The drive to Choluteca was short in distance but long in time. I crossed at Amatillo, a horrible place. Hundreds of border helpers compete to steal your money. My helper was Jose, who saved me from eleven other helpers who stopped me in a roundabout on the way to Amatillo and waved their name badges in my face.

I followed Jose (in the bed of his brother’s truck) to the vehicle exit point and he had the official sign my papers. He had a military officer skip me to the head of the line and only asked for a quarter each to make copies. I thought these were promising signs that I was not going to be ripped off.

After officially exiting El Salvador I followed Jose to the first of two immigrations buildings where I paid a man in an official uniform $3 to give me an official receipt after looking briefly at my passport. I do not know what function this served.

I followed Jose to the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant where I was to leave my bike. I asked if I could park closer but Jose and his brother assured that I would be ticketed if I did. Jose’s brother assured me he would watch my bike and that I should be tranquilo. I took my tank bag (with the big Canon in it) and Jose and I took a tuk-tuk (Indian taxi) back to the immigration building 300m away.

Jose
again used his line-skipping powers to get my crossing application ahead of everyone else. We went to the photocopying center and paid $30 for copies and for a woman at a typewriter to type up my crossing application.

We went to the bank and paid $32 in road tax. I was out of cash at this time and so to continue the process of bleeding money everywhere I had to have Jose’s other brother take us back to Santa Rosa de Lima to an ATM in the pouring rain. We got stuck in semi traffic there and back and the process took an hour. Visa called me about “suspicious activity” and I assured them that I really was in a monsoon in El Salvador. The woman sounded quite surprised. I had to call my bank to find out why my card wasn’t work, it was my daily ATM withdrawal limit. This worked to my advantage as I was able to use it as an excuse to pay less money.

Jose brought me to another office where I was to pay $70 for a reason I am still not sure of. Jose also asked for $50 to pay off the fumigation man, which he assured me would save me two hours. It was now getting dark and I had to drive 50 miles so I paid them off.

Jose and his brothers escorted me to the immigration checkpoint and I was on my way. I entered Honduras at dusk in the rain. I encountered two police checkpoints and crossed the bridge to Choluteca in the dark. I saw signs for the Paradise Hotel but instinctively distrust anything with “paradise” in the name. I ended up staying there anyways, it’s quite good for the price. There was a convention of Shrimp farmers from the US in attendance when I arrived, drinking by the pool.

In the El Salvador pictures below please note the man guarding the Subway with a pump-action shotgun. This is the norm for many businesses in Central America, though sometimes they have machine guns.

Today I took pictures of Choluteca bridge and then went to the parque central and took more pictures. I met two brothers who wanted to talk to me about my bike. We talked for a while and then a third brother showed up, and then a sister. The first two are Alex and Hansel (there’s a picture of them below) and the third brother is in the yellow polo shirt. The sister is pictured next to Hansel. The sister talked to me for a long time in English about her life, her late Canadian husband, a boyfriend from Illinois, and about life in Honduras and Nicaragua (where she was born). She told me she thinks BMW bikes are the best and that they are muy bonita.

The picture of me with all of the girls below was at a gas station near my hotel in El Salvador. They wanted one for themselves and I asked them to take a picture with my camera too. They were all headed to work in a van but I didn’t catch what they did. The interaction started off with one of their coworkers walking up to me and saying “these girls think you’re cute!” I’m sure he was messing with them… It seems fairly common when only the guy speaks English.

Today Alex told me a girl walking by said I was cute and I assumed he was messing with me… Until she walked over and kissed me on the cheek. Alex then told me she was known for being muy loco.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Granada, Nicaragua, which is supposed to be fairly safe and touristy.