Itinerary

I realized I haven't mentioned what our plans are for the trip other than to put up a map. The basic idea is to go up the pacific coast of Mexico as far as Los Mochis, where we'll catch the train though Copper Canyon to Chihuahua City. On the way we'll be visiting a few other spots. We had to scrap going to Granada, Nicaragua because the bus doesn't stop there as I thought it did.

We have to overnight in San Salvador anyway but we decided to spend an extra night and take a day trip to Suchitoto, El Salvador which we've heard and read is a nice little colonial town. Lonely Planet says it is like Antigua, Guatemala was before it filled up with tourists. After that we'll go on to Antigua so we can compare. We'll probably stay at least two nights in Antigua so we can rest from our travels. After that we may travel to other spots in Guatemala and finally stop in San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, a beautiful little town that we didn't have enough time in last year. Then we'll go to Oaxaca, which we skipped last year because there was some unrest there. From there south to the beach at Zipolite, which several people have recommended to us, then up the coast and play it by ear.

When is all this going to occur? We have reserved our tickets for this Wednesday, the 20th. We'll go to San José on Tuesday and get on the bus for San Salvador at 3 am Wednesday morning. We should arrive in San Salvador around 10-11 pm.

Tickets to Guatemala

I was looking on the somewhat useless web site of Tica Bus and I thought they no longer offered the bus service that goes from San José to San Salvador in the same day. I talked to my sister, Selva, who lives in San José, and she said the her boyfriend was coming on the bus from El Salvador in one day. So I called and they said that they did indeed offer it. Selva bought our bus tickets as far as Guatemala city. You have to buy the tickets at the bus station. She was coming down here for a visit anyway so that worked out.

The right schedule

The trip takes a day and a half, with an overnight in San Salvador. We're thinking we might hop off the bus in Granada, Nicaragua and spend a night there (edit: I found out the bus doesn't actually go through Granada). The tickets we have don't have a date yet. We just have to call at least three days before we want to go to reserve our seats.

Tica Bus route map

I was talking with Alaine tonight and we thought it would be cool to keep track of our costs so at the end each post I'm going to put the expenses since the last post and the grand total. The bus tickets were 31,200 colones each, including tax. That's about $63 USD.

Expenses:

	Since last entry	Total
Transportation	$126	$126
Food	0	0
Lodging	0	0
Beer	0	0
Activities	0	0
Souvenirs/Gifts	0	0
Misc.	0	0
Total	$126	$126