The Pan-American

Leaving San Cristobal was difficult for many reasons, mostly because I'd gotten so used to it so quickly and so comfortable. And well, there are other reasons but they're small, silly things.

Somehow we made it on a night bus to Tapachula and just as our bus was pulling in, the bus next to ours was pulling out for all Central American cities. Without hesitating, we threw our bags on the bus and jumped on. Our first stop was Guatemala City. It was hot and I was slightly delirious from the travel. We stopped in a parking lot outside of a small strip mall, fast food restaurants and car dealerships lined the streets. Breaking with my tradition of not patronizing U.S. companies while in other countries, we found that we were both starving and without cash so I had to swipe my American Express at the Subway, and we got back on the bus.

I spent the next few hours falling in and out of sleep, falling into and bouncing off of the window, watching movies while the sound went in and out, the subtitles making me slightly nauseous. The countryside was beautiful and I felt a little bad for just racing through these lands, my heart set on a distant other land, but "next time," I remind myself.

Our bus stops again as the sun is setting. San Salvador, El Salvador. The bus station is conveniently located inside a cheap hotel so we throw down our bags and prepare to rest. But, that money thing again. We haven't got a dollar, a quetzal, or even a cent in any currency (besides pesos but they don't mean a thing here). I attempt to walk a few blocks looking for a ATM machine in this strange and unfamiliar city. After a couple of blocks of completely dark, completely empty streets, lined only with funerarias (casket stores and funeral services, some with 24 hour service), I am sufficiently creeped out enough to just head back to the hotel. Later one of the hotel employees walks us to a nearby gas station and finally we've got some cash.

I shower in the smallest bathroom I may have ever witnessed in my life and then commence to repack my bag and sleep, though not very well, until we're woken up by a loud knock. "Managua!" they shout and we're up. Back on the bus for a day full of riding, the entire Bourne film series, and endlessly beautiful forests, mountains, volcanoes, rivers and green-yellow grasslands.