this'll be quick...

but this past weekend was a little crazy, so i had to share. this has less to do with me overall and more with a period of time. margaret and i worked around our work schedules, i came in to work early a few days to give tests to students and all that jazz just to take off this past friday... friday morning at 4:40 my alarm went off... out the door by 5:15 and we were headed to the del sol bus station to go to el salvador. it was the romero march. 27 years since the death of the monseñor and his memory is just as strong in the people. we crossed the border into honduras without a hitch except that the movie showing was "the holiday" but one of us was happy with that. as we crossed a nice little river margaret took a picture out the window. that would be ironic later. you see, that river was the one that separates honduras from el salvador so we had to stop to get our documents checked out... there was a problem with mine and i was taken to the office. it turns out that we were illegal, margaret too, but for whatever reason the border lady didn't notice hers right away. we had both passed the 90 days we had on our tourist visas and had yet to get our residency in nicaragua... all we had was our temporary residencies in nicaragua, which is not recognized nor valid for anything in the rest of central america. we were given two choices after being told there was nobody we could call to remedy the situation, not the embassy not the president, nobody. we could turn back to nicaragua from that town without any issues at all or we could pay the fine for passing our 90 days, 75 DOLLARS each, continue on until we reached mexico or belize paying whatever other fines, and return to central america to receive another 90 day stamp and we had to do all that in less than 5 days. we had a day and a half left on our trip before having to be back for work... so we stayed in el amatillo, the border town, on the honduras side. the lady that told us we couldn't enter el salvador was the same that offered to walk us to a hotel. her name was lucy. she explained that the two safe ones were 15 dollars more or less... a little expensive for us and when we asked about anything cheaper, lucy offered her room. a govt. provided room with a few beds in it--she stays there 8 days and some other people stay the next 8 and they switch off. we jumped on the opportunity... we spent the day eating honduran food, drinking chilean "frontera" wine down by the river and enjoying ourselves in a town where apparently not many americans ever get out to stay a while. we were like the circus as little kids stared with gaping mouths. that evening we sat on the bridge enjoying a rainbow, a sunset, a nice rain and then took lucy out for dinner. she told us all about honduras, including the politics and the word for cool... cheque, and we slept in her room. the next morning we caught a bus back to nicaragua to our disappointment and many others... but we will try to go back next year. another adventure will be in store. god bless.
james