Our next stop in Nicaragua was Granada, a colonial town on the northern end of Lake Nicaragua. It's a beautiful place. We walked around and soaked in the incredible Spanish architecture, tried our first quesillos, checked out the view from from the bell tower of a big cathedral, and had a great meal before heading for Laguna de Apoyo to camp.
We had heard there was camping at a lodge called Pajaro Azul on the shore of Laguna de Apoyo. We descended the steep road towards the lake shore a little after sunset and found the entrance gate. The guard and his big gun informed us that they no longer allow RVs to camp there. After a little discussion, he explained that they only allow tent camping now (at an exorbitant fee) and that Chomo wasn't welcome inside the gate. We tried to argue that we weren't an RV and we weren't going to use electricity, but he was adamant-- 'el jefe' makes the rules, and 'el jefe' wasn't there. We've been lucky to not have to face this situation often in our travels, but every once in a while, we get stuck without a viable camping option after dark and have to come up with a plan. Driving at night is not pleasant or really safe in Central America, and having a solid place to park the van and sleep is obviously a priority.
As we were trying our best to change the guard's mind, another guy appeared in the darkness and told us he might know somebody that would let us camp nearby. He hopped in the van and we drove a little further down the narrow road. It turns out the lake shore is dotted with private vacation homes and our new friend and his friend were caretakers looking after empty houses. Friend #2 offered to let us park Chomo in his caretakee's driveway for a small fee, given we were out by 7am. A little sketchy, but we were in a pinch, so we had a deal. We parked Chomo in the driveway and slept the night away in peace. In the morning, we ate our breakfast and made coffee in the lakefront palapa and enjoyed our 'vacation rental' right until 7. The price was right--we were just hoping the owners wouldn't show up and ask for an explanation!
As we got closer to the Northern border with Honduras on the PanAmerican, we noticed a stronger police presence on the road. This has been the norm throughout our travels, so we weren't surprised. We were waved down at one of the checkpoints (also normal), and exchanged the usual greetings with the policeman. He asked for the car's documents, our passports, and my driver's license. Pretty standard. One small problem. I had donated my wallet to the cloud forest back at Fox's Leap, Costa Rica. We're pretty sure there's a howler monkey cruising around with my driver's license at this point. So we have photocopies of my license, but not the real deal. The policeman was very disappointed in us.
It was a couple hours drive to Estelí, a quaint town in the mountains near the northern border of Nicaragua. We stopped for some lunch at a cool vegetarian restaurant and grabbed a few veggies at their great market for dinner and the next day in the car. We parked at a recreation club and hotel north of town with ample room for us to camp on their lawn and were surprised to find we were the only ones in the whole complex. We took advantage of their giant pool and held the first annual Nicaraguan awkward diving competition. Since there wasn't anyone else for miles around, Rok was the obvious choice for judge. We're still waiting for the official results to come in. It was a great relaxing evening to prepare us for what we knew would be a long day of double border crossings through Honduras and into El Salvador.
We had another dawn departure from Estelí. All was quiet on the peaceful mountain stretch of the PanAmerican. We were making great time towards El Espino, the border we had chosen to use this time around. Out of nowhere, a rogue cow that was being herded by a vaquero on horseback on the shoulder got startled up the bank and on to the road. Becca did everything she could and locked up the brakes, but it wasn't fast enough. We were nearly stopped by the time we made contact, but the vaca's hindquarters were pushed up on to the hood of Chomo. We were all a bit startled, the vaca included, but he recovered quickly and headed on down the highway with his herder. We hopped out to assess the wound--a small dent in the hood and a bit of startled cow poo shmeared across the chalk art were the only damages. We continued on, at a slower and more cautious pace and made lots of terrible jokes about cows and Central American road hazards.
We cruised through the quiet mountain border crossing and dropped down in to Honduras on a windy beautiful road. Our few hours in Honduras were as uneventful as before, and we had some nice laughs with the police about our cow head, Chomo, and the new cow dent in the hood. We arrived at El Amatillo, the border with El Salvador, during the customs' ladies lunch break. Again. A nice helper helped us find an on-duty customs agent, who took care of our paperwork with no fuss in record time. We sped across the bridge towards El Salvador, thinking we were home free and on our way back up to our happy crater camping spot at Laguna de Alegria. 
We got our passports stamped at immigration and were pointed toward la Aduana, which sits a few kilometers further down the road, when a customs agent motioned us toward the 'Escaner.' It took a few minutes and a lot of pointing to understand that they were directing us in to a giant Xray machine surrounded by a solid steel and concrete wall. They explained that the Escaner would take images of the car--we only needed to drive it in to place and wait on the other side so the tracks could pull it automatically through like a carwash. We were surprised to see such a spiffy modern machine at the seedy border town, but we followed directions and waited for Chomo to roll out the other side. Fifteen minutes later, all the employees were very apologetic, but we would have to circle around and try again. The images were not coming out well. We're still not positive what exactly went wrong, but we're pretty sure it has something to do with the chalkboard paint. After 4 more times through the Escaner and a couple hours, we lost our patience with the technology. We tried arguing that their machine was broken. They tried other cars. It was us, not them. We informed them that it would be much easier and faster to search the car by hand. This was not part of "el proceso" and "el proceso" must be followed. So we did the only other thing we could think of, and started to set up a picnic in their nice parking lot. As they watched us pull out our camp stove to brew some coffee and our cooler full of taco fixings, I think they finally took a hint and told us we were free to go. And we were just getting comfortable!
After the big delay at the border, we were behind on time and dark was rapidly setting in. We stopped at a grocery store on the outskirts of San Miguel to stock up before heading up the volcano to Alegria. In the parking lot, we noticed a giant green puddle under Chomo. Ruh Roh. I popped the hood and noticed the coolant overflow boiling, even though the engine wasn't running hot. It took a few minutes to realize it was just the radiator cap, by which time all the auto parts stores in town were already closed. There was no way we could make it up to Alegria without a functioning cap, and we didn't know of any other camping options in the area, so we decided to head back in to the big city of San Miguel and find a hotel for the night. During the trip so far, we've been doing everything we could to avoid cities and hotels, but it seemed like our best option. We found a cheap traveler's hotel by the bus station and pulled Chomo and Chomito into their jigsaw puzzle of a parking lot. We're pretty sure the parking attendant is a former world champion Tetris player. For all the bad rap we give to cities, San Miguel wasn't so bad. We found a delicious pupuseria a couple blocks from the hotel and reveled in the cheesy goodness, washed down by cold horchatas.
In the morning, we quickly found a new radiator cap with the help of the local mechanic shop and were on our way again. We rolled back to Lago de Ilopango, the cool crater lake near the capital that we had checked out on our way south. We had a few hours to kill while waiting for the wind to turn on and the local pilots to show up, so we stopped in the small town on the lake shore and discovered glorious peanut flavored horchata (2 for 25 cents), a $1.50 haircut from a one eyed barber, and delicious thick tortillas and fresh avocados, tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and chiles.
We entertained ourselves at the lake with a game of bocci and a refreshing swim, and watched the breeze come in across the water. Julio Vega and the other local pilots showed up eventually, and we all hiked to launch above the lake. We were surprised to find totally different conditions from our last flight--we got boosted up a few thousand feet over the lake in no time and soared along the rim of the crater below. We had a blast waving at all the kids in the town perched on the rim and even had enough altitude to do some acro.
We landed early at the sweet grassy Club LZ, knowing we had to find some Rok-friendly camping for the night. Our search led us north to Lago Coatepeque, where we camped on the lake shore in a restaurant parking lot. In the morning, we took a back road around the lake and shortcut past Parque Nacional Los Volcanes on to the PanAmerican. The road was deserted and the scenery beautiful. We added the park to our ever growing list of places to revisit. We spent way too short a time (again) in Honduras and El Salvador, but Pana was calling and we were already well past the ETA we had given Christian and Stefanie. Time to get back to work. 
wicked guys,as always in flying to many amazing spots, not enough time :)
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