Seven buses, two rickshaws, and a tuc-tuc

After our night of drinking it was hard to get up and catch a 7am bus. When we did get up around 5, we found out from the American woman in the room next to ours that two girls had come in drunk at 3 am and eaten everybody's food out of the refrigerator. They were still passed out on the couch. We didn't have too much in there, just some yogurt and water. The hotel owners had offered to give us a ride to the bus stop to save us having to lug the big suitcase up the hill. We got there in time for the 7 o'clock bus to San Salvador.

A real chicken bus

Our British friends had told us how we could get to Antigua without going through Guatemala city. There is a very direct route going west, but we asked several people and there are no buses that go that way. We had to go all the way to the most southwestern border of El Salvador. The bus wasn't crowded. We put our big suitcase in the back and sat next to it. A lot of folks were getting on with big things in baskets that I guess they were bringing to sell in the city. One old lady had three big jugs of goat's milk that she could barely get a round with. There's an ayudante (helper) who gets people and their stuff on and off the bus as fast as possible and alerts the driver when to stop and when to go. He also collects the money once you are on the bus. It's a very efficient system. He also shouts out the places the bus is going trying to get people on. The guy we had on the way up to Suchitoto was a real character, calling everyone on the bus niños (children).

An old man got on the bus at one point and had a quarter in his ear. I pointed this out to Alaine and we watched him for a while. When the ayudante came around the man pulled the quarter out of his ear and gave it to him.

Pastries going to market. Who's that in the corner?

We arrived at the Terminal de Oriente (Eastern Terminal) of San Salvador about 8:15. We had to take a city bus to the other terminal to get to our next destination, Sonsonate. The ayudante said we wanted the number 7 bus. When we got on I had to heave my suitcase over the turnstile. The aisle was wide enough that I could roll it to the back of the bus and a guy helped me find a place to put it. After we sat down I thought to ask Alaine if she had confirmed with the driver that this bus went tot the other terminal. Nope. I didn't either. We asked some people sitting around us and, after some discussion, they said it did not go to the terminal. We wanted bus 7C. They said if we got off at the next stop a 7C bus would come along. We did and one passed us right by. The second one did stop though and we eventually got to the terminal, where a more comfortable bus was waiting to take us to Sonsonate.

Cycle Rickshaw

In Sonsonate we stopped for a small meal and got on our 5th bus of the day, to the Guatemala border. At the border we changed some of our dollars to Quetzals and got a ride in a cycle rickshaw, which is like a big tricycle with two wheels in front, one in back and a bench seat in the front. He could only take it as far as the actual border line where we got into a Guatemalan rickshaw. No problems with immigration and no customs at all. We had to wait about 45 minutes for our 6th bus, to Escuintla. Then some more waiting and the 7th, and final bus, to Antigua.

And here we sit, in a lovely little hostel called Yellow House for which we are paying about $16 a night including breakfast.

More later

Expenses:

	Since last entry	Total
Transportation	$26	$155
Food	$5	$72
Lodging	$16	$80
Beer (and other spirits)	$0!	$61
Activities	$0	$6
Souvenirs/Gifts	$0	$55
Misc.	$2	$14
Total	$49	$443

San Salvador

Nicaragua customs

After we got checked out of Costa Rica we got back on the bus and the attendant collected everyone's passports. We got off again on the Nicaragua side to go through customs. We had to take our luggage from the bus and wait in a line. The wheel of our big Samsonite suitcase started disintegrating. At the head of the line was a button to push. If you got a green light you could go and put your luggage back on the bus, a red light meant they would search it. We got the green light. While we were waiting in line I went to the duty free and bought two liters of Flor de Caña 7 year old rum($16).

We got our passports back and got on the bus and were on our way. the whole border process took about 2 hours. They showed a movie, "I am Legend". English with Spanish subtitles.

Managua

We got to Managua about 11:10 and had a 15 minute rest break. We bought some snacks in the terminal($5). They served us a small lunch on the bus and showed the movie "Paulie" about a talking parrot. Dubbed in Spanish. It was pretty bad. I watched the whole thing. After that they put on videos of sappy South American love songs from the '80s.

The bus driver stopped here to buy himself some oranges

We got to the Nicaragua-Honduras Border around 3:15. We had handed over our passports again so we just waited outside the bus while they did the paperwork. The whole thing took about half an hour. We didn't have to stop on the Honduras side. Another movie: "Daddy Day Camp" with Cuba Gooding, Jr. Dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles. What can I say about this movie? It was worse than "Paulie". I watched the whole thing. Alaine fell asleep. I envy her.

We arrived at the Honduras-El Salvador border around 6 and two guys came on and just looked at our passports for the immigration check, but then the El Salvador customs guy came on and spent a long time staring at our passports and looking through people's bags. The whole thing took an hour and ten minutes.

Down the road we had a 10 minute rest stop at a gas station. We bought some food and some beer which we drank outside($8.80). Then they fed us on the bus anyway, which I didn't remember from last time. One noticeable thing about Honduras is the amount of trash on the side of the road. This is true of El Salvador too.

We got to the first stop in El Salvador, the San Benito terminal, around 10:15. We got off there and checked in to the hotel. They had beer there so we bought a round for us an a nice English guy we met on the bus. He told us some good places to go in Mexico.

Market in San Salvador

The next morning we went out to walk around the neighborhood a little. They assured us it was safe. One thing we noticed was that there are a lot of armed guards everywhere. We went to a pharmacy trying to buy Ambien to help us sleep on the bus. They said we needed a prescription but offered us some other pills over the counter which contain 3mg of diazepam (Valium). We bought $10 worth of those. We went to the a market that sold souvenirs and bought a few things($32). trying to find the market we got on a bus and after 1 block we realized we were already there. After that we went back to the Tica Bus station and got an 85% refund for the Salvador-Guatemala leg of our trip since we decided to just go straight from Suchitoto. Then we got a taxi($8) to the Suchitoto bus terminal and caught a bus($1.60).

More later.

Expenses:

	Since last entry	Total
Transportation	-$16	$128
Food	$23	$33
Lodging	$24	$24
Beer (and other spirits)	$28	$33
Activities	0	0
Souvenirs/Gifts	$36	$36
Misc.	$10	$10
Total	$105	$264

Really on the way

I'm sitting at a table in the restaurant of Hotel Mesón de Maria in Salvador. It's a little more than we'd like to spend at $24, but it's right here at the bus station and that makes it easier when you get in at 10:15 pm. They also have wireless internet here. It's a much better value than the place we stayed at the other bus terminal in the center last year which was a dump for $20 and no hot water.

Before leaving San Jose we had dinner at a good Italian restaurant with Jeanie and her friend Jim, in whose apartment we were crashing. Jeanie bought dinner. Thanks Jeanie! We slept on Jim's fold-out couch for about 3 hours, got up at 1, and called a taxi ($2) to the bus station.

Tica Bus has a new terminal in San Jose which is much nicer than the old one. I talked to a guy there who had hitchhiked from Canada with his friend and they were out of money so they were looking for work in San Jose. They had gotten a ride and were supposed to have a place to stay but it fell through, so they came to the bus station to hang out and wait for morning.

They gave our breakfast in these little boxes

The bus left on time and Alaine and I were able to get a little sleep. I woke up around 6 and shortly after that they announced that we were approaching the Nicaragua border. They served coffee and a light breakfast. They came and collected $17 from each of us to cover all the border crossings as far as El Salvador. This is one of the big advantages of the international buses; they take care of all the paperwork and getting passports stamped whenever possible. To leave Costa Rica, though, we did have to go in person with our passports.

After going through the line I went to one of the money changer guys to get rid of my colones. I've found these guys to be honest before. They will try to give you a bad exchange rate, but you can talk them down if you are aware of the right rate. This guy was tricky though. I had 64,800 colones, which in the bank would get be around $129. He was showing me how he was getting his figure on his calculator except instead of the "=", he was pressing the memory read key. First he came up with $96. When I complained he got it up to $118. Still no good. He complained that, "A guy can't make much money like this." Finally he gave me $128.

I'm running out of time here. We only have a few hours to go visit the market in San Salvador. I will post more later.

Expenses:

	Since last entry	Total
Transportation	$34	$178
Food	$0	$10
Lodging	0	0
Beer	$0	$5
Activities	0	0
Souvenirs/Gifts	$0	$0
Misc.	0	0
Total	$34	$193

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