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Crossing the boarders from funny countries on Sundays is never a good idea, but I had no choice. I have that ship to catch in Panama end of this week, or I might get stuck for a full month. 

Back in Guatemala, I lost one day, when it took a full day to service my bike, but later I got the news that the ship would be delayed for 1 day as well, so I am still on schedule.

But I cannot afford to waste any time, it is still far to go, three more countries to cross.  Because of this, I am driving much faster at the moment that I intended to do, and probably I am missing interesting things and people in Central America.

This time I had pay, and I hate it. Besides that it was a lot. Entering Honduras cost me more than 250$. The deal was very simple. Either I pay, or I spend a night at the border, which btw is a really shitty one. There was nothing I could do, nobody to whom I could complain, I had to bribe them all. Honduras has no agreements with either the US or EU, and does not give a shit of tourists like me. On an average, during the season, which is now, there are 1-2 tourists per day. A Mexican van who arrived early in the morning was waiting since 6 hours, and I arrived at 1 pm.

Bribing would accelerate things, and I might get in ion just 4 hours. Here it gets dark at 6pm, and I really do not want to drive at night, that is far too dangerous, for different reasons.

So I paid, and I paid a lot, and I passed the border after 2 hours.

10 km later on a check point, the policemen  wanted to bribe me as well, but I just refused, told them to f..k off (a bit politely, though) and continued.

While I sat at the border and waited, I chatted a bit with other people, wondering why El Salvador and Honduras had their borders points 2 km apart from each other, which is not a good sign usually.

They went at war several times, the funniest, (If one can talk of funny, regarding wars) was the football war in 1969. There were of course other issues between both countries, but a qualifying game for the 1970 world championship triggered it all. After riots following the first and then the return game, both countries really went to war for seven days. Some 2000 people were killed, 300000 people evicted from their land, and most of El Salvador’s air force was destroyed.  A peace treaty was signed only 11 years later. A border dispute, which was probably the real reason behind the war, was settled in 1998 only.

The worst thunderstorm I ever experienced burst out just before I entered Tegucigalpa, the capital. All the roads were immediately flooded, and I drove in up to 15 cm deep brown water. Visibility was close to nothing, the most dangerous being, that I could not see the deep potholes in the street anymore, and was close to fall down many times. It took me more than one hour to drive the last 10 km.

Natural disasters are recurring here. For 5 days a hurricane destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure in 1998. 10 years later, huge flooding destroyed everything again. Not to forget the regular earthquakes.

And if it is not nature that makes people suffer here, it is the politics. There were several CIA-backed cleaning operations from the army, as soon as some Marxist opposition groups became too strong.

If you want to meet corrupt customs agents and policemen, this is the place