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May 14th, 185 miles. all day.
What a morning, 20 minutes to the border. I waited in line to go through aduanas and when I finally arrived at the window i was told that i have to go buy a pig flu mask to be waited on. what a racket.
so i went out to the bike and put on a bandana bandito style and it worked. Got my stamp on the little offical / unoffical piece of paper. We crossed over the bridge and the pig flu "police" pulled us over. We shouldnt have stopped.
"why do you need our passports if we are on our way to immigration right now@"
When the guy saw our bad stamp from Guatemala he got all control freek on us.
after an explanation and letter that went no where he called in the jefes. who we had to wait for.
we seemed to be the only people who had to fill out papers the whole time we waited. The pig flu lady just sat there while everyone else cruised by.
when they arrived they needed to bring our passports to the bigger jefe back in Nicaragua. So we got our passports back and follwed him on the bike- his idea was to run the errand on his own with our passports...
the big jefe saw no problem and made a call to immigration to let us pass. yeah.
back we go and drove by the pig flu people.
we paid $2 each to leave nic and $3 each to enter hond. that was all easy and fast.
Then, we had to pay around $40 to bring the bike in to Honduras!
We cant complain much because we got away with paying nothing the other time we entered, but it was still a shock.
Or notes said it cost $7. But their paperwork in the window said it was $7 for the permit, $10 for someone to fill out the permit and $12 to "transcribe" or something equally redundant and a few other fees that were all bullshit.
the big sign says "you pay this amount, dont pay more, you wont be asked for more. help us stop corruption"
the entire paper pushing process got on my nerves, which is no place to be because it doesnt make anything any easier for anyone.
then you give copies of your stuff, which you should have. Then you make copies of their form that is - i will add, Already in triplicate.
walk away, make 2 copies of 2 things, and request two things on the same piece of paper to see if it will throw the aduanas guy into confusion.
go pay this part over here. wait.
but the first bank lady charged me $3.44 more. so i said " the big sign says you pay this amount, dont pay more, you wont be asked for more. help us stop corruption"
And i went back over to aduanas guy and said that she was charging me more. (i know it was very little money, but i was anoyed.)
he said "i cant do anything about what she is charging. that is the price." I reminded him of his sign and that he should change it.
then i went back and asked her again why it was more. She pointed out her sign and said, it is the $10 plus 12% tax. You do the math. i tried to argue this with her. $10. 12%. doesnt come close to $13.44. i wasnt getting anywhere. i handed over the $14. because there is no change. and took a deep breath.
Then,go pay the other part over there. He needs 4 more copies of forms in triplicate.
bring everything back to the aduanas guy and get your receipts back.
There is nothing wrong with their system. it is beaurocratic to the bone. that in its self is enough to drive me nuts.
That took TWO HOURS.
We need breakfast!
So we continued out of town and drove past the pig police so we had to keep going...
We finally found somewhere to stop for a cold fried chicken breakfast for Steve and icecream for both of us.
The road was hot for a while. Once we got up into the hills is was some of the best rode Steve has come across anywhere. Great views, constant curves and very little traffic. We passed though Teguc pretty easily and on up into the hills and curves most of the way to Comayagua. Passed lots of construction traffic back up on the bike in this stretch. There is no need to wait in the lines, just roll up to the "flager" and they usually wave you ahead into the oncoming traffic. There is enough room bikes to squeeze by.
Stayed in Comayagua, pretty nice colonial town, great plaza. good food options.
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