Day 113 – Tuesday 10th January 2006
I felt I was running out of time with still three countries to traverse before reaching Panama for my flight to Buenos Aires. The boys and I also felt that Honduras didn’t really have much more to see, so we decided to make our way to Nicaragua, more specifically the town of Granada.
Leaving Carlos’ house at 8am we (Angus, Ryan and I) met up with Ryvo at the bus station ready for a 9am bus. That bus was full however so we caught the 9.45am instead. Not twenty minutes after that we were sitting on the side of the road awaiting a replacement vehicle, ours having broken down. We remained in the same spot for about 90 minutes before the substitute showed up and we got moving again towards the border. We had to change buses in a little town 12km from the border and catch the slowest bus ever. This 12km took about 30 minutes, meaning we averaged 24kph or 15mph. Seeing how slow we were going was was pretty painful!
The border formalities were the usual, no problem for the UK passport holders (providing we paid the obligatory “fees” to enter the country). Ryvo on the other hand is Latvian & when he gave the border control people his passport they looked at it, looked at it again, called the boss over, went to look on the map, looked at the passport one more time, stamped it, gave it back and allowed him to enter the country (after paying the obligatory “fees” of course!) . Ryvo wasn’t worried however, he said that it is the same every country he goes to, but it was a lot worse before Lativa joined the European Union.
After walking across the border we caught another bus to another border town. On arrival there we were informed that that were no more buses that day, and we were also informed that there would be one more, about 45 minutes later. We hung around to see if it would come & luckily enough it did, at about 4.30pm!
I sat next to a local and started chatting away, in the process asking him how long the ride to Managua would take (we had to change buses in Managua). He reliably informed me that we would be there at 7pm. However as 7pm came and went we saw no sign of Managua. This was to be expected as nothing runs to time in Central America, but as 8pm and then 9pm came we really wanted just to get to Managua!
WE eventually arrived at about 9.15pm. Another gem of information my man had given me was that the station we would arrive in would be the same station that we would get the bus to Granada from. Wrong again I’m afraid. We needed to take a taxi across town to a different bus station. Which we did. Which broke down 200 yards after setting out. We hailed another taxi and took it to the correct station. As we arrived it was deserted and we thought our mission to reach Granada had finally failed at the last hurdle, but alas there was one last bus to Granada that day, departing at 10pm.
The 30 minute wait for the bus to go was pretty poo, especially for Angus who had a blind drunk dude trying to ask him the same question 50 times, but we got going and arrived in Granada at 11pm. We took our final taxi to our chosen hostel, The bearded Monkey, only to be told there was no room at the inn.
The girl there called and made us a reservation at another place 5 minutes away, which left us just enough time to grab a late dinner (at midnight)), checking into the hostel and going straight to bed!
Grand Total for the Day:
Total Travel Time: 8am to 12.30am – 16hrs 30mins
Bus Rides: 6
Taxi Rides: 3
Breakdowns : 2
