OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
We’ve read that Honduras has the highest recorded murder rate in the world and some of the most corrupt police in Central America. Many overlanders who find themselves near the Pacific coast of El Salvador (and also Honduras) cross through Honduras in ONE DAY. This means two border crossings in a day. Hey, why not, let’s give it a try.…
As you can see from the title we have been busy suffering Central America’s notorious border crossings, first let me say that technically they aren’t difficult but the standing around in full bike gear sweating more than in a sauna in 40 Degree heat and high humidity makes it all a little more trying, however no point in moaning because…
We hit the road early and make it to the honduran border crossing. There’s a chance we’ve read too much about the trip through honduras, because even though its only about 80km until nicaragua we’re a bit worried about it. We’ve read countless accounts of how corrupt the country is and the last post we read described 14 checkpoints within…
Sadly we had to leave our “home” in Salvador, because Fernandita we have to head south again. We left early for the border, but the lure of “the new road” led us off track for an epic ride thru the hills and left us 90 min behind schedule on our dual border day. I have been dreading the Honduras crossing…
An early start was in order on this particular day and an early start we got. Our resident rooster woke us at 0100 then again around 0300’ish and if we had had the energy rooster wasn’t going to make the 0430 call and re-awaken the neighbouring cock’s. We have previously spoken about our new car game – catapult the ants,…
Kurven satt in den Bergen beider Länder Kati: Etwas wehmütig haben wir dem schönen und abwechslungsreichen Guatemala Lebewohl gesagt. Doch auch El Salvador lockt mit toller Landschaft und Vulkanen und soll laut anderen Reisenden die nettesten Menschen Mittelamerikas beheimaten. Dass es gemeinsam mit Honduras zu den Ländern mit den weltweit höchsten Kriminalitätsraten gehört und fest in der Hand der…
The bottle looked innocent enough, merely herbs floating in a clear liquid. Taking four shots in a row should be as easy. Not easy when the four shots are part of the Guifiti Challenge at the Skid Row Bar. Guifiti … Continue reading →…
Honduras smells like sweet, sugary smoke. Miles upon miles of banana plantations and sugar cane fields stretch across the eastern Caribbean coast rimmed by mountains densely carpeted with jungle. Honduras is green. A haze blankets the fields and mountains: … Continue reading →…
Well well well, here we are on Isla Utila, off the north coast of Honduras, in the Caribbean Sea, lounging in hammocks, sipping cervezas and planning tomorrow’s scuba diving. It’s been a whole month since we last dabbled in blog world, so it’s time to dust off our capes, goggles and masks, and raise our skinny fists like antennas to…
Central American borders can get real funky – Central American borders and dogs even more so. Below you’ll see our limited experience of 2012, a snap-shot of what actually happened rather than what you’re told by a thousand different forums and websites. The wealth of information out there in this regard, of course, is undermined by the fact that anything…
I left Guatemala City and headed towards the El Salvador border. I decided to make towards the Pacific Coast border crossing down south. I rode into the border town of Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado. Immediately on my arrival I am greeted by a guy asked to see my papers. This is the start of a common border scam. Scam is…
Couldn’t of said it better myself! Leaving El Salvador we were up for our biggest day of border crossings to date. We had decided to just drive straight through Honduras in a day as we were on the Pacific coast and all things interesting in Honduras were on the Caribbean coast. Word had it that the Honduras borders are the…
Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua [by Paula] We got the van out of Honduras last week, and I have to say we didn’t even give it a cursory backwards glance as we gleefully skipped southwards over the border. We’ve since been busy loving Nicaragua – the gorgeous camping spots, volcanoes and lakes galore, and the (mostly) blissfully smooth roads. Yes, now…
Comme dit la chanson « pleurs et rires », nous avons pleuré et ri en Honduras … Nous avons passé plus de la moitié de notre séjour dans un garage à Tegucigalpa, coincés, à attendre, inquiets que Bip Bip se fasse réparer … le propriétaire Roberto a accepté que nous restions dans le garage la nuit pour que nous puissions…
San Pedro Sula, Honduras [by Paula] Vroom vroooom. Happy days. We are back on the road! It’s true. Almost ten weeks (actually 69 days, or 1,656 hours) after breaking down, we collected the van yesterday, all spick and span. I did actually kiss the mechanic this time – he was a little taken aback. Thanks to everyone for all their…
Without much discussion it was an agreement to avoid the Capital cities. There is nothing really of value to us to visit there and they are without question the hot-spots of many of these countries; drug wars and poverty and population just make for a bad mix. So no going into Capital cities. Yea riiiiight. It all started by our…
Estelí, Nicaragua [by Jeremy] We’ve been back at Spanish school in Estelí, Nicaragua while we await delivery of the new transmission – yes, still waiting. Last we heard it was, allegedly, on a ship heading this way. Meanwhile, in a desperate bid to avoid studying the present perfect subjunctive tense we’ve been playing around with some trip statistics. As journalists…
Perhaps we were getting too big for our britches, perhaps we had one too many drinks the night before, and perhaps we did not bother to sit down and seriously study the Honduran/Nicaraguan border crossing. But here is a lesson on what NOT to do. I went back and forth on sharing this story… Primarily out of amateur overlander shame…
We camped out on the beach and did not a see a soul for most of the next day. Later in the afternoon, 2 young guys came riding up on horses. We started talking and it turns out that one guy was from Belize (and spoke english) and the other dude was Garifun from the village just up the road.…
We had seen the movie “The Mosquito Coast” with Harrison Ford a few years ago that described this very remote undeveloped area of the northern Honduran coastline. We forgot all about it until we saw the name again in our Honduras guidebook. The Moskito Coastis described as the least developed area in all of Central America. With minimal roads, no…
ATM disaster dodged, Corrupt cops deflected. What else could go wrong!? We are climbing through the mountain passes of Honduras and I can tell the 4Runner is losing power. Not exactly sure what is going on I do what any proud Toyota owner would do and simply ignore it. Hell… She still runs don’t she? Eventually we are coming through…
Stocked up, fueled up, and ready for adventure! We hit the road to the Moskito coast. The directions we had were shaky at best and we ended up taking a wrong turn into a small sketchy neighborhood. Before I got a chance to turn around we found ourselves smack in the middle of a police-checkpoint in this barrio. The checkpoint…
We packed up our stuff from the “Omega Tours” in Pico Bonito and headed to town to stock up on supplies, gas, and cash. We were planning to drive out to the remote “Miskito Coast” and needed to be prepared for anything. We load up the grocery cart with tons of food, water, beer etc. Hit the register and try…
After four months on the road, we decided it was time for a recharge. It may be unfathomable to some that we would need a vacation from our vacation, but living in a van while navigating through foreign countries is challenging at times. We usually try to stay in a hotel once every week or two so we can have…
All in a day’s work…!! A long, hot, sweaty and patience testing day, wherein I crossed two borders, and spent four and a half hours in crippling heat and humidity, at the four border posts I had to negotiate… It took 11 hours in total to cover the 465 km from Granada in Nicaragua to San Miguel in El Salvador,…
Managua, Nicaragua [by Paula] It’s unbelievable to us that it’s now nearly five weeks since we broke down, and we are still not in possession of a new gearbox. But we have bought one, we have seen the pictures to prove its existence, and it is on its way here – apparently. But for financial reasons it is coming here…
Keeping a level head: I consider it a strength of mine, with a few notable exceptions. There was the time I flipped out on our neighbors in college for staging a boxing match against our front door in the middle of the night. By the time I realized what was going on, I was standing in the chilly air in…
Thoroughly relaxed and recovered from our hangovers we pushed towards La Ceiba, Honduras and Pico Bonito National Park. Semana Santa (Holy Week) was rapidly approaching. During Semana Santa the entire latin american populace takes the week off and heads to the coastline to party it up. On the beaches of Tela we were sitting at ground-zero for the madness. The…
Before our trip we researched all the countries we would be visiting on the PanAm. Overwhelmingly, overlanders reported the most issues with border crossings, corrupt cops, bribery, and theft in Honduras. From what we read the cops seem to like to play it fast and loose in Honduras with “official laws” changing daily or even in between car checkpoints… We…
It was a good feeling to be reunited with the bike. No more at the mercy of rickety buses and well worn backpacker routes. Even cycling across Tegucigalpa was ok. Except we got lost. But then we were shown the way by a father and daughter in a large 4×4. The last day in the Honduran capital was also the…