A journey to the center of the Americas

Can you name the 7 Central American countries? In the order I crossed them, here they are: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Except from Belize and the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast (English-speaking), Spanish is the main language.

Distance Guatemala City - San Juan del Sur: 1,040 km (645 mi)

From Guatemala City, I took a bus to San Salvador ... in El Salvador. There, I was supposed to spend only one evening and night at Alba's, a friend of Claire, one of my friends in France. Because of / Thanks to the bus company, I extended my stay 24 hours Salvadoran. I was unable to get on the bus due to the closure of check-in five minutes before my arrival. And when it is 5 am and the bus is in front of you, your mood could be... #@ù%£!!

But it allowed me to spend a day with Alba and her family, discovering San Salvador and falling under the charm of Salvadoran cuisine. I will keep a delicious memory of pupusas, national specialties which look like pancakes made of corn or rice flour (I will not deny that I preferred those with rice flour, I seriously begins to saturate maize) and stuffed with cheese, mashed beans or meat and vegetables. Yummy! And another local delicacy: empanadas, fried balls of mashed plantains stuffed with a cream. I continued discovering new tropical fruits and vegetables. This time was the yuca, cousin of the potato, which can be mashed and fried. Loved it!

I ended up taking my bus to Nicaragua. It crossed southern Honduras before arriving in Managua, capital of Nicaragua. The town itself is nothing special. In his defense it was destroyed by two earthquakes in 1931 and 1972. So there is no much more historical centre to admire. But the city is no less impressive, surrounded by five volcanoes, in the city, and from the top it seems that forest is everywhere over non rebuilt spaces of old Managua and new parts of it. I learned a lot about the country with her parents Denis: politics, religion, environment, etc.

In Managua, I should have met Savant, a Nepalese I met at Tikal (in northern Guatemala) to go together to Granada, on Lake Nicaragua. However Nicaraguan customs did not want to issue him a visa. He is therefore stuck in Honduras. What a pity!...

So I went alone to explore Granada and it sprawling market. Early in the morning, I tasted the joys of eating a bit cooked on fire place, at the time the market slowly comes alive. On my way to San Juan del Sur, I met Patrick (from Canada) in the bus. At the last moment I decided to accompany him on Ometepe Island for a closer look at the volcanoes of the island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. And I finally finished in San Juan del Sur, where I spent my last Nicaraguan night before crossing the border with Costa Rica today.