Bus to San Pedro Sula

Al fetches coffee and cakes for breakfast in bed, bargain. We have to leave for San Pedro Sula today to catch our onward flight to Costa Rica tomorrow. We collect food and say a surprising number of goodbyes to all the people we’ve grown to know in the last week. It is great to feel you can get to know so many people in such a short space of time. In the end we have to dash to catch the ferry and wave Utila goodbye. I’ve had a really top time here. On the rolling boat we catch a glimpse of a school of dolphins dipping in and out of the water. It is beautiful.
The Hotel San Pedro in San Pedro Sula is acceptable but pretty much like a prison. In fact if our room were my prison cell, I’d complain. So we shower (cold and gorgeous) and head to Pizza Hut for shameful comfort food. It’s either that or the Mayan Way, a dirty cafe with a sandy floor and cracked plates.
Costa Rican coffee
We are up early to catch our flight to Costa Rica. Al feels under the weather. Enroute to the bus station we grab two slices of pizza and a cream bun for breakfast, it’s about all our dwindling Lempira supply can cope with. We board a local bus to El Progreso (which passes the airport) and eat our food. Al eats half the cream bun and goes to take some photos out of the window. The bun is excellent – unprecedented for Honduras – so I tuck in. Al comes back incredulous as I’m down to the last bite and takes it from my hands. Turns out he only had one bite of it. I apologise but we both see the funny side. I am laughing longer…
In his therefore hungry state, Al is looking forward to the flight which although only 50 minutes long, claims to offer a meal. I have a pretty good idea that “meal” means a bag of peanuts in the case of this rather local airline. We get dropped off at the airport turn-off – taxis offer to take us to the airport but we refuse. The Lonely Planet says it is a 10 minute walk. It is stinking hot and by the time we reach the terminal, 20 minutes later, we are both absolutely drenched and smell like tramps: hardly likely to get upgraded to business class.
We check-in and pay the ludicrously extortionate departure tax of $25 US each. I can’t believe it: the last of our travellers cheques gone. In the departure lounge we take it in turns to try out the testers for Paco Rabanne Pour Homme in the duty-free perfume shop in a fairly desperate attempt to improve our chances of getting let onto the flight. The visible sweat patches are giving me away.
As it turns out, we needn’t have bothered. Our aircraft is a 46 seater prop-driven job and hardly stands on ceremony. It turns out the meal is a bag of peanuts. Full of cream bun, I have to laugh at Al’s disappointment. We get two seats each though and a great view of the country as we head south-west to El Salvador where we change planes. At least we can say we have been to the Pacific coast briefly. We suffer a bumpy landing and an hour’s wait for our next flight. This time it is a Boeing 737 and the food is better but there isn’t much of it.
Costa Rica is a cooler 23 degrees centigrade but has a similar feel to Guatemala. San Jose is apparently a dump with lots of downtown street crime. We search for a bank first and find one to get $50 US off our VISA cards. Then we find the hotel Gran Imperial, which is just about the cheapest in San Jose but hardly lives up to its name. The rooms are possibly the least inspiring I’ve ever stayed in with brown walls, no windows and patches of graffiti. At £6 per night it’s lucky we are only here for one. Judging by the number of notices of the type “be really careful in downtown San Jose, I put my bags down for like, one second, and had everything stolen…” left by recent travellers, there is a lot of crime here.
The hotel is bang in the middle of downtown San Jose and not wishing to be a part of the statistics, we eat in the hotel restaurant which turns out to be a lot better than the quality of the rooms. I have a couple of beers. Al is feeling feverish – so we go through the Lonely Planet, ticking off his symptoms. He has a cold as best as I can determine.

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