Antigua to Managua, the longest bus ride ever

When we left Antigua, we were faced with a tough choice. We had a little more than 2 weeks left before we had to be on a plane in Costa Rica, and about 5 months worth of things we wanted to do. After some serious soul searching, we narrowed those things down to an itinerary that could be done comfortably in about 3 weeks. Unfortunately, that was still too long, so we made the tough choice to skip over Honduras and El Salvador and spend our remaining 2+ weeks in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We discovered that the fastest way to get from Antigua to Nicaragua is to fly. But the flight costs $400 each, and is notoriously unreliable. The next best option, in our eyes and on the travel agent's board, was a first class direct bus from Guatemala City to Managua. Less than a quarter of the price of flying, it sounded pretty good. It was advertised as a 12 hour trip, leaving Guatemala at 4am and getting into Managua at 4pm, which would be enough time to catch a bus from Managua to Granada, our desired destination. Why didn't we want to stay in Managua you ask? Managua, as described in our travel book, is the most traveler-unfriendly place in central america. The streets have no names, the buildings have no addresses, and crime can be an issue. To put it another way, when we told one of the employees at the hostel we were planning to take a bus to Managua to try to get to Granada in one day, he hugged both of us and said he would pray for us. While we knew he was joking, it was still a little scary. But there wasn't really a better way to get to Nicaragua for a reasonable price in a reasonable amount of time. We asked our travel agent, a cool dude named Alexander, and he said that it wasn't really that bad and that we would be fine. We decided to trust him and booked the bus trip for the next morning. Since the bus left Guatemala City at 4am, and we were in Antigua, Alexander said he would pick us up at 215am at our hotel and go with us to the bus terminal. We thought that was pretty nice of him, so we agreed to do it.

It turns out, that the reason why Alexander came with us to the bus terminal, besides just making sure his little gringo friends made it onto the bus safely, was that he hadn't actually bought our tickets yet, and he needed to buy them from the agent at the bus terminal, in the morning before the bus left. I don´t know if this is just the way things are done when booking "first class" international central american buses, but we found out later when looking at our receipts that Alexander had made a pretty sweet commission on our bus tickets, charging us $95 for a bus ticket that cost $60 when sold by the bus company. However Alexander did throw in an hour long taxi to Guatemala city at 215am, so that makes it a little better, but still, we definitely made Alexander's day.

Ok anyway, on to the bus ride itself. This was a "first class" bus, which means it is advertised as having air conditioning, free coffee and tea, bathroom on board, tv, reclining seats, the works. What does that mean in practice? Well, first, they cranked the air conditioning on full blast, and there was a temperature gauge on the bus, so I can report that it got down to 15 degrees Celsius before they turned it off. It apparently was a binary air conditioner, either off or on full arctic blast. Annie put on all the clothes she had with her (2 pants, a shirt and a fleece), and was still cold. When it was 5am, 15 degrees in the bus, and we had a full day ahead of us, we knew it was going to be a long one.

Once the sun started to come up around 6am, they played the first movie. I wish I had written down all the movies that were played on board because there were some seriously awesome selections. They played the Tooth Fairy movie starring The Rock (dubbed in spanish, no english subtitles), Ice Princess, a disney ice skating movie (english with spanish subtitles, but so terrible I stopped watching), From Dusk til Dawn (in english with spanish subtitles, an interesting choice when taking a bus through rural central america), Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 (the live action version, in spanish with no subtitles, except the songs were in english), a bad Heather Locklear movie that we can't remember the name of, and a few other real winners.

Although this was advertised as a direct, express bus, there were many surprise stops. First of all, we had to cross 3 borders (Guat-El Salvador, El Salvador-Honduras, Honduras-Nicaragua), and each time, there were surprise fees and 30 minutes or so of delays for no apparent reason. Then, there was a stop in San Salvador where the bus disappeared, our stewardess said it would be back in 30 minutes, and then it showed up over an hour later with no explanation. We also stopped a few times for gas and food/bathroom breaks, which were nice, but all in all the trip took 16 hours and we didn't arrive in Managua until 8pm, too late to catch a bus to Granada (or anywhere for that matter). It was dark, and our travel book advised not walking around Managua after dark (especially not around the international bus station, gulp), so we found a hostel in a nicer part of town that was right next to where we needed to catch a bus to Granada the next morning, and took a cab straight there. Our cab driver was nice, again warning us not to walk around Managua at night, and although we had to tie our backpacks down in the trunk of his cab, because the trunk door was a hatchback made of more duct tape and plastic than actual car, we made it to the hostel without incident, and finally relaxed, having made it to "a" destination, even if it wasn't the one we planned on. The hostel we stayed in, Managua Backpackers Inn, had a weirdly unfriendly american owner, and we were glad we would be leaving in the morning.

After a pretty sweaty night's sleep, we made our way to the bus stop, a 5 minute walk from our hostel, which happened to be directly in front of a large, beautiful, immaculately clean McDonald's. Feeling slightly guilty, we luxuriated in Mickey D's air conditioning while enjoying some egg McMuffins and hash browns, which, in case you are wondering, taste exactly the same as they do in the states. Unfortunately they did not have McGriddles on the menu, apparently a breakfast sandwich with pancakes for bread has not become popular in central america yet. Their loss, to be sure.

After our shameless support of american fast food imperialism, we hopped onto a microbus for Granada to officially begin the Nicaragua portion of our trip.