It’s not as bad as it sounds because it’s possible to cross these petite Central American nations in just a few hours. Although when we finally arrived in Nicaragua’s capital Managua it felt like we had accomplished something – on the map we had covered almost a third of Central America’s skinny isthmus.
The reason for dashing through these countries at such a frenetic pace is that we have just reached the halfway point in our Latin American adventure – five months down, five months to go. Having started our journey in Mexico, we realised that we have a lot of distance to cover to reach Argentina to fly out by September 18.
Our plan was to hop, skip and jump through to Panama in order to arrive on the Caribbean coast of Colombia by the middle of May. We would break up the journey on the remote Little Corn Island, off the coast of Nicaragua, and also visit the adventure paradise of Boquete in Panama’s northern highlands.
We covered the first leg of the journey, from Antigua to San Salvador, in a cramped minibus for seven hours which included a long wait in the immigration queue at the hot and sticky El Salvador border crossing. The reason for the delay had nothing to do with extra scrutiny of passports or luggage searches. The customs officers were operating at an excruciatingly slow pace, single-finger typing our details into their computers.
San Salvador seemed relatively upmarket compared to Guatemala – lots of flashy cars, modern office buildings and shopping malls. We didn’t spend much time there, but it was enough to establish that it is very Americanised. Signs, billboards and other forms of advertising dominate the streetscapes, along with US gas stations and fast food restaurants.
People are clearly obsessed with security here. Rings of razor wire top tall concrete walls built around houses with thick metal grilles over the windows. Shops, including pharmacies, banks and even fried chicken joints are patrolled by guards with automatic weapons casually slung over their shoulders.
The bus from San Salvador to Nicaragua left at the ungodly hour of 5am, took 12 hours and required two border crossings. We were in the parched, scrubby landscape of Honduras for a sum total of three hours. We shivered for the early morning as the bus’ air-con system went into overdrive, then became progressively hotter and more parched as the system struggled to cope in the heat of the day.
Central American capital cities are not usually something to write home about, and Managua is certainly no exception. Managua had its heart ripped out when the centre of town was destroyed in a 1972 earthquake and never rebuilt. As in Haiti, international aid money poured into Nicaragua but was diverted by corrupt government officials and so the former town centre lies derelict. Now Managua is an uninspiring sprawl of makeshift barrios or neighbourhoods arranged along a highway that cuts the town in two.
We arrived as the sun was setting, and quickly established that it was not a good idea to go strolling through the ‘burbs to visit one of the local eateries. Even though our barrio felt safe, other parts of town had a decidedly sketchy feel to them. We ended up walking to a nearby shopping mall, partly to enjoy the air-con and partly because we somehow felt safer eating in a big lit up building. This probably reduced our chances of being mugged, but still this didn’t stop a small child from trying to pickpocket Adam.
Fortunately we had less than 12 hours there. The prize for passing through these salubrious locations, which involved getting up at 4am for three days running, was five luscious days on the Corn Islands, a former pirate hangout 30km off Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast where you can snorkel right off the beach and lobster is as easy to come by as chicken.
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| Eye on the prize..... |
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