My clutch parts arrived on Wed. morning and I was able to get the bike back on the road. Shannon and I left our little home away from home early Thursday morning after a really sweet going away party at the restaurant up the street. As going away presents Neto gave me his sons ID card from kindergarten and Cokey gave me a $3 bill from Cuba. They might sound like small gifts but the depth of the gesture is deeply touching.

We crossed into El Salvador with little problem and spent the night on the black volcanic beaches of the Pacific coast. Friday we crossed into Honduras through the most horrific and chaotic border crossing to date. Arriving on the El Salvador side Termitadores, the people that make their living by helping people navigate the confusion of the border, came running en masse at us. They crowded around Shannon and were yelling for attention. We had met one at a gas station before arriving and had “contracted” to work with him, so I yelled at everyone to back-off! We were working with Nelson – no one else, so go the hell away. There is two sides to the way it works. You check out of one place and into the next, and you need a different Termitadore for each half. Nelson got us out of El Salvador and we followed him trough a chaotic town that exists between the borders. There were people everywhere running up to us trying to exchange money, sell us everything from oranges to ceramic statues of the Virgin, vans with loudspeakers blaring political messages, kids begging and skeletal dogs.

Nelson dumped us into Rudys hands on the Honduras side. We were shuffled from office to office paying fees and making copy of receipts. The whole time I felt like a wounded cow in parana infested river. But we made it through, spent the night and crossed into Nicaragua mid-morning on Saturday.

By contrast, the crossing into Nicaragua was heaven. The border was a rope across the road and a stop sign. The Termitadore was peaceful and efficient and our entry was smooth. Maybe this colored my opinion of the country, but so far I love this country. The roads have been great and the sky clear. Its been raining on us hard since Patulul, but in Nicaragua we’ve had sun! And the greens of the hills is so varried and deep under the blue of the sky that I just ride and grin.

We’re now in Granada, a really nice tourist town on the lake. We haven’t had time to explore much, but there’s lots of restaurants, hotels and cigar shops in this colonial village. I think we’ll spend the day kicking around and head to Costa Rica tomorrow.