Departure, for now

Leaving is always hard, I should know this by now, right? Yet, I also knew I had to get back to Mexico or I wouldn't make it out of Nicaragua ever (though actually, and unfortunately too late, now this idea appeals to me). I said good-byes, bit my lip, and got on any bus I could find heading north, north, north.

My exit across the Nicaraguan-Honduran border was very surreal in its contrast to our arrival. Rather than being on a noisy bus with films and a large group of people, it was just me, my bicycle taxi driver and his companion, and an eerie silence only disrupted by the soft sound of gravel under the bicycle taxi tires. Over a bridge, Honduras. The Nicarguan immigration attendant is coincidentally also the attendant for Honduran immigration and doesn't hesitate to charge me twice. When I accidentally and unsuccessfully attempt to steal his pen and am caught, I am indignant and feel that by this point he owes it to me. Whatever.

More buses, more dry and dusty countryside, more solitary travel, more swindling money changers and I arrive at the border of El Salvador, not having eaten or drank water the entire day. I am covered in sweat and dust and begin asking how to find a bus to the capital, San Salvador. People point at the grandiose King Quality coach that is parked at the border, going through the immigration process, and I figure I may as well pay a little bit more and actually get to San Salvador today rather than wander around by myself at night in this unfamiliar country. The luxury of the bus astounds me after being on chicken buses all day, do people really live like this? I feel out of place even though it's just as likely that I would have taken a bus like this had I had the money. A young bus attendant offers me a pillow, blanket, coffee, juice- do people really live like this? Of course they do, I know that they do, but after such a long day, I am struggling to take all of it in.

In San Salvador, my communication with my potential couchsurfers falls through and I spend the night in the bus station. Rain! I haven't seen rain fall in a long time, and it makes for a nice background to the mild chaos unfolding in the early hours at the bus station. It reminds me of how I'll miss taking cold showers in the middle of a brutally hot day. At 6am I board a bus direct to Mexico, missing Nicaragua already, but knowing I'll be back. That land of lakes and volcanos took bits and pieces of my heart at every turn, so of course I'll be back.