Guatemala through El Salvador to Honduras

Left our hotel in Guatemala and charged off....in the wrong direction. An hour and a half later, 50 precious miles and we were back where we started from. Ok fine, now off to El Salvador, a country, justified or not neither of us were looking forward to. We ended up making it to the border before noon, again sketching our way through without title. The last thing I was on the phone with Ronnie, a friend of the guy who helped get us through the El Salvador-Guatemala border. He would be waiting for us at the El Salvador-Honduros border, where we needed him.

It was not Guatemala, but there were some amazingly beautiful parts of El Salvador, at least what we saw in the few hours we were there.

Ok, so we're coming up on the border. I really don't think anything of the Ronnie rendevous. But sure enough we come to a fork in the road and there they are the border "officials" who try to wave us down, waving obviously(by now) fake id's. We blast past them. We know better now. They take pursuit in a pick up truck. They parallel us. "It's me. It's me. Ronnie. You know me."

Ok, we slow down maybe we can use his help. Over the next few hours, several things happen. Ronnie gets us to the head of the line in the worst immigration office yet. Good. Ronnie's brother realizes we don't have title. Bad, very bad. They have us by the balls. They run off with our liscenses, passports, registrations, several times. I know, all cardinal sins in traveling. But we are in reality, traveling illegally and they have us by the balls. Oh and then there is a lightning storm and black out, thank you God or mother nature. Now we are blocked in at this impossibly crowded border, litterally dozens of truckers sleeping in there cabs while Ronnie and Jose work us for everything they can.

The border just before dark and the black out.

But we do not want to spend the night here. At the end of it they got us for a few hundred bucks but we did get in front of the crazy lines, got past without title, and got the name of a hotel in Honduras that did prove to be a port in the storm. At the end of the day it was a bargain.