Here is the adventure known as "Getting to Utila.". We thought we could take a ferry from Livingston, Guatemala to Utila, Honduras. The travel book said we could, anyway. Nope. Not so. Turns out the travel book was outdated and wrong.(About most things, we were finding out.) Our only option was to take the land route. It started with a one hour ferry from Livingston to Puerto Barrio. It was raining and a little cold but still felt good. One of those times when you get wrapped up in the adventure of it all and appreciate feeling the wind and rain on your face. We started early so we arrived in Puerto Barrio early. We thought we might catch a ferry from there to Utila but, again, no dice. We were going to stay the night there but then thought "Why not just see how far we can get today?". As luck would have it, a microbus to the border stopped right in front of us right when we were contemplating carrying on. We didn't hesitate and immediately jumped on the bus. It was a 14 passenger vehicle. At one point we had 26 people in the vehicle. Well, not in. More like in and around. Both side doors were open with three or four people standing in the doorway either leaning in or holding on but mainly outside of the vehicle. I was one of the people on the outside. I had wanted to do that since starting this trip. I still haven't ridden on top of a bus yet, but there's still plenty of time for that. It was fun for awhile but then my arms started to get tired. I got a little nervous when we were doing about 50mph while I'm hanging onto the outside of a wet bus. Eventually, enough people got off that I could move to the inside. After about a half hour, we reached the Guatemalan border and, for a small fee, our conductor(drivers' helper) when and got our exit stamps on our passports. It saved us a lot of time. Then we walked about 50 yards to get our entrance stamp into Honduras.
While waiting in line, three big buses pulled up and unloaded about fifty tourists that all needed entrance stamps as well. Luckily, we didn't get there after them! As we waited in line, two things happened. First, it started to rain. Hard. Second, we realized that there were no cheap, local buses. We were kind of stranded. We asked one of the bus drivers of the bigger buses if we could get on with them but he said they were full. The second driver we asked said no problem. Whew! But.... directly ahead of us in line were two Americans. We struck up a conversation with them and it turns out they were driving all the way to Panama. We asked if they were open to giving us a lift and they said no problem. Awesome! Lot's of space in a real car! After getting through the border, we put our packs in the back of their Forerunner and we were off. We made it about fifty yards before we had to pull over so the local police could check the paperwork on the car. It was then that I hoped these guys weren't carrying anything illegal. The police were really polite but there was a little communication breakdown. Were pretty sure one of the guards was messing with us because he kept kind of grinning and talking fast. Finally, he slowed down and asked us if we had anything to declare. Like guns...... After all of us replying "NO" we were sent on our merry way.
We were on the road for about forty-five minutes when we came to a kind of traffic jam. All the cars and trucks ahead of us were stopped and no traffic was coming our way. After talking to some other people, we learned that the road ahead had been washed out by the creek, now river, running up against it. Remember that rain I was talking about earlier? Nicole and I ran ahead to check out the situation and sure enough, literally half of the road was washed away. And.... the way the creek was flowing against the road, it was only a matter of time before the other half would go, as well.
Just when Nicole and I decided to continue on foot and try to get a ride on the other side of the washout, the local police decided to start letting traffic through a little at a time. Awesome! We hopped back in the car and continued on. If we had waited another day to continue on from either Livingston or Puerta Barrio, I'm sure the road would've been completely washed out. We would've had to go back into Guatemala and take a huge, two day, detour to Utila. After that, it was only another hour to San Pedro Sula. Our stop for the night. I have never seen so much fast food in so little an area as downtown San Pedro. Seriously. Worse than starbucks. We checked into a cheapie hotel we found in our travel book and dropped off our packs. The room was actually pretty nice and they had television in English. I know, I know. TV? Hey, it's the little things that keep you sane when traveling and everything seems chaotic. After dropping off the bags we promptly went to Pizza Hut for some good ol' Merican food. It hit the spot! Then a quick walk around downtown and back to the hotel. We didn't find out until later the San Pedro is one of the most dangerous cities in Central America. Seemed pretty friendly to me. At the hotel, both of our hot water knobs(the sink and the shower) were "mysteriously" stripped out. What? They don't want us using hot water? No problem. I pulled out my leatherman, took off the knob, and used the pliers to turn the hot water on. Voila! Best shower we've had in Central America yet! The next morning we got up early and made our way to the bus station. We used the local, cheap bus instead of a taxi as it was 25 cents instead of five bucks. Again, the book says those buses our dangerous but everyone was so friendly. I figured if there are whole families on there it can't be too bad. At the bus station we hopped a pretty decent bus to La Ceiba. Kind of like an airporter shuttle but different. We even got to sit in the front seat! Pretty comfy ride.
We made it to La Ceiba and hopped a taxi to the ferry terminal just in time to buy ferry tickets to Utila. Except...... it was sold out. Full. Completely booked. There are only two ferry times to Utila a day and we had missed the second one of the day. I started looking in the book for other, smaller boats that might go to Utila. I was just about to start walking around looking for them one one of the locals trying to get there said his cousin had a boat and would take us for the same price. We would end up going with the local, his small family, and some other travelers. We said we were in, but it turned out that there were so many people that wanted to get to Utila that the ferry company booked an extra trip for that night. We would get there late, but we would get there.
We waited an hour and a half for the boat but it was worth the wait. Once everyone was loaded, we took off. The ride was really rough. REALLY ROUGH! Some people puked off the back of the boat. Nicole and I could've gotten sick but we held it down and gutted it out. After an hour, we were finally there. We had made it to Utila. Whew.......
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