Our travel through Central America had been, at points, hectic. These were not the buses of South America that we had grown accustomed to, and getting from point A to B proved to be more of a challenge. But our last day of travel in Honduras and crossing the border to Guatemala really took the cake.

Our last day in Honduras was spent traveling from one seaside town in the north to another, not far away. But we couldn’t go directly - we had to bus it inland to a town to catch another bus further north, and yet another to Omoa, where we wanted to go (see Show Me The Beach! for details). On our first bus, we secured seats for ourselves, but there was no space for our bags. We sat sweating away without AC, bags piled on top for extra warmth. I jimmy-rigged one of the bags to hang out somewhat into the isle, which gave us some additional breathing room.

In San Pedro Sula, we transferred to another small bus where we deftly secured our huge bags between our legs and our smaller bags in our laps near the front. The driver came in and told us that the back was better. With Beth’s ever-looming motion sickness, I definitely did not think the back would be better, but he insisted that with our bags we’d have more space.

We pulled our packs out of their secure position and lugged them to the back. We had a bit more space, but then more people boarded. And more. We ended up having to heave our bags on top of us again, and since we were in the back row, there was no isle to hang the bags out over. To top things off, some crazy man sat next to me and tried to make conversation the whole ride. I was able to maneuver my bag slightly so that a direct line of eye contact was broken, which helped some.

We were dropped off at Puerto Cortez, a town close to the border, and immediately jumped on a big yellow school bus bound for Omoa, our destination. When we asked the price, the driver said in English, “Don’t worry, we will take care of you. You will save money.”

He also warned us not to use up a seat for our bags - even though the bus wasn’t anywhere near full - or he’d have to charge us an extra fare per seat we used. We walked to the back, dropped our bags in the large storage space, and sat in the last row to keep an eye on them.

One of the guys who had directed us to the bus lumbered back to us and struck up a conversation with Beth. We learned that he owned the bus, and had actually driven it all the way from Buffalo, NY to Miami, where he had put it on a cargo ship bound for Honduras while he drove down to Honduras with a friend. Now he was trying to sell it to the government to use to run routes from Puerto Cortez to the border.

He left, and not long after two guys started hanging around in the back, supposedly to help other passengers store their luggage. I kept a close eye on them, always skeptical of people lingering around our bags, and also thinking it odd that the bus driver had made such a stink about putting our bags in the back of a fairly empty bus.

One of the guys kept looking out the window, leaning over our bags, or hovering near them despite having a multitude of room in the back. My suspicion grew, and so did the frequency of my glances back.

Suddenly, I saw him slip his hand to the top of Beth’s bag while pretending to look out the window. He had his fingers on the zipper and was slowly tugging.

I jumped up and yelled while grabbing both of the bags, and throwing them into Beth’s lap and my seat. We sat the rest of the way holding them.

(Beth: I was nervous about the bags too, but trying not to glare at the guys as often as Lauren was. Suddenly, I heard Lauren yell “Dude! Hell, no!” and she jumped up and grabbed our bags. I was surprised more people didn’t turn around at the commotion, but we had often read that locals will often do nothing to help you if you’re being robbed.)

Homeboy didn’t acknowledge any of this, and in fact, he began hovering directly behind us with his hand on the back of Beth’s seat. I was ready for a fight, expressing my extreme displeasure to Beth in English while trying to think of how to say something biting in Spanish. But Beth convinced me that there might be something wrong with him and to just leave it alone.

We made it to our hotel, the details of our stay detailed in the previous blog. Though one thing we did not mention was that I was up all night with some stomach bug, Irritable Central American Bowel Syndrome we like to call it. Between the hours of 2 and 5, I was up 6 times, and when 6am rolled around, we decided to rest for a while and catch the next bus. At 7, I was still unwell, but I popped two Imodiums and we headed out.

We went outside and found that the streets were empty, no tuk-tuks, and we were already pushing our luck with time. We walked for about 10 minutes and managed to hail one down, making it to the roadside where we’d hail down the local bus with time to spare. We sat in semi-shade, trying to get out of the searing sun while we waited. Finally, our bus came, and we jumped on. I stood in the back, keeping guard of our bags.

Not long after we boarded, a man with a heavy duty weed killer sat next to Beth and a preacher got up in front extolling the virtues of Jesus Christ, who he said was “la salida”, or “the exit.” On and on he went until his voice was nearly hoarse, when suddenly he untucked his shirt and pulled it up to show a massive tattoo covering his side - a massive 1.5 foot gash with a sword sticking out of the top.

This was obviously a depiction of Jesus’ final moments on the cross, and I thought this bordered dangerously close to sacrilege. But in all our wanderings around churches and religious icons in South and Central America, we’ve become aware of a strong focus (fixation?) on the more gruesome and morose aspects of Christianity… so who am I to say.

A man and a dog boarded the bus from the back not long after the preacher left. The dog had bloody sores all over him and had a chain around his neck for a collar. He was cute, but I didn’t want his open wounds anywhere near me. He sat across the isle from us and I tucked in my legs.

We got to a bridge, and pulled off on a bumpy dirt road. I looked longingly at the paved bridge (with painted lines!), as we turned. There were hardly any shocks on the bus, and we were in the back.

Ten minutes later, we pulled up to a store. It was a pet store and vet. The man and the dog got off, and we waited. Beth and I watched puppies play outside for about 15 minutes, and then the man got back on the bus with his dog. The dog’s wounds had been cleaned and he was dripping with antiseptic.

We went on our way and ten minutes later Beth said, “Look, there’s the bridge!” We returned to the main road and went over the bridge realizing that the entire bus load of people had been forced to go on a trip to the vet.

We were dropped off in a strange location, somewhat deserted, and told we could walk to the border from there. We began walking and found a few buildings. We walked closer and saw that this was indeed the border to Guatemala. But there was absolutely no one there.

All of the border crossings we had done so far had included long lines, multiple hoops to jump through, and a healthy helping of bureaucracy. Here, we just walked in, got a stamp, and kept walking. We didn’t even have to enter a single building.

On the other side of the border, we climbed into a microbus that took off at a rapid 3 miles an hour. After several minutes of this, I asked if the bus was broken. The driver muttered something incomprehensible, and kept going. We pulled over, near some banana plantations, and sat there for a good while. Finally, we were off, picking up anyone on the street who happened to flag us down.

After an hour and a half, we arrived in Puerto Barrios where we ran into a nearby bank to get some Quetzals. The next part of the trip would be tricky… we wanted a bus headed west toward Guatemala City, but we wanted to be dropped off where two highways intersected so we could catch another bus headed north.

After walking through the crowded market, we found a bus bound for Guatemala City. It was pulling out as we ran up to it, and the guy waving us over threw our bags under the bus while it was moving. We ran to the door and jumped on just in time.

We reached the crossroads in no time, about an hour, and we got off and grabbed our bags. There was a store and people were standing around, but there was little indication that it was a place where buses stopped.

But our bus came, and we squeezed on. Our fourth and final bus ride of the day was a doozy - five hours, and there were no seats, no air conditioning, and an abundance of B.O.

Not long into the trip, there was a police check point. We all trudged off the bus, waited while the police got on and did a thorough inspection, and then all trudged back on. Off we went.

To the next check point, where we repeated the exercise. This happened several times, severely stalling our progress and making the crowded bus increasingly more irritable. Sometimes we stopped and we were not ordered to get off. But I could hear the luggage doors opening and closing, and it was making me nervous.

Beth and I got seats, and at one point I dozed off. I was still feeling unwell from the night before and I felt light-headed and queasy. I awoke with a jolt, realizing we had been stopped for a while, and hearing the squeak of the luggage doors.

“Beth!” I said in a sleepy, disoriented state, “The doors are open! Will you go check on the bags?”

The bus was still really crowded, with people standing in the isles, and she was having trouble getting through. Plus we were both travel weary, hot, and cranky, and neither of else felt like moving. I kept urging her to check.

Beth pushed her way to the other side of the bus to look out the window. “No one has our bags!” she announced.

“Well, it’s always good to check,” one of the English speakers replied.

I was a bit horrified that Beth had announced to the bus that we were monitoring the baggage and they were all under suspicion.

“Beth, please go see if the bags are ok,” I said again. “I went the last time.”

“Well, I think you have a little too much anxiety about the bags,” she said.

I’m not usually one to argue with a statement about me having “a little too much anxiety” about A, B, or C, but given the events of the previous day, I felt well entitled to some healthy anxiety about the bags. I asked her again to please go.

She looked at me straight in the eye, raised that little eyebrow, and said “No,” with a little hand motion that said, “and that’s the end of that.”

I stormed outside to see for myself. The door was open, and there were our bags. People were milling about, and no one was watching them, but they were there. I waited until they closed the doors and got back on the bus.

The bus bumped along, and we were pulled over yet again. This time, the police detained 10 men and brought them to a room. They were let back on, and we went on our way.

Another time, a big police SUV pulled up, lights flashing, and the cops jumped out and boarded the bus. A woman and a little kid were with them, and they walked through the isles inspecting the passengers. It started to dawn on us that perhaps that all these stops were about finding some criminal.

An hour or two before the end of our now very long bus ride, my stomach started to gurgle. I was having cramps again despite the Imodium, and I needed to release some gas. I tried to do so quietly and immediately opened my eyes wide in alarm when I realized it wasn’t gas after all. I had just soiled myself. A long day had just gotten a lot longer.

I tried to think of what to do. I had toilet paper, but I couldn’t think of how to make use of it in this crowded bus without everyone being made painfully aware of what had happened. Nor did I know what I would do with the paper once it had been used. After thinking through a few other options I realized I had no choice but to sit there, like a baby in a diaper, until we arrived in Flores.

On top of it all, Beth and I were still giving each other the silent treatment, so I had no one to complain to. I just sat, stewed, and marinated.

Finally, after 11 hours of travel, we arrived in Santa Elena, a town close to Flores. We jumped on yet another microbus and sped toward our hotel. We got there and were amazed. For $15 a night, we had a nice big room with a deck and an incredible view of the lake. And a newly renovated bathroom that I ran into as soon as we dropped our bags.

It had been a long, hard day, but we had made it. And the breeze coming in off the lake made victory even sweeter. We apologized about our squabble, took showers, laughed about my accident, booked our tour to Tikal for the following morning, and headed out for dinner on the lake.