horrible borders
Holy harrowing border crossings Batman! Two today... El Salvador/Honduras and Honduras/Nicaragua. Temps were 100F all day, but I remained cool... well actually I was sweating like a pig in the Klim while trying to figure out confusing border posts. Multiple offices, a stamp here, some copies there, back here, then a stamp on the copy, then go get a copy of the stamped copy, a tiny weeny ticket from this guy to give to another guy on the way out... on an on. I caved and got one of the "helpers" again. I should know better, last time they stung me for $45. I thought, having learned from that experience, it wouldn't happen again... I was wrong!
I think I figured out their MO though. At first I tell them to go away but they ignore me and just keep following. They wait until I'm standing there scratching my head at the confusing array of offices and shops and kids... then they point me in the right direction. What am I supposed to do, not go? So I do that step and he points me to the next one. In today's case he picked up a mistake by a girl at the vehicle import desk, so he did actually save me some time. But the game is to build trust in the early parts of the process, so that you're more likely to go along with the scam later.
This time the scam was a $35 "road tax" for Honduras - they took me to a nondescript office to pay where a guy "entered the number of my import document" into the computer so that "they would know at the other end that I'd paid". I told them it was BS but they insisted and in the end I just wanted to get out of there.
So I got screwed again. I did better on the Nicaragua side, except - I had to pay my first official bribe of the trip. The guy at the last gate before entering Nicaragua picked up that my registration was expired. Whatttt!!! But he was right, it expired in January. WHY would South Dakota only give me three months registration? And why hadn't I (or anyone else) noticed it before? So the guy pulls me aside to a quiet spot and in a low voice lays out what kind of trouble I could be in with no valid registration. I didn't get all of what he was saying but I DID get "20 dollars". I knocked him down to $15 but then I didn't have change so just gave him the $20. F*ck me, now I have to figure out how to get an "original" copy of new registration papers down here... I'm thinking a color scan and color printout will probably be passable, till I can get the real one mailed somewhere.