Captain's Log

I've never seen the original Star Trek but in honor of the latest movie being released yesterday, this is my captain's log. Or it would be the captain's log if anyone ever let me be the captain! Basically, the easiest way of writing this post was to simply document things as they happened because it was another travel day. So I'm in the middle of five weeks in Central America instead of five years in deep space but you get the point and this is my day.

6:54am - We left our room
7:00am - Time we were told that shuttle would arrive
7:30am - Time we believed the shuttle would arrive
7:52am - Time that the shuttle actually arrived
8:10am - We finally got on the shuttle and started driving
9:58am - Our driver pulled over to the side of the road to relieve himself. Not joking.
11:45am - Lunch break. We ate chicken tenders and the world's soggiest, most flavorless French fries at a gas station that was spitting distance from the El Salvador/Honduras border.
12:11 - Pull up to the Honduras border
12:14pm- Get out of the truck. Have to fight off people offering to exchange my money
12:17pm - At the immigration window
12:19pm - Given a little slip of paper. I don't know what it means but at 12:20, our shuttle driver takes it and $15 for when we cross the next border (that's what I think, anyways)
12:35pm - I find out that we haven't actually entered Honduras yet, we've simply exited El Salvador.
12:36pm - I become worried that the heinous stench of body odor might be me. Whitney reads what I am writing over my shoulder and starts smelling me.
12:39pm - We hand over our passports to the shuttle driver at the Honduras border.
12:53pm - The shuttle driver returns but doesn't return our passports. He has them on the dashboard, he just doesn't give them back
2:00pm - It starts raining
2:20pm - It REALLY starts raining
2:29pm - Whitney reads over my shoulder and comments that it's 2:29 and not 2 or 2:20. I tell her that I record things once I have deemed them worthy of the blog
2:31pm - Whitney gets mad at me for leaning away
3:11pm - We stop and the driver leaves with our passports again. He tells us to stay (or maybe he says something else in Spanish -- I don't know but we don't leave either way). Note: the rain has stopped but I don't know the exact time
3:19pm - Driver is back, still no English
3:24pm - We see multiple signs that are welcoming us to Nicaragua and I don't think much of it except that it means we're probably going in the correct direction. The driver leaves and some guy in a gas mask comes and sprays the shuttle for pesticides.
3:27pm - We stop again. The driver tells us that we can use the bathroom and he mysteriously heads inside with our passports
3:40pm - We succeed in taking US currency out of a Nicaraguan ATM (this was a big deal because we'd repeatedly tried to do this in El Salvador and couldn't get anything)
3:45pm - Whitney debates trading seats with me but does not debate continuing to use me as a pillow
4:18pm - Our passports are finally returned to us. We have gotten two stamps for entering and exiting Honduras and a card for entering Nicaragua. We got two passport stamps for a country that we spent three hours and 32 minutes in but zero stamps for the country we spent the past four days in or the country we're going to spend the next week in. That must be a record.
6:48pm - We have checked into our hostel and gotten our beds. We got free t-shirts as part of our upcoming volcano boarding and got our Big Foot Hostel booklets stamped (we now have six stamps which means that if we ever come back to Central America, we get a free night!). I also found a bumper sticker in our room from BelAir Cantina in our dorm! This probably isn't a big deal for anyone except me and Jas Spencer but for those of you who don't know, BelAir Cantina is a taco shop in Milwaukee and it is our favorite taco place!!! We went out of our way to go there for tacos throughout the tour and one of their bumper stickers is here in Leon, Nicaragua! Small world!

Side notes:
-To the man-baby who was our only remaining dorm mate last night, stop sighing and rolling over dramatically because we have the lights on at 8:30pm. We know that you're napping off your day drinking just so you can go out again later. Also 11:30pm is a time to keep the lights off, thank you. Also don't put stuff on other people's beds while they're sleeping in them
-To the 5'3" girl sitting in the front row of the van, stop fussing every time my knee grazes the back of your seat. You have more than twice the leg room than I have and six less inches worth of human to maneuver. My knees are touching the back of your seat because I don't have anywhere else to put them!!! Let me know if you feel like trading because I don't just only get the pleasure of forcing my body into previously unknown positions  but having knees jabbed into my back as well!!
-To the girl that we are 99% positive we met/didn't like in Flores, shut up already! Apparently you're annoying in any country (and we've now been in four with you)
-To ATMs in El Salvador, Why wouldn't you let us take out cash? We're down to our last US dollars!!!
-To Bank of America, if the reason we couldn't get cash in El Salvador is because you shut off our cards without warning, I will be coming for you (Plus you aren't even the "Bank of America" anyways since you don't have any branches in Montana OR Vermont, so false advertising!!!)

--Your Captain