On the Road again
Been on the road now for 10 days, 2 more & the Grey Dog’ll drop me off, in Peterborough, where I started my 5 country road trip from back in September.
The shuttle to Antigua stopped at the Royal De Cameron in Sonsante, so got a look at it & talked a bit with the couple who stayed there. It’s geared to the Latin tourist trade than the North American one. Most of the guests are from Central/South America with a mainly Spanish speaking staff.
Spent a couple nights & a day in Antigua but it just didn’t feel the same, prices had gone up & people seemed to have their hand out for tips every time you turned around, got old pretty fast & pretty much quit tipping because of it. Central Park is still the same though as is El Portal. Going to have to find a new place to stay though as Posada La Merced has put their prices up a tad too much & just aren’t worth the money they want.
Got the Tica bus in Guate to Tapachula & the supposed 5 hr trip became 8, partly due to construction & partly due to the police checking for something. Found it kind of a nice little town with good cheap, 250 Peso rooms right across the street from the bus station. This came as a happy surprise as none were listed on the net, other than the $70 + Holiday Inn & a couple others in that class, even on BNA!
Next afternoon got the ADO Platimo class bus, 19 hrs & $130 to Mexico Norte station where on the advise (not necessarily good) of another passenger went to a hotel near the airport. There was a demonstration against violence of a million people planned for Sunday so the advise, while erring on the cautious side, was likely prudent. Did however mange a couple hr tour on the Sunday which showed that one needs at least 4 days to explore the city.
Next day came a 9 hr $100 trip on ETN’s Tourista class (same as ADO) to Monterrey where I got an Omnibus to Nueva Laredo, had my Spanish been better, note that a basic understanding of Spanish is really necessary for bus travel, or the website been more up-to-date I would have known that I could have taken the Omnibus straight from Monterrey to San Antonio. This would have saved taking the junky Americanos/Greyhound for that segment.
A couple or three more hours, which included an hour at the border where “Border Security Services” fancy new name for Homeland Stupidity, had a fortune tied up in 5 trucks for X-raying buses but of course they only used ONE of the 5 but that’s for another posting.
Spent a couple great days in San Antonio, which offers much more than the Alamo, then it was off to Dallas, a just over 5 hr trip on Americanos for a switch to a Grey Dog for Memphis, another 6 hrs + an hour “standing in line” at the terminal. More on the worlds worst bus line in another post, was going to reserve judgment on that until the end of the trip but not necessary to wait now!
So it’s off to find Elvis this morn followed by another 26+ hrs on the British operated “sick” dog!!
Tags: Travel
busman7