We had decided to cross Honduras in a day because of the political unrest there and their unfavorable opinion of the United States.
 We got ourselves ready for a big day of travel and left for the border between El Salvador and Honduras at 6:30am. El Amatillo is the city on the El Salvador side. We arrived by 9am (early enough) and were suddenly thrust into border-crossing madness. We were in a line of traffic, dwarfed by huge semi-trailers. It was overwhelming.



We opted to hire a tramitadore to facilitate the crossing. We are not really sure his services helped or were worth the money we paid. Perhaps we would still be sitting there had we not hired him. Perhaps we would have paid even more to the border officials for the vehicle, the dog and us to enter Honduras. Perhaps it`s best that we’ll never know.
 But, in two and a half hours we were in. It takes three hours to drive border to border across the part of Honduras that necks down to its Pacific coastline. We were stopped no less than four times at police check points.

Each time we were asked for our license and papers for the car…and then for our triangles. We had read about this from other travelers who had done the trip: Get emergency triangles as some officials seem to really think this is important. We even held them in our hands in an auto parts store in California, but they were heavy and cumbersome and expensive for what they were and we opted out. Ha. We were wishing for those triangles.

Of the four stops, three ‘officers’ tried to extort money from us for not having triangles. We took advice from the same travelers who had recommended we get them and played dumb. `Lo siento, no entiendo` (I’m sorry, I don’t understand).

After trying for a few minutes to tell us we were in BIG trouble for not having them, the first officer said “Five dollars; Coca Cola” apparently hoping to get something for his efforts.

At the second stop after pretending not to understand, I just said “Gracias” with a big smile and the officer gave us our paperwork back apparently giving up.
The last stop was the most difficult and our charade of not understanding was proving less effective. The officer drew triangles in the dust on our mirror and (in Spanish) asked what we would do if we got a flat tire (when you would certainly need your road side triangles). Mike hit the emergency flasher (oops, we really did understand) which ironically enough is marked by a triangle. Not good enough. The officer stopped a trucker coming from the opposite direction and asked for his triangles in order to show them to us. “Ooooh, triangles. Nope, we don’t have those”. Smile.
 He tried to tell us we had to pay a fine of $35 for each triangle we were lacking and go back to the last town to pay the fine at the bank. “Oh, we’ll go to the next town and pay”; “Noooo, you have to go back”.
 I even tried to offer him a soda (we had no coke with us, sorry, Fresca would have to do) but he did not want my bribe. And then after maybe 20 minutes, he let out a big sigh, gave us our paperwork back and sent us on our way. Maybe he should have taken my offer after all.

We stopped in the next town and bought two folding triangles for 5 bucks as we were starting to wonder if we’d get across Honduras without landing in jail for not having them. With triangles in hand we set off for the next check point, but alas, there were no more check points and we arrived at the border with Nicaragua with newly purchased triangles and no one to share them with.

The border crossing between Honduras and Nicaragua was muy tranquilo compared with the one between El Salvador and Honduras that we had done earlier that day. We were the only people there and the officials actually hung out by our van, yes, making friends with Chettie and marveling at our casa rodante. With little effort we were in Nicaragua and on our way to more adventure.

One day, a week or so later we came upon a traffic stop at which we were asked for our triangles and our fire extinguisher. We were quite proud to show that we were in compliance on both counts and we were quickly on our way.