Panamá may have the canal, but Guatemala feels to us like the true Central American crossroads. And who owns these crossroads? "Chicken buses" and their drivers do. If you arrive with pretensions of any other transport pecking order, you will soon be schooled by these wildly and colorfully costumed former US school buses and their hellbent operators. We were. But this is how Guatemalan people and international backpackers get to where they are going, their small livestock or packs in tow. We didn't have the pleasure of riding one in Guatemala, but we white-knuckled our way down the two-lane Pan-American, as these hulking conveyors slingshot around us and a line of 20 cars and trucks into opposing traffic, rosary beads swinging from their mirrors.
Guatemala is one of the most photogenic countries we've seen.
Speaking of photogenic, Guatemala also has Lake Atitlán. Go there if you haven't. This stunningly beautiful 340 meter deep lake, punctuated by its surrounding volcanoes, inspires profound peace. Aldous Huxley ironically and admiringly called it "too much of a good thing." It was really just right. And there's no better vantage of Atitlán's deep-green-meets-azure beauty than the Casa del Mundo hotel, lovingly built on steep terraces over decades by a country-friendly Alaskan Guatemalan couple. Casa is perfectly isolated, reachable only by 20 minutes on a small lake lancha, and from its dramatic perches, we ogled the lake and its volcanic topography. We lazed and sunned and dove and swam and loved life - and we didn't want to leave. Here you do feel you are in the World's House.
No trip to Central America's living terrain is complete without heating up leftover pizza on the air-cooled shell of a real lava flow. During a short stopover in Antigua, Guatemala, we learned of Volcán Pacaya. For a paltry sum, a local man took us in a van with a few other trusting souls to the base of the Volcán and its national park. A mere two-hour hike up a steep trail took us to the active peak's red-hot river of rock. Here we heated up our pizza, roasted marshmellows, and took ill-advised photos in the river's path. We could feel the heat through our shoes and we actually "tanned" while gathered on this forbidding and seeming mythical slope. While we roasted and were roasted, cool drifting clouds paid homage to the oozing mountain and kissed our awed, scarlet faces. So great.
But five more isthmus nations and their highly trained border employees awaited! To enter El Salvador, the gauntlet of patience awaits. Standing catatonic for nearly two hours while my paperwork was "processed," I incredulously watched a medievally torturous session of on-the-job training in the El Salvadoran customs office while the day's light waned. I felt the tropically thick and darkening air closing in, and a kind Guatemalan gentleman told me real-life horror stories of armed highway robbery in the Salvadoran coastal tunnels heading toward Sunzal - our route and destination. A border crossing's stress will steal years from you, but mercifully, and more than not, you survive, you get waved through, and if you're lucky, you traverse tunnels unharmed, and you are surfing Sunzal's excellent right point break the following morning while your travel partner suns on the rocky shore.
What's next in north-to-south order? The unmissable Honduras! From the above description, you get the border crossing idea, but the Honduran story must be told. Border towns are the world's modern day Babels. No one understands anyone, and often no one who can help really cares. And, generally, a putrid river runs through it. Border towns revolve around a quick buck, and they are total chaos.
As we entered El Amatillo a group of 10 to 15 shouting, sweaty men swamped our approaching El Cuervo and seemed ready to fight each other physically for the right to guide us through Babel-Byzantium for a tip. The alpha dog of the group prevailed and led me to a depressingly sparse office space with peeling walls, a single empty desk and chair, and an inoperable, dust-covered window air conditioner leaning inward and powerless against the oppressive 100F heat. Here stood a security guard with a circa 1900 pistol tucked precariously under his too-loose belt and earphones blasting the day's fútbol game into his forlorn head. Here sat in the single chair a rotund, vapid woman who informed me in nearly unintelligible Spanish, after some awkward silence and lack of eye contact, that lunch hour had just begun and I'd have to wait that hour before my paperwork would be completed. I stood - the sole customer - in the room with the armed guard and the seated public servant, and I watched her slurp down some kind of Honduran Chinese wet noodle concoction for a full hour. My paperwork was then completed in under four minutes.
Desperately eager for more, we motored the Honduras's two-hour length to Nicaragua's border, never once looking back. The Nicaraguan crossing was mercifully simple by comparison, though it was here that we noticed the slow leak in one of El Cuervo's tires. Refilling the tire at every gas station, we made it to Nicaragua's hottest city, Chinandega. We fell to sleep that night with one of the trip's most torrential and beautifully cool rainstorms raging outside our wide open hotel window. Breakfast in Leon and several days in Granada, perched on the edge of Lake Nicaragua, introduced us to some of the prettiest cities, most dramatic volcanic landscape, the best, most affordable food, and the kindest people we've met. Emese flew back to SF from Managua for an unavoidable US immigration appointment, and I scoured the southern coast around San Juan del Sur looking for surf with a group of five crazy-hilarious Canadian guys who had just left northern ski country for a month in Nicaraguan surf country. They say Nicaragua is the new Costa Rica. No big knock meant to Costa Rica, but get here before that's really true.
One more quick border story. Sorry. While they steal years, these crossings don't tend to cost much. Costa Rica is the exception. It cost us $300 US. Now that's not oficial. Some guy in Peñas Blancas on June 14 bought the beers that night and brought his wife something nice, I hope. I didn't have my original car title. They wouldn't let me into Costa Rica or even back into Nicaragua with El Cuervo, and I needed to pick up Emese in San Jose the following day. (She was bringing the title back with her.) The copy had worked fine before that - even in Honduras - but I was stuck, screwed, and bitten big by the mordida - bribe, or literally "little bite."
I made it to our reunion in San Jose, and then Costa Rica almost made up for its dubious greeting with great surf and beautiful sunsets in Dominical.
A couple days later we were in Panama City chasing the elusive solution to getting El Cuervo from Panama to Ecuador, as the road stops in Panama. This took days in both Panama City and Colon (not a nice city), but we completed the arduous task under budget, and El Cuervo got a ride through the Panama Canal out of it.
If you've made it this far, thanks, and here's a reward: one final Panama story for this lengthy entry. Having stowed El Cuervo in its shipping container in ominous Colon, we took our first "chicken bus" ride toward Isla Grande, on Panama's Caribbean coast for a little well deserved R&R. 20 minutes into our ride a man got on the bus and started stabbing people. I'm serious. After an apparently unsuccessful effort to separate the driver and his assistant (all divers have assistants) from their cash, he went nuts with a knife. Thrusting the knife wildly toward the driver and two brave/stupid passenger-intervenors, the knife made contact with one's leg and the other's side while the whole of the bus went into total bedlam, people climbing over seats, out of windows and screaming bloody murder. It was scary. The wacko knife wielder hopped off and made a run for it. The victims were quickly put in a nearby cab for the hospital - very bloody but under their own effort and seemingly survival bound.
Disembarking the bus from hell, we jumped into a small boat heading for Isla Grande under whipcrack bolts and thunder and pouring rain. On the island I sliced open my foot in a fall on a muddy trail and I broke the fall with my $1400 Canon EOS 20D. (The camera was ultimately also survival bound, thanks to a Quito miracle worker.)
We were glad to leave Panama, which we did on an Ecuador-bound flight on June 29.
Next time: Extracting El Cuervo from Guayaquil customs, the Galapagos, the Andes, the Inca Trail, Bolivian mines and salt, and crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel.
