3 countries, 2 borders, and 12 hours - Nicaragua to El Salvador.

We had a long day ahead of us, that was as much as we knew. We woke early, after having prepared the bikes the previous day, and left the lovely town of Grenada, Nicaragua. Our hostel there was aptly named Hostal Oasis and was quite literally a relaxing escape from the bustling city with its own pool and many hammocks to rest in. We set off on the road that we had already traveled down on when we were heading towards panama, this time however we were riding in the opposite direction: North to the Honduran border. We passed the town of Leon which we stayed in on the way down and went Volcano Boarding. The next 100km to the border went by smoothly and quickly as we were on a sort of auto-pilot. We had arrived at our most dreaded place in any country we ride through: the border, they are dreaded for a good reason. By now we have ridden through so many that they seemingly all mold together into a large mush of borders. This particular one was no different; however, we did make fairly good time and were into Honduras in an hour. From the border we pushed on towards the next border which was 110km away. Whilst passing through San Lorenzo we decided to stop for lunch at a large mall (large for Central America), this itself was not as simple as we were hoping. Riding our bikes through the parking lot we rode past the motorcycle parking area which was overflowing with the very common 125cc motos that they all have down here, we decided since our bikes are larger than most cars here we could take up a couple of car spots as there was plenty of those to go around. No sooner after dismounting the bikes a security guard rides over on his bicycle and tells us fervently that it is impossible for us to park here as these are car spots, and not motorcycle spots. We took our helmets off and looked around at the 50 empty parking spots around us, surely you would think we would be fine here. We told him that it was OK, our bikes are enormous and there are plenty of spots. He shook his head and continued to berate us in fast Spanish that we absolutely HAD to park in the motorcycle section, almost as if we didn't the entire mall would explode. We reassured him that it was fine (we are starving at this point and just want to eat) and that we'd be 10 minutes maximum. He quickly pulled out his radio and spoke quickly into it, suddenly we were surrounded by at least 4 armed guards all yelling that we can't park here. WOW, what a scandal over a parking spot. At this point we were frustrated and being ravenous, just locked our bikes and walked to the doors of the food court. Reaching for the handle of the door we had two guards step in front of us in the attempt to block us from entering the mall! Luckily for us we knew the magical phrase "No entiendo" (I don't understand) and after repeating this multiple times we pushed passed the guards towards our goal: food, specifically Wendy's. We ordered our food and feasted on our first meal of the day. Out or fear that the guards would push our bikes over or something ridiculous (who know's, I mean if they were all in a fuss about us parking in a car spot they could do anything) Shaun headed out to wait at the bikes whilst Tim and Chris finished their lunch. By the time we were all back out at the bikes, there were perhaps 5 more cars near us. The logic is sometimes in fact, most times ridiculous and incomprehensible. Back on the road we headed to the El Salvador border which was only about 40 minutes away. The plan was to get through this border and the ride most of the way through El Salvador to a beach town called El Zonte. This plan was as it turns out extremely ambitious. The border which ended up taking the better half of 3 hours left us entering El Salvador at nighttime. We had heard that this country was not renowned for its safety, and that riding at night was definitely not advised. That left us with two choices, search for a hotel in Santa Rosa de Lima: a larger town 10 minutes ride away from the border, or ride to San Miguel: a larger city about 40 minutes away. Option one sounded the safest and we chose that with little hesitation. Riding into town we found a secure hotel with A/C (something we had not had for many many nights) for $45 a night. Perfect! Once unpacked for the night we moved on to our next mission: find food without dying. We thought we had seen some restaurants just outside our hotel walls so we ventured out, only to find the restaurant was not serving food and that there were no other ones close by to walk to. Great. Plan B, we had seen a gas station and decided to go there in hopes of it having some standard 'gas station food'. It did not. We ended up having a gourmet dinner of chips and cookies, a dinner for champions some would say. Defeated on our quest for food we headed back to the hotel to rest up after a long day of borders, frustration, and intense heat. Not before we were told by a fellow hotel guest that we were lucky we weren't killed whilst we were our searching for food. Phew, lucky us!