Bus trip to Nicaragua

I took a trip to Nicaragua this week. The bus fare was only $7.00 one way. Now I know why! First we already had our tickets ahead of time but we still had to be at the bus station at 4:15 and the bus didn't leave until 5:00. By the way that's a.m.! We stand in line in a VERY scary neighborhood and wait and wait. We finally are able to get on the bus and we find out seats. The seats are so small that my knees are touching the back of the chair in front of me. They aren't just grazing the back of the chair, they are pushed into the back of the chair. The bus has no air conditioning, or bathroom. It's a 5 hour trip during the dry season in Latin America. What were we thinking?! The bus makes a lot of stops on the way. It not only lets people off at different places it picks people up! I had a strange man standing in the aisle next to my seat hanging over me for over an hour. The bus did make a pit stop, but the driver didn't tell anyone how long the stop would be so we just had to stay close to the bus and watch for him to get back on. We made it though I think it took a more than 5 hours but we made it.

The buses in Nicaragua are worse than that though. I didn't have the pleasure of riding one just watching them. The first bus we saw there was a guy hanging on the back of the bus standing on the ladder. What was that all about? Maybe he just didn't want to pay. Later we saw other buses that looked like those clown cars. You couldn't squeeze another person in there if you had to. When the bus stopped people jumped out the back door, the side door, I'm surprised I didn't see people climb through the windows!

When we got to the border to come back I made the comment that we should try to bring the Tica bus back. We were fortunate enough to be able to get on it there. We had to get on last because everyone else had gotten on in a city in Nicaragua. We weren't able to sit together but that was ok. The seats were much bigger. No knees in the back! The bus had air conditioning and a bathroom. It also had a movie. Things were going along smoothly for about two hours. People got off and we were able to move around a little bit. We were into our second movie when we in the mountain part of the trip and we felt the bus jerk and stop. We pulled over as far as we could considering we were on a mountain road in Latin America. The bus would roll back and then jerk as we tried to go forward. This happened several times. The driver got off the bus and got under it to look around. I'm not exactly sure what ended up being wrong but I did hear that we had lost some bolts and we were going to have to wait for them. We were stuck on the side of the road with big trucks squeezing past us. Scary! The wait turned out to be only about an hour. We drove up the road and changed buses. This but did make a few stops to let people off but none to get on. I take that back we did have one person get on. The police got on and checked everyone's passport. We left Nicaragua at 3:30p.m. and got to Costa Rica at 10:00p.m. The bus station was a little crazy too. There were lots of people crammed in this little building and there was a tiny counter where you had to pick up your bag and everyone thought they had to be right in front of it. So when your number was called you couldn't even get up to the counter to get your bag. I made it though. I'll write more about the trip later. It really was a good trip just not a good bus ride.