Latin America Collection

Our amended goal for this day was to drive across the other half of El
Salvador, through the short neck of Honduras, and into Managua, which
was about half way across Nicaragua.

We made it out of El Salvador with no difficulity, but when we got to
the Honduras border check, things changed. The problem was with a very
nasty soldier who insisted that we take everything out of the van for him
to check. I showed him the list, but to no avail. He insisted. He had us
back up to a concrete loading dock. There was a crew of about twenty-five
eager helpers who were going to pick up some easy money from the
"gringo". The other part of the problem was that this "gringo" had gone
through a similar mob-type action in China before this soldier was born.

He let me know that he wanted me to pick out a crew to unload the
van. We were in the boiling hot sun. I balked. I made him understand
that I wanted him to get everyone back to the far edge of the concrete
platform. I stood and waited for him to do as I promised. He finally
relented and got them back, after I suggested that he had no control over
the situation. I had such an incident in China, where we got everything
exposed, and then the Chinese mob grabbed everything and ran off in
different directions. I was not about to have a repeat of that type of action.

I unloaded the mattress and the bedding against a pole on the platform.
Audrey was unloading through the side door of the van and I was taking
the mattress out of the back. When we had all of the boxes and suitcases
unloaded, he insisted that I take out the bed springs. With a bit of
pantomiming, I got through to him that first, the bed springs were solidly
fixed to the van (if I had moved the front seats forward a bit, it would have
come right out), and second that he could see there was nothing under the
springs. After I had backed him down twice, his potential loading crew
started razzing him. I think he was ready to get rid of us.

He opened and looked into three boxes, then motioned for us to load
up and get out. We did not hesitate, but started loading the van immediately.
He was standing, watching us with a sneer on his face. We got into the
van and made some fast tracks out of there.

One thing that had been puzzling us since we were in Southern Mexico,
was that quite often, and with apparently nothing to do with the town
dumps, we would see another type of roadside litter. This appeared to be
blue plastic sheets strewn along the road. We could not figure it out, until
suddenly we came upon a banana grove beside the road. Over each bunch
of bananas on the trees was one of these blue plastic bags, tied to secure
the bunch at the top.

We asked about this during our lunch stop, and found out that the bags
were put over the bunches of bananas to protect them from insects, birds
and other banana lovers. Then they pick the bananas, the bags are stripped
off and just dumped along the road. I guess the farmers do not want to
litter their fields with them. (I see in the papers where Costa Rica has taken
action to stop this practice in its country).

We came to the town of Choluteca, Honduras right at noon. It was only
twenty-five miles from the Nicaraguan border, and just about two hours
from there to Managua. There was no possible way to make it to Costa Rica
this day, so we decided to treat ourselves.

We stopped at a very nice hotel and restaurant called the Hotel La
Fonte, right on the Pan-American Highway in the center of town. We
decided to have our first "sit-down" lunch since we left Laredo, Texas. We
had lunch, and changed another $50.00 travellers check. After lunch we
gassed up and headed for the border.