Xela to Nicaragua

Xela was a great break from constant movement, and it's tough not to learn Spanish when you take 5 hours of 1 on 1 classes a day, but I "unintentionally" put up a good fight. Although I was slowly improving, I still found myself making mistakes and oblivious to the nuances of the language to the amusement of my teacher Ana. Here is one such conversation that seemed normal to me. It started when we got on the subject of food and cooking.

Me (in my poor Spanish)- "I like my chili. It's really the only thing that I'm proud of. What? It's actually really good. Why are you laughing? It's the best thing that I can make."

At this point Ana was on the verge of tears and told me that chile (pronounced "chili") is slang for Penis. She also found my explanation of chili competitions in Canada and the States to be absolutely hilarious. "People come from all over the continent to compare their chili's. There's even different groupings for spicy and non-spicy chilies."

After our two weeks in Xela were up, we drove down to the border and crossed over into Al Salvador. I don't know what I was expecting, but a calm decended upon me as we drove into the new country. Maybe it was the well maintained and pot hole free roads, the fact that there were road signs in the towns and on the highways or that the women seemed to be more beautiful, but I felt safe in Al Salvador.

We drove for awhile in the dark (about 1/3 of the country) and eventually found a sign that said hostel -->. It was poorly placed, but within seconds of stopping we had 2 people helping us out and directing us to the hostel which only cost $6/night. 3 delicious pupusas were only $1 and the national beer "Pilsner" was cheap and much better than Gallo -- sorry Guatemala.

We decided to stay one more day and learn how to surf. I was actually able to get up quite a few times on the surf board, but only with the help of the instructor. Unfortunately the only shirt they had turned into a belly shirt on me, leaving a well defined sunburn belt that I'm still nursing.

Honduras wasn't quite as nice... More than four hours to get across the border into it. Getting ripped off by the guys who pestered us until we agreed to their help. Most expensive vehicle insurance. And we got shaken down by the cops. Apparently you need to have a traffic cone in the vehicle at all times. We played dumb for awhile, pretending not to know really know Spanish (it was sad how easy it was for me). It seemed like the younger cop was learning the ropes from the wiley veteran. However, unlike most detective movies it wasn't how to read a suspect or interpret a crime scene, but how to leverage your authority to get money from gringos. Eventually the older cop went back to directing traffic, leaving the younger more nervous cop on his first shakedown -- part of a right of passage. We ended up paying $26 american to the cop before he gave us a nervous shaky hand-shake and gave me back my license.

From that point we were just searching for the first cheap hotel we could find. More difficult than it sounds in Honduras. Two were too pricey, and it seemed like something terrible happened at the third hotel we stopped at in a small town just before the border.

The outer entrance of the third hotel was only partially lit, and as we walked through it into the main courtyard we could hear a large dog barking -- trapped in one of the small rooms of the entrance. The main courtyard was a fully lit restaurant/bar with hammocks strung up on the outskirts and a myriad of white plastic tables and chairs evenly spread out in the center. Some of the chairs had been knocked over and were laying on their sides besides the tables. At the far end there was a bar set up with huge speakers beside it. Past this we could see an apartment like building with light sneaking out of its windows. Only one of the windows had the blinds puled back, and we could see a living room with a old flower pattern couch, old lamps with tassels, 70s faux wood paneling and several paintings of the Virgin Mary. We knocked on the door and waited. At one point we thought we heard talking, but nobody answered the door. We looked across the courtyard to were the rooms were and saw light sliding under the door of the room closest to the entrance. We walked across and knocked on the door, but as we did we realized there was a padlock on the outside locking anyone, if there was someone, inside. We looked down the row of rooms and notice that the light was on in the farthest room and for some reason the door was also wide open -- oddly enough we did not notice this before when we were looking across the courtyard. We walked over to the room and looked inside. There were 3 beds perfectly made up and the bathroom looked as though it had just been cleaned. It was a nice room, however, we still decided to look for another place to stay.

We eventually made it to Granada, and now I am reunited with my little sister. We live in a house that used to be the Voodoo Bar. Today we are going to Managua to pick up my parents. Times are good, except for the shake downs from the cops. My new strategy (inspired by David Stewie) is to only speak French until they get so frustrated that they will take a smaller bribe -- my last one was only $4.