Looking for an apartment.

The matriarchs of a family that were staying in the same hotel as us, just outside of Xela in Guatemala, spoke English very well. They lived in the States and were back in Guatemala visiting their family. They arrived in the same size van as we did except their van had bench seats and 13 people in it. We didn`t take many pictures in El Salvador and Honduras because we we getting exhausted and we were really pushing for Nicaragua. The border crossings were impossibly exhausting and always very hot. This picture was taken right after our final border crossing into Nicaragua. Maia is sad here and is showing signs of exhaustion as well.
We have been in Granada for two days now. We are staying at the hotel casa San Francicso and making new friends. I look a little drunk here because I am. We just got back from dinner and we finished two bottles of wine. Our friends name`s are Adam and Grace. We are relaxing at the hotel in the courtyard by the pool.

We made it to Granada....and its great. After leaving Guatemala we thought we could drive to Nicaragua in one, long day. As you know, the border crossing was crazy and we drove for 3 hours looking for a city big enough to have a hotel. We ended up in La Libertad right before dark. Emilie got some food and we went to bed. We had decided to take all coastal roads after Mexico because Tink simply cannot handle the big hills.

We left La Libertad without incident at dawn. We filled the van with gas and oil made fairly good progress despite the check points, construction, wandering country folk and stray animals that mosey across the highway without a care in the world. We thought we would make it to Nicaragua today (April 21) and we passed through San Miguel with only 3 u-turns. There are very few signs in the cities and the ones that are legible are often misleading. Em and I use a combination of intincts, a compass and luck to get through any of the cities and towns. Once we drove right through the Town`s main market. The streets were filled with people and shops of all kinds of beautiful art and fresh fruit. We took a right, then a left and soon the density of the population on the street decreased. A couple more turns to a traffic circle and off we go!

The border of Honduras and El Savaldor was not as horrendous as Guatemala but was very expensive and took a very long time. I was waiting outside, in the 40ish degree heat while the "officials" sat on the other side of the glass, in an air conditioned room and ate their lunches. There was 3 or 4 young guys in there lounging and in no rush to stamp my paper at a cost of 10 dollars canadian. The final bill for all the different government divisions was over 70 dollars. We were at the border for about 4 hours and when we finally starting driving in Honduras we were spent.

We made it Choluteca and found a hotel. It was 2 pm and we could have been at the border in 40 minutes or so but we heard that the Nicaragua border is just a bad as the Honduras border and so we resigned ourselves to one more day on the road. The hotel we found was unremarkable but comfortable. Strangely, we had somehow driven on a pseudo city bypass. The hotel was situated on the highway to the border and we drove straight to the border (through two checkpoints ofcourse) without incident.

The Nicaraguan border was dream. It was fast (ish) and the people were very nice. We were at our first Nica police checkpoint by 10:30 am (April 22). The roads for the first 30 km were the worst we'd seen. Potholes a foot deep and wide as the highway itself. There was a crew of about 30 boys doing some repairs with tampers. After that, it was smooth sailing through Leon and Managua. We were stopped again near Leon and pulled over by the police in Managua for a bribe. We paid the 200 cordobas and kept on going. I was a little upset at my first "robbery" but it is only 10 dollars to me and 10% of their monthly salary so I will forgive him eventually.

We drove straight downtown and found a room a the Hotel San Francisco. We scheduled an appointment to see some apartments on April 23 and we also were invited to a very grand 60th birthday party on Saturday night. The owner of the Hotel is having the party. We met Adam and Grace that night and things are moving along nicely.

Today is the morning of the 24th and we will have a place to stay by tonight. We saw places ranging from $4oo to $1600 all in the downtown area. The $1600/month mansion is a summer home for a German family. It was HUGE. Hard to explain but I will try. It had 4 bedrooms, all with their own bathrooms, a pool, garage, indoor fire bar-g-que in the courtyard beside the gardens and a view of the mountains. The entertainment room was atleast 1000 square feet. We thought about renting it for 1 month just for fun but we would have to sublet half the house.

Talk to you soon!