Travel drama, chapter two

I wanted to share just a bit more of the drama around our travels! As Bill says, "it's the gift that keeps on giving!"

Because we now have no vehicle to get back to Guatemala, our friends (who had to go back to Guatemala last night) needed to arrange bus travel for all of us to return on Monday, from El Salvador to Guatemala City, where he has his car stored. And in order to travel on the bus, the bus company needs a copy of your passport pages. Of course, he did not have our passport pages in a photocopy or scan, so he called us this morning in El Salvador to send him the passport pages.

Easier said than done!

First we went to the hotel office to see if they would do a scan for us and then email it to our friend. No, they said they do not have a scanner.

Then we took a taxi to a nearby mall to look for a cyber café. When we got there, we found out that apparently the cybercafe moved out of the mall and there was none in the mall. But they pointed down the street and said there's one right by a gasoline station.

So off we go walking to the gas station, who said they didn't know about a cybercafe. Then a customer pointed us down another street just a few blocks to another cybercafe. The neighborhood was getting a little rougher, but off we went walking to look for the cybercafe.

It actually was just a storefront where he made photocopies. We asked if he could do a scan and he said no he couldn't because he didn't have the little memory stick to put the scan onto, and he didn't have Internet! Then I remembered I had a memory stick so, he did the scan, and put it onto onto my memory stick.

So we take a taxi back to the hotel, expecting to use the hotel's computer to email the scans we know had on the memory stick.

No, the hotel said they do not have a computer we can use.

We go off looking for one of the friends to see if we can use their computer. But could not find anybody who could help us.

Then we ran into some dear friends who offered to use their iPad application as a scanner to photograph the passport pages and then send them through email. We tried that twice but the emails were not getting through because of the large size. Finally we use their iPhone, took yet another set of photographs of these passports, and then set those through the email to our friend desperately awaiting them before he got on the bus.  All's well with the whole 30 minutes to spare!

The bottom line is that here in Central America, sometimes business dealings are a little more complicated than one might think. But with patience and with a sense of humor, you manage to get done what you need to!