We chose to make our journey to Guatemala with the Tika Bus Company, and spent the night before our first leg at their bus terminal hotel in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. We were up at 4am and on the road by 5am for a 12 hour bus ride that would take us all the way through Honduras and to El Salvador for the night.

The bus ride itself was comfy and pretty uneventful, which is kind of what you want for this part of the world! When we got to San Salvador, we settled into the Tika Bus hotel and asked the receptionist if it was legit to walk and get some dinner. San Salvador is, afterall, the third most dangerous city in the world, with 108 people murdered every year for every 100,000 people, that’s 6 a day. He told us we were in a safe part and that there were restaurants realy close so we ventured out. We had intended to go to a semi-fancy Italian place but on our way we walked past some food trucks in a carpak surrounded by plastic chairs and locals all eating and chatting together, so we decided to join them. It ended up being the best meal we had had in about a month; insanely juicy ribs and an epic pulled pork sandwich that was to die for. So good, and so cheap.

The next morning we were up at 5am and on the road by six for our last 6-hour leg to Guatemala which was once again delightfully mundane. We had heard about another traveller who drove into Guatemala and saw two bodies hanging from an over bridge, soooooo yeh, uneventful is good.

Tika Bus are probably the most common company to use for this crossing, and after going through four countries with them, it was obvious why. Crossing three borders can be a mission but they took our passports from us and pretty much did all the customs stuff. We only had to get off once. They were so friendly and really efficient (which is not something you see often in this part of the world.) Yay for Tika Bus.