After Nicaragua, my goal was to speed through Honduras and reach Guatemala ASAP. This wasn’t anything against Honduras per se – one of my buddies in Shanghai was born there and the dad of one of my childhood best friends used to work there too; I’ve always been curious. But there honestly wasn’t too much that I was desperate to see in the country, and given its notoriety for violent crime, I’d decided to make only one stop within its borders: Copán Ruinas, which the historian in me couldn’t resist. To get there, I first needed to reach the transport hub of San Pedro Sula (a city I’m familiar with thanks to its longstanding reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous cities) and, to that end, I’d booked myself on a 3:30am shuttle departing León, Nicaragua that was going to take me the whole 500km there. No chicken buses for me this time, for I was well and truly over them! Naturally, I had to get an early night in León, and I politely informed all my dormmates that I’d be setting a stupid-o’clock alarm due to the next day’s adventures. It was at that point that a British girl heard my accent and asked a pertinent question:
SHE: ‘Do you have any passports other than a British one?’
ME: ‘Errr… No… Why?’
SHE: ‘Because Brits can’t enter Honduras without a pre-arranged visa…’
ME: *shock* *horror* *mental breakdown*
One of the pitfalls of being so resistant to the word ‘plan’ and so stubborn in one’s commitment to spontaneity is how much utter disaster my travels can attract as a result. And so it was that I’d somehow made it all the way to León, Nicaragua, with the sole intention of traveling onwards into Honduras, only to discover a few hours before heading to the border that I wouldn’t be allowed into the country.
There were multiple peculiarities about the predicament I now found myself in. 1) I normally take local transport, but my absolute disdain for Nicaragua’s chicken buses had caused me to renounce them and book a direct shuttle for once, which might have spared me from an even more traumatic situation; 2) I’d actually heard rumblings about Brits not being allowed into Honduras earlier in my travels, yet had chosen to disregard them because of my erroneous understanding that the CA-4 visa stamp I’d received when crossing into Nicaragua would guarantee my entry into the other member countries; 3) Most travelers – including other Brits – had mistaken me for American or Australian up until this point, so it was pure chance that a compatriot actually recognized me as one of their own and pinpointed my problem immediately thereafter. And, for self-reflection purposes, here’s where the passport privilege that I’m so accustomed to came back to bite me in the ass. Citizens of pretty much every other Western nation can swan into Honduras no questions asked. Brits, however, pay the price for our government’s own visa policy towards Hondurans, and so Honduras reciprocates in kind. Understandable, and I really should have read up properly beforehand instead of taking my entry for granted as I’ve become problematically accustomed to. It was a massive blow to my plans anyway – I couldn’t fathom how it was possible to reach Guatemala without passing through Honduras, so it seemed that I was now stuck in León with nowhere to go.
I really did have a minor breakdown in the aftermath of this, but I was fortunate to be in Bigfoot Hostel where the travel helpdesk are lifesavers with the patience of saints. They dealt with my meltdown like quality therapists, which made me regret not having arranged my transportation with them in the first place. I’d actually booked with a company called Roneey Shuttle – their middling reviews speak volumes, but my goal was simply to reach San Pedro Sula as quickly and cheaply as possible and those were boxes they ticked. I was told that Roneey should have raised the alarm as soon as they realised I was a British citizen (as I’d disclosed on their booking form), but they clearly chose to disregard the red flag and rob me of my money. Sadly, I was unable to get a refund from these professional scammers. The Bigfoot staff’s protests on my behalf fell on equally deaf ears, but they were able to come up with a practical workaround: to reach Guatemala, I’d do a massive pivot and take a 7am minivan to Potosí on the Nicaraguan coast, where I’d get stamped out and jump on a boat (!) to La Unión in El Salvador. The plan was to overnight there until a passing shuttle could pick me up the next morning, whisk me safely across the Guatemalan border, and drop me off directly in my intended destination of Antigua . I was going to lose $60 for the abandoned Honduras shuttle (which, funnily enough, arrived at my hostel to collect me at 3:30am anyway, much to my chagrin) as well as a further $80 for the boat and an estimated $35 for the next day’s Antigua shuttle. This was a heck of a price to pay for not having done my homework. Especially when on an already-tight budget.
Potosí, Nicaragua -> La Unión, El Salvador
I slept terribly and come the next morning, the expected 90-minute drive to Potosí took considerably longer because #latintime. I was concerned that I’d end up missing the Salvadoran boat which was departing at 10am – but I needn’t have worried. Stamping out was a relaxed procedure, to say the least, with an actual child doing much of the paperwork on behalf of the immigration officials (who were preoccupied with a boatload of travellers that had arrived from the other direction, and who told me they’d already been waiting an hour to get stamped in to Nicaragua…). We then had to wait a further hour on our boat – which was less the ferry that I’d imagined and more a panga-style water taxi – while someone in one of the dilapidated offices dithered over giving us clearance papers. It was a fairly shitty experience, but beggars can’t be choosers eh.
It took under two hours to reach La Unión once we finally got going at around 12:30pm. The border post there is similarly small-scale, but manned by very affable staff who provide a refreshingly warm welcome into El Salvador. This was a much-needed uplift for two reasons: A) I never had any intention of being in El Salvador; B) La Unión is neither the most happening nor inviting of locales to spend a night.
Of all the journeys that I’d made until this stage, this was the ‘loneliest’. Lonely as in there wasn’t really any of the camaraderie amongst fellow travellers that there normally is on these routes (and note that it was only other Westerners who were taking this panga alongside me, though curiously enough none of them were Brits). I blame that partly on myself: it had been an incredibly stressful night with a wild, head-fucking turn of events, and I wasn’t much in the mood to chat. Perhaps that’s a shame, as when I finally recovered a little of my spirits after receiving the Salvadoran passport stamp, I found myself conversing with a cool Canadian mother/daughter duo who invited me onwards to a more vibrant destination (El Tunco) with them. Alas, I’d reached my travel ‘limit’ for the moment, had tentatively committed to taking the next day’s shuttle from La Unión, and had just booked non-refundable accommodation before that convo was had. Thus, I bade them farewell and set off to find my guesthouse and get to grips with my unexpected new surroundings.
Aforementioned guesthouse was a 10-min walk away, very centrally-located. And very empty. There were perks to this, as I’d paid only for a cheap dorm bed and ended up having the entire room to myself which was probably much-needed. There were also some minor mishaps as the young teen who seemed to be doubling as both receptionist and housekeeper spoke no English, and my Spanish wasn’t at a stage where I could adequately convey my two most pressing concerns: exchanging my leftover Nicaraguan cordobas (both border posts that day had been so threadbare that there were no currency hawkers anywhere in sight; neither La Unión nor the Salvadoran/Guatemalan border would prove to be any better, so I ended up having to sell the cash to another backpacker in Antigua several days later) and finding a cheaper route to the Guatemalan border. See, in the short time since arriving, I’d been informed that a mistake had been made, and the ‘$35’ shuttle to Antigua would now cost me $65. That was now a potential total of $200+ on transport to exit Nicaragua and reach Guatemala. A humongous loss.
snapshots of La Unión
I was unable to get any answers on either front from the guesthouse so set out to explore the town and find things out for myself. My interest in El Salvador has been majorly curbed by the human rights violations committed by its Trump-cosying government which is why I hadn’t added it to my original itinerary, but I’ll say this: for a country that was once notorious for its homicide rates and lawlessness, its brutal clampdowns have resulted in a nation that’s now relatively safe and, consequently, much the envy of its neighbours. There’s a burgeoning tourist industry here, though it’s not one that’s found its way to La Unión. At all. The town, outside of its bustling marketplace, is the definition of sleepy – literally, there were multiple security guards snoring in the afternoon shade! My struggles to find vegetarian food (Salvadorans are extremely into their fried chicken) and the curious stares I elicited from the few other townspeople prowling the streets suggested that La Unión has yet to fully take advantage of its border office and position on the coast.
Exchanging currency was clearly a no-go, so I made my way to the local bus station to figure out an alternative route to Guatemala. And it took me all of thirty seconds to determine that I was unwilling to undertake such an expedition. Dude at the ticket office had the manners of an oaf, the chicken buses there were even more garishly (and devoutly – people love Jesus here) decked out than those in Nicaragua, and the sheer volume of El Salvador had already been made apparent long before I even reached the bus station. People blast the loudspeakers on their phones everywhere, not merely on public transport. So when I found out that getting to Guatemala by myself would require another 4am start and multiple connections on those buses with that noise, I promptly surrendered the clasp I’d had on my bank balance. The scars from Nicaragua were still far too fresh, and I knew that there was no way I’d survive a killer travel day in El Salvador after all the strain of the prior 18 hours. I messaged Bigfoot, told them I’d cough up $65 for the direct shuttle, and chose to buckle down and wait.
With hindsight, I recognise that I’d come at El Salvador all wrong. I should’ve given myself a couple of nights here – ideally at a place like El Tunco, where I would’ve been far more likely to have vibed with my surroundings and left with some sort of positive feeling. Instead, I arrived weighed down by negativity and stress, intent only on beelining out of the country at the earliest possible opportunity. La Unión was an interesting place to overnight, but after wandering most of the downtown’s deserted streets and finding little to attract my attentions, I decided to give myself some breathing space. There was a lot of decompressing to do, and I was lucky enough to have an empty dorm to do that in. With the exception of dinner at a Chinese restaurant (they had tofu and I couldn’t resist! but the service was atrocious and there was no one Chinese there, much to my disappointment), I spent the rest of the evening wrestling with my failures and trying to recover some enthusiasm for the trip again. For once, travel had begun feeling like a burden – admittedly due to a mess of my own making – and I had to find a way to vanquish that. There were still two weeks to go before returning home, and I was too far along my route to bail on it now. The hope was that Guatemala would restore some of that old spark before I became too jaded.
Click here for the full El Salvador gallery, though it’s not much more extensive than this blog post tbh.
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