If the last couple of days could be summed up, it would be "..."

If the last couple of days could be summed up, it would be "..." An ellipse, pretty much. Things have just been dragging on and on. We decided to get out of Honduras for awhile, but didn´t really appreciate that we love taking the most difficult route possible. So 4 days after leaving the Omega, we finally find ourselves in Perquin, El Salvador. Imagine you´re on a subway, and there´s crosstown express trains, and there´s local trains. Now the local train stops at every stop, and the express train just goes to the major stops. We did the equivalent of taking the local train from New York to Chicago. Don´t ask why, because there´s no real good reason.

One day travelling to get to San Pedro Sula. Not bad, we got a late start and then the bus took it´s time to arrive at the destination, Honduras´ 3rd largest city, but not really the 3rd most beautiful or interesting. So we left. We went to La Esperanza. Took about 4 hours or so. We had planned on going this way because, if you draw a straight line from San Pedro to Perquin, it goes right through La Esperanza, which is, according to Let´s Go Central America´s guidebook, a quaint town with excellent weather. It did rain most of the time on the clay dirt streets, but let´s not be picky. It is rainy season after all and it wasn´t unbelievably hot so we even had the luxury of needing a blanket. There really isn´t much to do in the town, however, so we decided to have an early night, head into our hotel, which was an upscale room because it had a TV and, get this, cable. So we watched movies until we passed out, probably around 11pm.

The next day, we were thinking we could get to Perquin. This thinking was, unfortunately, false. We got up early to catch the 8am bus. But we didn´t count on the fact that we couldn´t get breakfast until 8:30, which means we didn´t get out to find the bus until 9am, when it had already left. But no worries! The next one was leaving at 10:30am. They should have added a descriptive phrase, "African Time" because the bus actually left around 12:30pm. The 45min bus ride turned out to be nearly 3 hours in an old school bus (donated from a St. Louis school district) over what would normally be classified as logging roads.

So we get into Marcala, where we´re supposed to be able to catch a bus to Perquin, but apparently that doesn´t leave until 4:00am the next morning. We, therefore, check into a hotel, grab a bite to eat, purchase a healthy breakfast of donuts for the next early morning (see, we´re learning), then head back to the hotel to watch a couple episodes of Friends, Brothers and Sisters, and then the epic masterpiece called Hellboy.

3:15am wake up came early, but we dragged ourselves from the bed, threw our backpacks on and headed out through the deserted streets to wait by an empty central park in the foggy cold, wondering which would come first, a robbery or a bus. Well, let me tell you, it was fantastic when a lady came around the corner with her child to wait for the bus as well. Now, I´m not saying that this little old lady could beat off any aggressors that came. (That would typically be considered my role, I suppose, given how naturally intimidating I am.) But there is some comfort to knowing that you won´t be the only ones if something does happen. A witness just reassures me somehow.

People continued to come out of the woodwork until about 5am, when the bus finally did arrive. I think I would have preferred waiting. The bus was a bone-breaking 3 and a half hours of torture, specifically designed to be more painful the second day in. 2 days of unpaved logging roads has made me appreciate the beauty of pavement, even pavement with potholes.

To top it all off, when we passed the Honduran border, the immigration post was closed. No worries! There´s no problem, so we thought, since we never officially entered Honduras anyway. (We did manage to officially exit Guatemala). We´ll just officially enter El Salvador, no problem. Unfortunately, the El Salvador immigration was also closed. Good thing the bus didn´t even stop because that would just be a waste of time, which is clearly precious here. So we grabbed a hotel, some breakfast, and went to the police to explain our situation. They said, hey not a problem, when you´re leaving the country, just explain to these other immigration officers the situation, then you can officially get a stamp pre-dating your official entrance, then leave again. Who knows if we´ll get to officially enter Honduras this time.

On a side note, these types of border/visa issues seem to be par for the course around here. Many travellers have been put in these situations where buses run over borders after immigration has closed. Doesn´t make me any less nervous, but we´ll figure it out in the end. We do have a bit of experience getting fleeced by a border official at the Zambia/Malawi border for this exact type of situation, so we´re trying to avoid that. Keep your fingers crossed.