Alright, so let me just say that this was by far the craziest travel day I have ever experienced on the race. Our logistics team decided that they wanted to race to Nicaragua, amazing race style. So we were on our own figuring out how to get from the island of Roatan all the way to Granada, Nicaragua. We also had some challenges to complete along the way. In the end, the winners received an all expense paid day at the Chocolate spa!
So let’s begin on the morning of May 30th. Team Swerve left our house on the island at 6:07a.m. and headed to the ferry. Our ferry left at 7 a.m. and took us an hour and a half to get to the mainland. It was one of the most peaceful boat rides I had been on yet. Little did I know that it wasn’t going to remain that peaceful and easy the next 36 hours.
So from the mainland we took a taxi to a bus station in order to catch the 12:30 bus to Tegucigalpa. So we waited around and then hopped on the bus at 12:30. After 8 hours we finally arrived in Tegucigalpa. The only problem was that we didn’t have a place to stay. Lynda had gotten a name of a hotel so we took yet another taxi and headed to this hotel. This hotel was in one of the sketchiest places ever! Every store, hotel, house, etc had bars on the doors and windows. In the shops, you couldn’t even pick out your own items because they were behind bars. Needless to say, I did not feel safe at all!
The hotel ended up only having one room available so a drunk man that Andrew befriended told us to go across the street to his friends hotel. Through all this, we also had our taxi drivers helping us get everything worked out. I’m pretty sure all of our taxi drivers were angels. Otherwise we would have been in trouble. So anyways, we went to the other hotel and we were able to get 2 rooms for $5/person. ($5 is world race budget, thanks God!) They were by far the sketchiest rooms I have ever been in. The bathroom was only closed off by a curtain and the shower didn’t work. Luckily there were beds and the toilet and sink worked, so that is always a plus. So we went to bed, not sure if we would make it through the night or not.
Praise the Lord we woke up alive the next morning and headed to the Tica bus station. The Tica bus was going to take us straight through to Managua, Nicaragua and then from there we would get a bus to Granada. Well, we arrived too late and there weren’t enough seats for us. 4 of the other teams got on the bus, so from there, we were at a loss for what to do.
Thank goodness again for taxi drivers. They took us to another bus station and we arrived 2 minutes before that bus left. This bus took us to El Parasio and from there we took yet another bus to the border. It took us about an hour to cross the border.
From the border a bus came and took us to Ocotal. The bus driver told us that a bus to Managua leaves at 1:30 and we should get there in time to make that bus. Well, as we were pulling into the bus station, we saw the bus to Managua leaving. Bummer. So Lynda and I ran and tried to get someone to call the bus to have them come back but no one would do it. But yet another angel showed up and took us to a guy who said there would be a bus at 2:30 and we could get on that one and we should buy our tickets now. As we were buying our tickets the man told us, standing room only. At this point we didn’t really care because we were just desperate to make it to Granada. So at 2:30 we pulled out of the bus station. This bus had 52 seats and 100 people on the bus. You do the math. We were squished on this bus and had to stand for 4 1/2 HOURS! There was nowhere to move because we were literally packed into this bus like sardines. I have never felt more violated in my whole life. I stood butt to butt with complete strangers for 4 ½ hours. Not ideal. So we finally arrived at the bus station in Managua. We had to take ANOTHER taxi to ANOTHER bus station to catch the bus to Granada. Well, when we arrived we were told there is a bus at 8, so we were good. We had about ½ to spare. Then a man comes up to us and proceeds to tell us that the bus is no longer coming. That’s when I cried.
I was done.
I was over this race.
I was done with busses and taxis.
At this point, I didn’t care if we had to pay a ton of money to have a taxi take us to Granada. However, five minutes later the same man came up to us again and told us the bus is coming now. THANK YOU JESUS! So it showed up literally a minute later and we hopped on and made our way to Granada. We arrived around 9pm and then finally took our last taxi to our hostel.
By this time we were all pretty han-gry since we hadn’t eaten a real meal since Friday night. So we dropped our bags and headed out to dinner. We had finally made it.
1 Ferry, 6 taxis, 6 Busses, 1 sketchy hotel and 39 hours of traveling.
It hasn’t been the longest travel day yet but it has by far been the craziest.
Unfortunately I can’t tell you that we won the race…we didn’t even stand a chance once 7:30 passed. But it was a couple of travel days that I won’t forget. And we would probably still be in Honduras if it wasn’t for Lynda and Scott and Jesus. The day may have been long and stressful but every single bus and taxi fell right into place and we are still alive.
It was moments like those two days where I definitely saw God working and taking care of us. Lynda basically spoke fluent Spanish the whole time which was amazing; Scott helped keep us calm and told us where we needed to go and what we needed to do. And we all just laughed the whole two days because that’s all we could do. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything; as frustrating as it was in the moment, it was a great moment for our team and we got to see how we all reacted in a stressful situation. And I would say we all did pretty great.
So future world racers, first of all, be very, very thankful for your logistics leaders. They put a lot of work and effort into planning travel days and making sure it all goes well. If they ever decide to have you race somewhere, then have a good attitude about it and make it fun because otherwise you will be miserable.
