Endurance Test

12^th February

Shenanigans of the highest order so far today.  Last night, I asked for a taxi to be ordered for 8am so I could arrive in good time for my 9.30 bus to Managua in Nicaragua..  The owner of the guest house immediately said: "8.30 will be fine."  Alarm bells should have rang.  

"No," I insisted, "8am".  He seemed a little too laid back regarding my travel arrangments.  The buses only go once a day.  I had my ticket, which had involved a lengthy slog across the less than pretty Tegucigalpa, to the only place anywhere near the centre that sold the tickets (the actual Tica Bus left from an office five or more miles from the centre), and I wanted to make sure I’d get there in good time.  I’ve missed planes by ten seconds before due to other people’s planning, and had no intention of spending another night in Honduras.

I went to bed pretty early after enjoying my second pizza-hut meal in the last twenty or so years, (the most recent being in San Salvador, less than a week ago), a small 7-inch pizza, a 7 inch plate piled as high as possible with salad and a Pepsi, all for £3.50.  I’m getting to like Pizza Hut.  They're better than most of the burger joints anyway.

I wake up between 6 and 7 most mornings whilst on the road.  There was no breakfast, no proprietor, no coffee, but at least there should be a cab coming at 8am.  By 8.25 am still no taxi so I caught one in the street.  Off we went, dodging the most terrible drivers in the world, but it wasn’t long before I realised he was going in the opposite direction of where I needed to be.  I started to panic a bit at this stage.  I ordered him back to the centre and took another cab with an older more experienced driver.

I couldn’t decide whether stressing about getting there in time, was worthwhile or whether I should just see what happens, and worse case scenario remain in the ugly city another night and forfeit my booked room in Managua.  It's more sensible to stay calm, but while there’s still a chance of making it, it’s hard not to get excited.  

The traffic was so bad I alternated between, we're not gonan make it, I guess I'll just have to stay one more day here, and the traffic's moving, we might just make it, with 15, then ten minutes to spare!  

The roadworks: frustrating, the other drivers: all fools!  Why has he stopped there?  Please don’t let me getting another taxi back into town at the end of this trip. 

After much involuntary fretting and extremely long waits at red lights we made it to the departure point with fifteen minutes to spare.  I looked at the printed ticket.  It read: arrive 45 minutes before departure.  Shit.  But surely, this is Central America.  People are always late.  Buses are always late.  Life is always late.  I’m never late!

The Tica Bus employee cared not what time I arrived, and the bus wasn’t even there.  It was late arriving from El Salvador.  All that worry for nothing.  And in the end, it actually didn’t leave until exactly 10.30 am.  I'm sure they think that being exactly one hour late is a good, as long as it was exactly one hour.  This is the third Tica Bus I’ve taken and the only late departure so far.  2 out of three isn't so bad.

Tica Bus, along with one or two other companies, specialise in cross border city to city travel.  This particular company operate from Mexico all the way to Panama, and you can do it all on one ticket, although it includes a couple of overnight stops and some long long days on buses.  Every Tica Bus office has a hotel above it.  There are in this business and they’re in deep.

Today, the Honduras to Nicaragua border crossing became THE worst crossing I’ve ever had to make.  It starts well, with an opportunity to change my remaining Lempiras to Nicaraguan Cordoba, a much-needed service in Central America.  

It’s the same story at every border.  Men, and occasionally women, meet every vehicle brandishing with handfuls of notes shouting “Cambio”.  Although as it's so hot here, they say it rather than shout.

I’ve exchanged money at every border I've crossed so far apart from Guatemala, getting rid of every last note of the country I'd departing.  The heat is turned up to max here, and the entire bus of passengers, (of all ages including one baby) take refuge in the shade of the bus while the Bus employee takes our passports somewhere to check us all out of Honduras.

We wait twenty minutes in whatever shade can be located, then all pile back on the bus (takes another ten minutes just to get back on), to drive what seems like fifty yards, (take another ten minutes to pile off) get off the bus to have an “examination” of some kind, possibly related to the Zika virus?  

We line up and a dilapidated cabin and one by one enter to stand in front of some kind of heat sensor.  They ask me something in Spanish.  I reply that I don’t understand Spanish, how about English?  They say I can go.  Ha ha What?  I guess I'm not sick.  Good.

We then have to walk another fifty yards, drag our bags back off the bus, which has driven ahead, and queue up for the pleasure of passing through a ramshackle warehouse with some kind of customs house inside.   All this time, the passengers are harangued by beggars and young boys wanting to carry bags for a tip.  At least they’re working for their money, but I don’t ever want anyone touching my bags unless either; I’m dead, or they’re working for a bus or plane company.  

“No neccesito.”  I’ve carried my bags far enough in the last 3+ months, and will make it another fifty yards. 

We pass through these “customs” then have to wait around in the heat for 2-3 hours while the officials interrogate one or two passengers.  A Dutch tourist, (one of three “gringos” on board) is away in the office for over an hour, and at one stage has to come back to the bus to remove his bags for them to look at for all of ten seconds before giving up the charade. 

While waiting, I consider buying one of the little boy (of about 6) that hang around this dump, an ice cream.  He’s begging the equally dis-shelved ice cream sales man for some time with a coin that obviously doesn't meet the asking price, but he suddenly disappears.  I notice a few of the children that work the border spend their tip money on ice cream!  That’s why they do this crappy work?  I fail to understand how fucked up that is.  Surely money is more valuable than that here?

Amongst the touts, that are regularly found across all transport stations in Central America, there’s a woman of about eighty selling mango and various fruits.  This isn’t an unusual site in Latin America.  I don’t really want anything, but buy some mango from her anyway.  She charges too much, but that’s ok.  These bags of mango is a speciality of the area.  Slightly salted mango strips in a plastic bag, with some brown sauce poured inside.

I ask for a sample of the brown sauce on a piece before I allow it in my bag.  Shock! Horror!  It’s the most unpalatable nasty substance I have ever tasted.  It’s so salty, but there’s something more, it is anti-flavour, disgusting.  So I eat a few strips of salted mango without the sauce, before giving the pack back to the woman.  Why ruin mango, when it’s naturally good?  Actually, it’s good as a drink when it’s sweet, but these ones seem to be picked and eaten before they’ve ripened properly and are sour.  

At least I've tried it, but like every other local food in Central America, it’s revolting (sorry amigos).  I start to dream about eating my Ma's home cooking again.  Any kind of food from England. Or Europe.  Anything nice!  I wonder if there’s a Pizza Hut in Managua?  I bet there is.  Actually there's plenty of European style food available, just not to the same standard - it's fine really.

I watch the activity that surrounds our bus from a bench under the shade of the warehouse.  It's still hot, but staying still helps.  It's not only buses and travellers pass through here, there are a multitude of articulated lorries and smaller trucks carrying produce.  One truck is piled high with honey-dew melons.  I want one.  I should have asked for one, now I come to think of it, perhaps we could have come to an arrangement.  People with clip boards and paperwork constantly walk back and forth being official or some such nonsense.  

Some of my fellow passengers have been standing outside the locked door of our bus since we passed through customs: much more than an hour, perhaps two, by now.  And now everyone but myself have swarmed around  the door again.  When will they learn, I think, they can’t all get on at once.  Then I notice passengers boarding, albeit very slowly.  Why so slow?  Hang on!  It’s time!  We’re going.  I won’t be called to be interrogated, no-one will.  We are freeee!  I get to the bus just as the official calls my name.  I take my passport and enter the bus, one of the first to board!  Why have they kept us waiting for so long?  Bastards.  Worst Border crossing ever!  Leaving Israel is always a terrible experience (I've done it twice, and both times, was searched and questioned at length).

Back on the bus, I read Kindle on my ipad to kill the time.   The man sitting next to me calms down after berating the customs officials about the length of our processing.  It’s now apparent I won’t reach my lodgings for tonight until way after dark, something I always try to avoid, but I booked a place just one block from the bus terminus this time.

Half an hour into the continued journey we are halted at a check point, and a police office of some kind boards to walk up and down asking questions and poking about in the overhead storage.  I cover my laptop with hat and read the kindle, in case the laptop makes him think I’m rich and perhaps carrying some superfluous dinero he could relieve me of.  I don’t look at him.  I can tell he wants me too.  I carry on reading.  It feels a bit like the old movies, where travellers/ reporters who pass through Central America would get a shake down of some kind.  Times have moved on I think.  The officer shares a joke with a few of the passengers.  I still wouldn’t put that kind of thing past a provincial police though.  Honduras and Nicaragua feel less welcoming, than Guatemala and El Salvador but that might just be me being paranoiad.

We stop briefly at a petrol station in the city of Leon to let a woman off.  Wherever these buses stop, taxi drivers await.  It will be the same in Managua.  I walk past them the majority of time.  They love to overcharge, especially foreigners.

At the terminus in Managua, I hear "taxi" at least ten times, but I scoot out and away to the lodgings just around the corner.  I team up with a German traveller for a belated dinner then retire to plan my Costa Rican adventure.  I'm way too tired to concentrate though and am asleep by ten.