Onto Honduras

The El Salvador-to-Honduras border crossing at El Poy was our worst one yet. We were stamped out of El Salvador in about 25 minutes, but the Honduran side took a full three hours. While it only cost us 60 lempiras each to enter the country ($3), it cost Milo 500. I sat in the car while Juan ran around between three buildings, doing his best to stay calm. Of course, it was pouring rain this whole time–making it a good time to finish The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, as suggested by Carol the other day. It’s a quick and solid read, and it makes me want to read more books about dogs. I think Travels with Charley might be up next…

We had a better time changing money at this border, and the lempira is an easy conversion (20:1) compared with the quetzal (7.8:1), but of course not as easy as the El Salvadoran dollar–they converted to the US dollar in 2001.

Yes, we were at the border so long that I took a photo of Juan changing money. Because it took us so long to cross, we spent the night in the first town we came to, Ocotopeque, where we paid basically all of the money we had left to stay in a hotel with secure parking. As soon as we stepped out to find food, the power on the entire block went out. We went to the only two places on the street with power–an ATM and a fried chicken joint with its own generator. We have been eating a lot of fried chicken and french fries on this trip. This was also our inaugural meal in Guatemala.

Our first full day in Honduras was better. We drove through a few hours to Gracias, the actual former capital of Central America for five whole years (1544-1549)–not Suchitoto as I wrote previously, having confused the two. Frommer’s touts Gracias as the next great tourist destination of Central America, but I just don’t see it. It has a nice town square, though, and a surprising amount of hotels.

We stayed at the very lovely Hotel Guancascos and got a pretty early start today for long (ish–about 3.5 hours) onto Los Naranjos to D&D Brewery, our midway point to the Atlantic Coast. The drive, like yesterday’s, was beautiful, mountainous and verdant, reminding me of our drive through southern Wyoming this summer, en route from San Francisco to Chicago. While yesterday’s road from Ocotopeque to Gracias was badly pitted, today’s road was mostly smooth–except for a roughly 20 kilometer chunk that was absolutely awful. Resuming the paved road again was a real treat.

It feels good to be back in the cool mountains, but I cannot wait to get to the coast.