Our teammate's contact in Tegucigalpa offered to drive us to the bus station at 5am to start the race. We set our alarms for 4:30 to be ready to jump in the truck as soon as he got there. A slight miscommunication got my bag locked in the room we were staying it, but luckily the contact was the director of the church so he had keys to retrieve my bags.
We piled our bags in the bed of the pick up and the guys sat in the back with the bags while the girls piled into the cab. The bus station was only about fifteen minutes away from the church we were staying at. When we got there, we saw Team Sweet Aroma, the other team that was starting the Race in Tegucigalpa. Both of our teams ended up going on the same microbus to the border town of Las Manos. The bus was supposed to leave at 6am, but since it was full, we left at 5:30am. We had packed the entire back seat of the microbus with our packs and they made us pay for the seats that our bags were occupying. We tried to argue with them, but ended up just paying it and splitting it between the two teams.
As we got closer to the border, we noticed Sweet Aroma whispering and planning trying to get an advantage at the border. They were at the front of the bus so they were in cahoots with the driver and attendant, too. Team Tumbler was in the back with the bags, so we did some of our own conniving and planned to grab our own packs before we even got off since they were on top of the pile anyway. As soon as we got the border town, we grabbed our bags, and "pregnant turtled" the entire time [see picture below]. We decided that it would be safer and quicker if we all just kept our packs on us at all times instead of dropping them, watching them, and moving them as needed.
Kwak and I headed over to the emigrations window of Honduras to get started with the process. We decided it would be easiest if we had everyone's passports and then quickly paid the exit fee and got them stamped. While we did that, everyone had exchanged their extra Lempiras into Cordobas. Being the treasurer with the team money, I had to quickly follow suit before heading over to Nicaragua's immigrations window.
We walked the few short meters across the border and got in line. We had beat Sweet Aroma through emigrations thus far. We stood in line for ten minutes just to be handed forms to fill out, one for each person. So, we quickly distributed the forms and passports and then gathered them to return to the window. The man who was working the window we were at was extremely slow. Sweet Aroma went to the other window and had gotten through a lot quicker. We also paid the entrance fee in US$, which sent him searching for change. Dually noted for the future: pay in local currency if at all possible, saves a few minutes.
As Christopher and I waited for him to finish scanning the passports, Ed and Erin went looking for SIM cards for their phones. They found some without having to go further into Nicaragua, which was good since they didn’t have their passports. When we finally got through, we walked into Nicaragua, only to get stopped to have our passports checked. As soon as the guard let us through, we were hounded by a man trying to sell us bus tickets. We knew we needed to take a bus to the next town, so we paid him the $1 per person for the ticket that he handed us. We asked where we catch the bus and he directed us a few yards down the road.
We waited on the side of the road and regrouped while doing so. While I was trying to put stuff back into my bag, I came within inches of getting hit by a bus. I was flustered and just wanted to get everything back into my bag and no one thought it would get that close to me. At the last second, everyone yelled and I jumped out of the way, throwing my passport, which was still in my hand, under the bus. I retrieved it safely and we were ready to board the bus.
As we boarded, the attendant told us that the tickets we bought we not really tickets at all and that we had been scammed. Oh well, lesson learned: don't buy tickets for a bus if the bus is not in sight. As we waited for the bus to fill with passengers, we accomplished our first task for the race: singing a worship song in public with our guitar. We were sitting at the back of the bus so we opened the emergency exit and played for those outside the bus as well as those inside. They seemed to really enjoy it.
After about 45 minutes, the bus took off, heading to the next town of Ocotal. When we got to the bus station, we quickly got our bags off the roof rack of the bus and started asking about the express bus to Managua. We had read on a blog that there was a 10:30am Express bus and we would be just able to make it. Kwak started asking around, learning that the first bus we saw was the 11:30am express bus. A local pointed her to the 10:30am and we took off running, trying to catch the bus and in the process, lose the other team.
When a guy approached us trying to sell us tickets, we were hesitant, having just been scammed at the border. He assured us that he was the boss and showed us that the pieces of paper he would give us were actually tickets. So, we paid for them and had a few minutes to use the restroom before the bus started loading. The guys helped load all our bags while we went on the grab the seats. It was an old Greyhound bus, much better quality than we expected.
We made it on the bus and were feeling good about it. Sweet Aroma had gotten on a different bus, which they were told was also a 10:30am express bus. Our bus pulled out before theirs, so we aren't really sure what happened after that. All we knew is that we had lost them and we were officially on our own!
