Nicaraguan Border- May 3, 2007

After a leisurely continental breakfast at the Hotel Casa Real, some trading on the stock market and a little swimming, we set out for the Nicaraguan border. We enjoyed the usual sights of livestock, horse and ox drawn carriages and beautiful country. When we arrived in the border town we were accosted by the usual group of border crossing friends, those who want to help you through the crossing for a propina (tip). We were experienced now, so this time we weren’t frightened and knew more of what we were doing.

We parked at the government building, and Greg went inside to pay. Then he came back out and we were ready to go, until a man came over to Kevin’s window and asked him to roll it down. He looked inside at all of us, then went over to talk to Greg. He wanted to see all of our documents for all the kids- uh oh. (Remember, according to the Mexican consulate, all we needed to cross the border was birth certificates for the kids, and when we did cross, all they cared about was the two older kid—the younger ones were of no concern to them at all. Entering Guatemala and Honduras they didn’t ask for anything at all.) So Greg took all the birth certificates that we had (we still didn’t have Kimball’s) and went inside.

Well they didn’t even look at the birth certificates, as soon as they saw we didn’t have passports for the children, chaos ensued. “How did you get into Honduras without passports? You’re illegal immigrants!” and on and on, drama, drama. They just didn’t know what to do with us.

They had no phone at their office, so Greg rode into Nicaragua with one of the officials to talk to their “boss.” Well to make a long story short, basically all that happened all day long, after five hours of sitting in the car waiting for Greg, being hounded by cute little street urchins begging for food and money, and fun bathroom experiences with small children and third world toilets that you have to pay for that don’t come with toilet paper, all that was accomplished was more government inefficiency, U.S., Honduran and Nicaraguan. The US Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua was going to try and get us special permission to come to Managua so that we could work with them to get the kids passports, but the consulor decided he would rather take a long lunch.

We finally just told the guys at the border—We can’t sit here all night, we have to go get some food and a place to stay. Give us our driving permission slip back so we can go back into Honduras. With some persuasion they gave it back to us, but they tried to get us to pay again, and then we drove back to the Hotel Casa Real in Choluteca.

5/3/2007 : view on map : permalink : add a comment