friday May 1st- We head out of Culmi after bypassing the kickstand safety wire that had shorted out after a day of driving through rivers perhaps..? The bike cut out every time I engaged the clutch, so that was the first thing to check since KLRs are known for it. We are heading to Las Manos border as a second choice. We went by way of Bijagual and Azacualpa to Danli, over the mountains, along dirt roads. its a pretty nice road. 182 miles , 8.5 hours with some short turnarounds.
We got to the border around 4:30 if i remember. It is a 24 hour border. We tried to just drive through but it didnt work at this border. The guys in pig flu masks and rubber gloves were all over us. So we had to back track to Customs for Honduras and tell the woman that we never got the permit for the bike, they never gave us one... She said ok and we were on our way. Ok, things are looking good.
We went to the Nicaraguan aduanas office and the man with the pig flu mask and dirty latex gloves typed up a permit form for us, "There is no charge for this" he said. Ok , great.
on to the the nicaraguan immigration office. We skipped honduras because we had no stamp anyway. We werent sure why we had to go to the window, but its because they all want there entry and exit fee. $3 to leave honduras, $7 to enter Nicaragua. $12 required for motorcycle insurance.
The only stamp that matters in the CA4 is your first entry stamp to the union, for us Guatemala. So they were looking for this stamp. When they found it, we all realized it said 16 April 2007! not 2009.
We were floored!, looked through to make sure it was the only one in the passport, and said, well it was a mistake. Not our fault, a mistake. Look, we have been to three other countries since that stamp in 2007. We have not been here for 2 years.
He just sent us over to Honduras, he didnt want to deal with it.
I explained the mistake, pointed out her old rubber stamp which easily switches from date to date. No go, lets go see the Jefe of immigration. "there will be a fine" she said.
He was a nice man. Said he believed our story that it was a mistake, but there is nothing he can do. There has to be a fine. After pleading our case, showing our other stamps, showing that we bought the bike last year, they wouldnt budge.
In thier big book it says the fine should be over $1,600 total for the 2 of us.
Well that cant happen. let me plead some more, take up more of your time and see where this goes. It finally got down to $300 total, but we still were not going to pay it since it was a stupid mistake in Guatemala. They could have had a little money, but instead they got none. Our option was to go to the capital immigration headquaters, 2 hours away, in a city we really wanted to avoid. He said maybe the big jefe can lower it, but no garauntee. Still all this would give us is a stamp to get out of CA4 into Costa Rica within 5 days to get a new CA4 stamp on reentering. Entering leaving entering leaving -all cost money, especially in CR. We decided to sleep on it, thank them for their time and leave after 2 exhausting hours of talking. we werent getting anywhere even with "Im sure you have the power to lower the multa..." and one lady just wanted to know how much we could pay.... She wasnt too happy when i offered $20 "because its not our fault".
Of course it is partly our fault, we never inspected the date. lesson learned the hard way.
So, its dark. night in a yucky border town with bad food, off to Tegucigalpa the next moring. - After we decided to go back to the border and try our hand with the Nicaraguan Jefe, he was having no part of it. Wouldnt even hear me out. We were trying to get into the country with out the $300. I saw him talking with our Honduran female interigator as we pulled up...
So we decided to go to the Guatemalan embassy. But now it is saturday morning. So we go and spend a couple hours trying to find an embassy in Teguci with no street signs. We eventually did with the help of lots of people and hit the road for better place to spend the weekend.
Valley de los Angeles, very nice colonial mining town 30 min outside of Teguc.
Monday morning we were at the embassy. The nice ladies heard our story, quickly said "let me see what i can do", scanned our passports to Guatemala City. Then we waited, hungout in Dunkin Donuts, checked in, waited, looked for a museum, got stopped driving the wrong way by a cop who wanted our papers, drove away, gave up on that neighborhood, waited,.... And then it was done. A letter with offical stamps, saying it was a mistake, not our fault, 2009.
It took a weekend, but it actually got done in 1 day, for no fee! - Well a few Donuts for the office which we were happy to provide. Amazing.
hightailed it for the nicer border town for the night. Crossed in the morning with no problems! yipee.
The Guatemalan border, where we crossed, was very small. The offical was sitting out on the sidewalk with the money changers when we pulled up. the rope was manned by a 7 year old kid. this border wasnt even there a year a go, so maybe he just didnt know what he was doing or didnt care. But the Guate immigration office called him there on his cell phone to ask him if we had passed this month and he remembered us. So at least he learned of his mistake.
