No Van. Nicaragua. Night.

We left Flo early the 19th to get on the move. We were going to go through Honduras because we were told that El Salvador was very dangerous and any white man that entered was dead on site. We ended up taking a wrong turn (or two), and ended up going through El Salvador. In El Salvador the roads were amazing, and we didn´t get any problems from the locals or the authorities. We made it through El Salvador in hours, and got to the southern Honduras border at night. They wouldn´t let us enter that night because of paper work issues, and the person at the post didn´t have enough authority to let us through. We parked in a gas station parking lot and waited for the morning. The next morning Dean and Bob went to get what we needed while Ryan and I sat in the van. Ryan and I sat ..... and sat .... and sat, until (four hours later), we had what we needed to continue. A mile into the country we were stopped at a check point and asked for our papers. We gave our papers and were told to get out of the car by the police. They then explained that my drivers licenes was expired (which is was not). The date on the licenes reads 05/01/09, which we all know is May 1st 2009. In Honduras they don´t read it this way, they read it Day/Month/Year, Janurary 5th 2009. We picked up a little trick from the Czechs; we have all the time in the world, they do not, so stall, and talk about calling the embassy to fix things. This worked ...... for the first of many harassment stops. At the next stop we were told that we had to pay them so they could get booze . At the next we were "fined" for not having "reflective triangles" on the van. At the next it was for the lack of fire extingisher. Many stops later, and with little money we found the border. We found there was no ATM, and we didn´t have enough money for us and the van to enter Nicaragua. For fear the rest of the countries would harass us for the van, I was insantly in favor of dithching the van. This was not an option because the van was attached to Bob´s passport, and he could not leave the country if not with the van. We got our passports stamped and convinced the border people to clear Bob´s passport. Now we talked about selling the van. We found a kid who was in love with the idea of picking it up for $20, so we started the process. Many hours later this process wasn´t working, and there was a crowd of astonised onlookers wanting to veiw the $20 van. Then all hell broke loose when people started trying to buy things out of the back of our van. We quickly pulled out our bags and anything we found we needed and let the crowed go to town. We gave most of it up for free, but I picked up $10 for an old pair of running shoes I brought, and Bob got $10 for the spare tire. After about 6 hours of this the kid told us that we had to bring it to Nicaragua to sell it to him. He also told us he´d pay for all the fees. We got it in with a lot of ease, and started driving. The kid went a little ahead because he didn´t want to be associated with us. We met him a mile into the country where he then decided he didn´t want the van anymore, only the $10 he had spent getting it in. We were alright with this because it meant we could keep the van. We started driving, and I laid down in the back to get some rest. I woke to the motion of stopping, and the smell of burning rubber. We had popped a tire, BAD! We got out, and immeditly decided that it was no longer worth anything to us, and that it has brought us much further then we ever expected. We took the plates, and VINs off the van when a young farm boy walked up to laugh at us. Dean gave the keys to him, and we threw on our packs and headed down the road. Less then a kilometer away we hitched a ride in a small truck that was delivering dough to bakeries. He brought us to the capital Leon, where we are staying the night at a hostel with many other gringos. So no more van, everything from here on is survival training ..... and luck. Pray for us.