Day 1746 Monday 27^th July

The border is a twenty four hour one, we arrived at six am and they took down a heavy chain that barred our passage. At once we were asked for passport and temporary import permit from Nicaragua. These were examined, written on an we were given directions to the immigration office. Within ten minuets were were stamped out, an hour later we had the bikes stamped out. A young boy of maybe ten years old asked on our arrival at the office if he could watch our bikes, he was polite, smartly dressed and not at all pushy, so we agreed. While we queued I noticed him aimlessly wandering the hall, not watching our bikes at all! When we came out he was sat on the wall, by the bikes. We thanked him and gave him a few notes and asked for the customs office, he showed us and said he would wait by our bikes. He did. As we left he waved, I waved back and wondered of his prospects and hoped he would be successful in life and if he wanted, to be able to leave the frontier town and dust behind, makes me think. We have seen a lot of young people like him, we ride off, they stay…..

The first sixty clicks of Honduras should be called “The Road of Holes”, it was awful. The trucks approaching us weaved to avoid them, they were hitting eight to one hundred km’s, while we tried to do sixty, avoiding them and huge craters. After a fill up of gas, coffee and a current biscuit, getting wonderfully lost in a hot town we eventually made our way out onto better tar and made good time to the wonderfully calm border town of El Amatillo. We got there at lunchtime and waited with the local police who let us use their toilet. As they have to stay at the town a month at a time, behind the desk there was a dozen beds, a tiny cooking area and a rack of maybe fifty pump action shotguns, AK47 rifles and hand guns. Boxes of rounds were staCked up on the floor, scattered over with holsters, belts and empty cool drink bottles. Needless to say I was watched in and out. A tout offered to carry out our paper work for us, cost? ten bucks. When the windows opened we all done in twenty minuets and rode out to another pleasant experience at El Salvador.