Big guns and Serendipity.

It’s a funny old business, vintage endurance rallying.  It’s a roller coaster of emotions - often within the space of about half an hour.  Luckily, I’m a fairly even person, even though some might call me feisty. You become so attuned to every little change in noise of strange pongs, that your adrenal glands go into over drive. How dull it would be though if everything went smoothly all the time. Or not. 

We got to the Nicaragua/Honduras border with ease in our little Toyota.  There wasn’t a car rental office at the border so we’d picked up an Alamo driver 100 kms before and he was taking the car back for us.  The Nicaraguan side was a collection of containers, all gaily painted.  It was reasonably efficient.  We completed our formalities and then the lorry containing our car, which was in Honduras, came back across the border to off load it. It was slightly complicated as the ramp didn’t go right down to the ground so he reversed against a pile of sand.  The first one wasn’t high enough and so he found another.  Out came the car and the Nicaraguan official lowered the string that marked the border and we crossed into Honduras.  Of course, at this point, we were not ‘officially’ in Honduras and had to be processed. Immigration was quick, but, most amazingly of all, the car import was super fast.  This was mainly due to the great work of our fixer, Hernan and his brother Javier.  It was actually one of fastest border crossings we’ve had on a rally.  

We had a 130-ish to go to our hotel in the capital with the unpronounceable name   It was uneventful. Until we were nearly there, that is. The city is in a basin and there was a long, steep climb to get up to it, before dropping down.  We were getting a bit hot and it did not cool down when we started our descent.  Adrian thought we had blown yet another head gasket.  All a bit serious. We reached the hotel and A and Toby stripped it all down, and, fortunately, the gasket was ok.  

I was despatched to find a diy shop to buy paint scrapers, or some such, to clean the gasket.   I set off and soon found myself on the mean, very mean streets of town. I certainly wouldn’t have walked there after dark.  Anyway, shop found, scrapers bought and I walked back to the safety of the Inter Continental. They stuck the gasket back together with some super strong gunk, tightened things, drained the coolant, performed a blood transfusion and crossed their fingers.

Honduras can a dangerous place. All the fuel stations have men with very big guns. I went to a pharmacy for a new toothbrush and the guard had a machine gun. You don’t see that too often in Boots. Our experience generally has been positive though with everyone so friendly and exuberant. Maybe that’s the old car effect. 

Tegucigalpa has a slight feel of La Paz about it, with myriad buildings tumbling down the sides of the basin. It’s nothing like as huge or as dramatic more La Paz light. 

Today, we are on our way to Copan and the first of the Mayan ruins. As I write, we are 109kms into a total of 400 for the day.  We set off at 6.30 to allow for slowness up the steep hills and, everything crossed, so far so good.  There is along stretch between navigational points allowing me to write this.  The sun is shiny, the views fab and just about every car that sees us honks, photographs and films us and drives very close to wave and smile. We are heading first towards San Pedro Sula, which had the dubious title of the worlds most dangerous city because of the murder rate, in 2013. Despite all the guns and dire warnings we’ve seen nothing but joyful friendliness.  I don’t think they see many 87 year old cars here.  

I keep glancing anxiously at the temperature gauge but, although it rises a little on the steep climbs it is dropping down quickly.  We live on. The day isn’t over yet though and by the time I have some Wi-Fi to post this, anything could have happened. But, for the moment, all is well with the world.  

20 minutes after I wrote the last paragraph we had a puncture. It happened outside a small restaurant with very clean bands and the RAC, in the form of Toby, Fenella and Doc Jorge, arrived 5 minutes later. Serendipity.