El Salvador to Honduras
El Salvador to Honduras at CA1
The Honduran reputation for bureaucracy is well deserved. Leaving El Salvador you will need a copy of your Salvador import paperwork. First, a trip to the copy store. The officials in El Salvador were very helpful, even walking us from window to window. Copy in hand; it was trip to the inspection station for VIN verification. Once stamped, we were off and across the bridge into Honduras. Ignore any helpers around here. First stop is immigration a blue building situated in the middle of the road, Lots of money changers hanging around here. Passports produced, it was on to the vehicle importation maze. The first Aduano is about 500 feet from immigration. Park on the right where there is another blue building. Down a walkway to the first office where you will need two copies of your passport, drivers license and registration or title. In our case, they would not accept copies of the registration without seeing the original. We made color copies of all original documents before leaving and these were accepted (a little color goes a long way). The clerk will handwrite in the information on a multipart 9A-1 form and stamp your passport Take the completed form all the way across the street to a little window hidden behind a telephone pole. Pay $10 usd per vehicle for the clerk to type the form into the computer. Take the completed paperwork to the bank in the center building (between exit and entry lanes) and pay 532 Lempira ($28.50) per vehicle). Go to the window located south of the bank in the same center building for more processing. Get two copies of everything (stamped passport, international drivers license and bank receipt. Take all of this back to the first clerk for more stamps. At this point you should be finished and can head to the official at the inspection station, about ¼ mile down the road. There you will be asked for your passport and importation paperwork. Once your are past that point, you can go on your way. A note about our crossing, we elected to use a helper. No one in our goup had a good grasp of Spanish and unlike El Salvador; the officials were not very helpful. While waiting at immigration, we met a couple from El Salvador who lived in San Francisco. They were very helpful in negotiation the services we expected for our money. We found it best to negotiate for the total cost ($38.50 plus the helper’s fee). Pay all the fees yourself and then give the helper what is left at the end. We negotiated a rate of $20 per bike. While this might be a little steep, we spent less than 2-1/2 hours to exit El Salvador and enter Honduras. There are plenty of stories of 3 and 4 hour crossings into Honduras Compared to the time we would have spent trying to find our way around and the translation help, it was worth it to us. Our helper also got the clerk to process our paperwork after their lunch period had started. When we got to the final inspection station, we realized one document had not been stamped. The helper ran back and got it stamped while we waited. We may have been lucky; I would be very careful and always keep track of your own documents. You can decide for yourself if you want to use a helper.