impressive signs and lots of them. I convinced Kristel that we should check it out. As we neared we also began to see signs for a guesthouse called the Mariposa and were sure we were on a good track. Then the signs directed us off the highway and then up an alley and finally up a road so bad I needed to put the truck in 4WD. We came to the Mariposa only to see it was closed, perhaps permanently. And then we saw the Lady M and thought that perhaps it should be closed but it wasn’t. It was every bit as sketchy as the name implied and there was no place even close to level where we could camp. The restaurant was open and we thought we would stop and regroup, but they didn’t take US $ or VISA and the nearest ATM was a couple of kilometers back. We were back in the truck and decided that our best bet might to go back up the road 45 minutes to the last City where we had seen what appeared to have several good looking hotels. It was now 4:00 pm and time was no longer on our side. It would be dark by 6 and we did not want to be driving after sundown…but at least we had a plan…sort of. We got to the “very nice” hotel we had seen and inquired about a room but they wouldn’t accept Chester. On to “nice” hotel and, again, they wouldn’t accept Chester. On to the “okay” hotel, but still they wouldn’t accept Chester. We were about to leave for the “sketchy” hotel when I noticed a nice flat parking spot under a tree next to the pool with showers and bathrooms. I suggested we see if we could negotiate a “camping rate” as it was starting to get dark, Kristel agreed. We managed to make arrangements that would allow us to camp in the lot and use the bathroom in one of their rooms. It was hot and muggy and we killed as much time as we could in the restaurant before returning to the camper for the night.

Perhaps we should have turned in earlier, though. At 6:00 am the following morning the groundskeepers decided it was time to trim the tree we were parked under and began dropping branches on our roof. When I awoke, I looked through the vent to see a man on a ladder staring back. Kristel got out of bed to see another groundskeeper peering into the window. As I stepped out of the camper, they whistled at me and motioned for me to move the truck. I gestured back that they could go work on one of the other ten trees they had to trim in the lot but my emphatic pantomiming seemed to be lost on them. Kristel went in to use the shower and I decided to move the truck before more dropping branches damaged our solar panel. As we were handing in our key, I was asked how everything was so I told about the incident and said that I thought it was extremely rude. All I got was a smile and a nod.

We headed to the mall where we had seen a phone store and we hoped to get set up for internet service, but discovered that it did not open until 11:00. We went to the coffee shop with WiFi to make a plan. We thought it best to head to Granada. We desperately wanted a small slice of civilization and we had solid leads on three places. We decided to email all three, drive to Managua, which was about halfway, and check there for a response. Luckily, one of these requests panned out. When we stopped in Managua, we were happy to see an email from Chris. He had a place for us at “Miss Margrit’s” and neither the truck nor Chester would be a problem.

We headed out feeling markedly more positive but we were hit with one more hurdle heading out of Managua: we were pulled over at a police checkpoint. After taking my license, the officer began to explain that he was going to have to ticket me for driving with my lights on in the daytime. A Spanglish argument ensued but Kristel’s “Ridicula, es mas seguro” seemed to deflate his lame attempt at getting us to offer him a bride, and after a brief consultation with his partner behind the truck (during which time I considered my chances of outrunning the broken down, ancient Lada that was the police car) he returned my license and grumpily sent us on our way. That was really our first experience with a bribery attempt and I thought we handled it well. As we got rolling again, I mentioned to Kristel that so far Nicaragua was not endearng itself to me and perhaps we should consider getting to Costa Rica sooner rather than later.

Luckily, though, we were greeted warmly in Granada. We were welcomed into Miss Margrits and managed to recover from our journey over a couple complementary “welcome beers” with Chris and the other guests. Needless to say, we have decided to give Nicaragua another chance.