In Nicaragua they play beisbol

That has nothing to do with anything, but I feel bad that we just skipped over Nicaragua, so this way it at least gets mentioned. After crossing the border we drove into Rivas and saw a large baseball stadium on our right. Apparantly baseball is more popular than football here. I suppose that means we're getting closer to home. Speaking of borders, we went through five countries in two days. We flew out of Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday morning, to Panama, from where we immediately hopped on a bus for San Jose. After three hours, and an ill-fated search for a donut we had there 3 months ago, we caught the bus for Managua, Nicaragua. We spent the night there, and left for Honduras at 5:00am. We were on the north coast by Thursday night. It was a long ride, but worth it because we will be in paradise for the next week.

We had no problems at any of the borders the past three days, although at the Panama - Costa Rica border it took four hours to pass through immigration. We do want to tell you about the border between Peru and Ecuador last week. What a joke that was. Partly our own fault, but mostly not. We arrived at the border last Saturday morning. The bus dropped us off right at immigration, after which we needed to walk across the border, which runs through the hot and dusty town of Huaquillas, and catch the next bus. As always, a bunch of kids crowded around us, offering to carry our bags and help us through the formalities. We told them we didn't need their help, we were here in February. But they insisted, and got into the bicycle-taxi with us even though we told them not to. At this point we thought, okay, maybe we can use their help to find the bus, and then we'll tip them 5 soles (about$2) each. So they found our bus and told us they would be able to get us a discount. After we paid for the tickets (which we later found out were at regular price) they were ready to leave, and waited for their tip. We offered them the 10 soles and they just laughed. They wanted $10 each! We argued back and forth for about half an hour, saying we didn't even want or need their help in the first place. And they were saying they needed to buy milk for their children (they weren't even 18, like they had kids). We ended up paying them $15. They still weren't satisfied and wanted to change the rest of our soles (Peru's currency) to dollars (Ecuador's currency) at a ridiculous rate. They finally left, mad. But not not as mad as us, I guarantee you. The thing is, they were demanding $10 for a half hour's work. That's $20 an hour, more than I've ever made. And if you consider that the dollar goes about twice as far here, they were wanting $40 an hour, each. And why did we need two guys helping us anyway? Well, the lesson we learned was that we should have agreed on a price beforehand. Although, we heard from several other travellers that they had the same problem, and that tactic doesn't always work.

By the end of the day we had cooled off a bit, and were in Alausi, from where we would catch the famous Devil's Nose train. The train left Sunday morning at 11:00. There were quite a few other tourists. The ride took three hours and took us back to Alausi. It wasn't quite what we expected, but it was still cool. Everybody sat on a roof of one of the four wagons. What makes this train so special is that at one point it descends down the side of a mountain which is too steep for normal switchbacks, so they use 2 V-switchbacks. This means the train goes forward for a while then backs up for a section while descending, and then continues the descent going forward. It basically zig-zags down the side of the mountain. I hope I explained that well enough.

From Alausi we went to Quito, where we had a day to relax. We decided to go to the centre of the world. We weren't sure what would be there, besides the equator. When we got there, we found quite a large park with a monument with an orb on the top marking the equator, and several restaurants and craft stores. That evening we met up with Veronica, an Ecuadorian who goes to school in Brandon. She actually moved into our house after we left in January, and is now home for the summer. It was neat to hang out in her home country and meet her boyfriend, as well as catch up on how things were going at the house in Brandon. Ecuador gave us a good impression, and we wish we could have spent a little more time there.

Are you for scuba? We are now on the island of Utila, a few kilometres off the north coast of Honduras. The Caribbean is a totally different world from anywhere else we've been so far. We just got back from snorkeling. Tomorrow we are starting a diving course (thanks Bonnie and Charlie) which will take three days. I am very excited, but I don't think I'll feel nearly the adrenaline rush Clay will, if you know what I mean. He'll let you know how it went in a few days.

Thanks for reading,
Pieter