Border Crossing: Honduras to El Salvador at El Amatillo

We got on the bus in Choluteca early in the morning after a not-so-comfortable night in the first air-conditioned room of our trip. Both of us had sore throats but we were both excited to be leaving Honduras and heading on to El Salvador. The border town of El Amatillo was a 2-hour chicken bus ride away from Choluteca and the bus was so empty, we could put all our bags on a seat without having to pay extra. The scenery we passed by that morning was pretty. Lots of green hills and farmland, a taste of what was to greet us in El Salvador. The day was bright and sunny too adding extra beauty to the view from the bus window.

On our last chicken bus ride across the southern tip of Honduras.

Once the bus reached the last stop, we loaded up our backpacks for the walk across the checkpoints. First we passed the messy Honduran immigration, which was full of people pushing and cutting the queue. Then we walked across a bridge to the checkpoint on the El Salvadorean side, which was pretty much empty. We noticed that we did not have a stamp in our passport to indicate that we had entered the country but the immigration officer told us that our details were already in their computer system. So we continued onto our first bus ride in El Salvador.

The last immigration checkpoint on the Honduran side of El Amatillo.

Yet another river seperates the two countries here at El Amatillo. The dramatic hills at the side of the river were a welcome sight.

The immigration checkpoint at the El Salvadorean side.

Before coming to El Salvador we had not really read up on the country or planned a route. We knew we had to get to San Miguel, the closest city to El Amatillo, but we had no idea about places to stay or places we would have to pass through to get there. One noticeable thing about the buses in El Salvador is that you immediately notice that you are on a comfortable coach, and not in a chicken bus (that we had grown accustomed to over the past few months). The chairs and overall feel of the buses were  luxurious compared to what we had been used to, and of course, now we had to pay in US dollars (the currency in El Salvador). We had to take two buses to get to San Miguel and we both fell asleep on the second bus and had to be woken up when we had arrived!

We arrived in San Miguel just as it started to rain. We walked around but when i saw a shop selling guns and other firearm accessories, i told Rick that i did not want to stay in this city. It suddenly felt dangerous and i was immediately uncomfortable. When it started to rain, we were both a bit frazzled. Rick suggested heading onwards and out of San Miguel to a place that he had read about in the guide called Perquin, another 2 hours away, situated in the mountains. It had a rich history as a guerrilla stronghold and scene of a terrible massacre during the civil war. We ate some food at the bus station before hopping onto a packed bus to the town of San Francisco Gotera. From there, we caught a 4-wheel drive pickup for the rest of the journey further away from civilisation and up the winding highland roads to Perquin.

Border Crossing: Nicaragua to Honduras at Guasale

We left Granada earlyish. We didn’t want to rush ourselves and we were fairly confident that we had a good chance of making it all the way to the border crossing at El Amatillo into El Salvador.

First was a bus to Managua, then to Leon. From Leon to Chinandega then to the border with Honduras at Guasale. While we were on this last bus route, it started to rain. By the time we had reached the last stop, the rain had subsided and we put on our backpacks to cross the border on foot. Since we had already renewed our CA-4 visas, we didn’t have any problem at all at the border checkpoints. We had made this exact crossing but in the other direction into Nicaragua around a month earlier, so we knew exactly what to expect this time around. We managed to navigate through the swarm of pedicab guys and made it across the bridge on our own.

When we entered back into Honduras, it was clear that we were not going to make it all the way over to the border with El Salvador. The sky was getting dark and we knew that we would have to find a place nearby and continue the next day. It had started to rain again, so Rick and i made a quick decision to make our way onto a colectivo which took us to the town of Choluteca, Honduras, a town we had passed through a month earlier.

Safe journey…

This time we walked across the bridge instead of being conned by a pedicab driver. Lots of trucks were lined up on the other side.

The river we crossed at the border, with black clouds looming ahead.

Border Crossing: Nicaragua

We ended up leaving Tegucigalpa later than planned. We were pretty exhausted from the long bus journey the previous day and had not eaten anything for dinner so we crossed the road and had a local Honduran breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall just a few doors down from our hotel. It was there that we had some overly-sour sour cream in our baleadas, which upset our tummies. Not a good start to another long day of traveling.

Our bus from Tegucigalpa to Choluteca.

We hopped onto the bus to Choluteca, one of Honduras’ southern towns just before the border crossing, right outside our hotel. The bus was slow and stopped to pick up and drop off people everywhere. It took us 3 hours, and at the Coluteca bus terminal, we found the colectivo vans to Guasaule, a tiny border town. We were not prepared for the commotion that greeted us as soon as the van stopped at the last point in Honduras before the border checkpoint though. A huge crowd of local pedicab/trishaw guys just descended on us, literally grabbing our backpacks  from the roof and loading them onto a pedicab before we had even exited the van. A fight broke out among them and we were in the middle of it all, which made us eventually feel coerced to pay 100 Lempiras (roughly 4 Euros) to one of the guys, just to get us out of this mess (which was a bit unnerving). We were first taken to the Honduran checkpoint to get our passports stamped before proceeding to cross a bridge over to the Nicaraguan immigration point.

Our full pedicab. Those two guys on the right took us over to Nicaragua.

The Honduras immigration checkpoint at the Guasaule crossing. Just a couple of tables.

Goodbye Honduras.

The river between Honduras and Nicaragua.

While we were crossing the bridge (quite a few border crossings have been over a river),  we were stopped by a couple of military personnel who thoroughly checked through our backpacks, and thankfully found nothing to stop us, so we continued to the other side. While Rick went into the Nicaraguan checkpoint to settle the entry fees and get our entry stamps (we paid 12 USD each), i waited outside with our bags. The pedicab guys, started asking for a tip ie. more money, which we were certainly not going to pay,having realised by that time that we had been conned (we could have walked across, it wasn’t as far as they had told us). At this point they were getting quite annoying, and the more they harped on about their “tip”, the more resolved we were not to give them a cent more than what we had agreed upon.

The end of the bridge and the entrance into Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan immigration personnel told Rick that we had only 3 more days left to either extend our CA-4 visas in Nicaragua (CA-4 countries are Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – and you get a total of 90 days for all 4 countries) or quickly make our way to Costa Rica to exit and reenter. We were told that we could get an extension in Leon,the first place we had decided to stay in Nicaragua, so we decided to head to the immigration office there and see how much it would cost us when we were settled.

The pedicab guy then took us to the bus stop after the immigration point, where we got on a chicken bus to wait for the 2-hour ride to Leon. Before getting on the bus, Rick realised that his sunglasses were missing, so he ran after the disgruntled pedicab guys (they were unhappy that we had not tipped them), and when he confronted them, one of them said that they had, rather conveniently, “just found” the sunglasses. It was not a nice thing to have to deal with at all. At this point we were both pretty tired from the journey and the heat and still had upset stomachs.

Waiting for our bus to Leon to leave after getting Ricks sunglasses back.

On the bus to Leon, we met a South African couple who we eventually ended up sharing a cab with into Leon from the bus stop (20 Cordoba’s each). It was already dark and we were stopped literally at the side of the main road to Managua. The taxi driver dropped us at a reasonably-priced hostel (Hostel La Clinica), where we spent our first night in Leon, Nicaragua.