ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

I’ve heard Honduras has some amazing areas – the ruins at Copan, mountainous small villages, and of course, the Bay Islands which are world renowned for diving and fishing. However, we crossed the country on the Western edge which basically consists of a border crossing, followed by 70 uneventful miles on the Pan-American, then another border crossing. But in the interest of making this side of their country memorable, or maybe just to punish those quickly skirting through the country, Honduras makes their border crossings as miserable as humanly possible. Stories of waiting 5 to 6 hours for paperwork processing are common, as are the tales of being scammed.

We knew we were close to the border when a pack of young men came rushing up to the car, then sprinted down the street alongside. Each one was competing for our attention in the hopes that we would pick them to help process our border paperwork for a tip. We had given a nice guy $5 to help with the confusion at the El Salvadorean crossing and concluded it was well worth it, so we thought nothing of doing the same for Honduras, which is notorious for having more paperwork. We picked the one who spoke the best English and, with him standing on our bumper hanging on, we proceeded on, ready to do battle.

You could see the gridlock of people and parked vehicles as soon as we pulled up. My guide took me to the first of many lines, then decided it was too long to wait. Instead, we went to one of the nearby nondescript buildings to see one of his “friends”. A nice lady working on foot-high stacks of paperwork promptly cleared her desk to focus only on my application. For a small tip of $10. Another long line, another trip to see a friend who would sign my application quickly for a small tip. This continued 3 or 4 times over the next hour and a half until we were one step away from getting through. I had spent about $40 or $50 but I was definitely ahead of the usual wait. Justifiable so far. Then, my guide took me to the last office, where he, a man with a very official looking badge and a cohort told me the last step was paying a $40 “road tax”. They explained the police were very strict about enforcing payment of the tax and, if you tried to proceed without paying, you would be sent back to the beginning of the line at the border. Ok, one more rub. Lets just pay and get this over with. But as soon as I handed over the cash and was wisked out without a receipt, I knew I’d been had.

By the time I got back to the car and explained the scam to Jenny, I was so mad I just wanted to get out of the country. So mad I didn’t even see the last scam coming. At the final checkpoint, we paid a guard another $10 to avoid having our car sprayed inside and out for bugs – to learn there wasn’t actually a spray check. Well, it wouldn’t really count as a visit to the country without at least one story.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 1:11 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.