We are working our way through Central America crossing land borders as a family of four. 

We decided to go from Leon, Nicaragua to El Tunco, El Salvador. 

There are a few ways to do this. You can fly, boat, bus, or shuttle your way. 

Flying is quite costly for a family of four. The boat cost $60 USD, and that price was just from Potosi to La Union. From there you would need to find transportation on either end. The chicken bus was another option, but we did a lot of reading and chatted with locals who said Southern Honduras is a huge risk to take on your own via the chicken bus. While we have been doing this option most of our way through Central America thus far, we decided the risks just weren’t worth it. 

The bonus to a private shuttle was that it would pick us up at our hotel in Leon and take us across both borders and drop us off at our hotel in El Tunco for $50 USD per person, with the girls being half price. 

With our alarm set for 2:30 am we were picked up by the shuttle at 3:30 am. It was scheduled to be 3 am but it was running late however, soon enough we were on our way through the darkness headed to the southern Honduras border.

Arriving at 5:55 am and still darkness, the shuttle parked and the drivers went to go get us our Nicaragua exit cards while we waited in the vehicle. Once the sun came up it was time to cross. We then drove to the Nicaragua immigration building where they took our passports along with $10 USD for the exit fee to get stamped out of the country. We then had to bring all our bags inside and put them through the x-ray scanner. This was a bit of a wait as no one seemed to be running the scanner. We waited patiently as the line continued to grow behind us. Also, a pack of stray dogs decided to enter the building and greet everyone and wrestle amongst us all. The girls were not a fan of this and neither were we really. These dogs were nipping a bit at some of the guys in the lineup. After a good 15 minute wait someone returned to their post and we sent our bags through. This entire process took 1.5 hours, including a stop at some highly neglected bathrooms. 

The shuttle drove against oncoming traffic as we rolled up to the Honduras point of entry immigration and we were escorted to the booth by our driver and quickly stamped in. We each paid $3 USD for entry and were on our way after 45 more minutes.

Back in the shuttle and now in southern Honduras, we proceeded through three checkpoints where we had to stop and show passports and allow the police to do a casual snoop through the van.

The rest of the journey was uneventful though, and after three hours we arrived at the western Honduras border. We got out of the shuttle and into immigration there which seemed way behind the times. The immigration officers were sitting behind their desktop computers balancing on plastic Costco tables. We handed over our passports, got stamped out and were on our way. 

Into the shuttle and passing through no-mans-land and arriving on the El Salvador side. Here we parked and the driver took our passports into immigration. We got out and stretched our legs and used the cleanest bathrooms we’ve seen so far at any border crossing. Once immigration was done with our passports they came out to the shuttle to verify who we were and made us Canadians pay a $12 tourist entry fee for us adults, the kids were free. Welcome to El Salvador!

By 12:30 in the afternoon the shuttle stopped at a gas station in Usulutan where a van loaded full of opposite direction tourists were waiting for us. Tyson ran into the gas station to get us some water and snacks while we switched vehicles and we were soon on our way. 

By 3:30 we were pulling up to our hotel just outside of El Tunco where we could relax the remainder of the day. We decided to splurge for the 3 nights on a nice hotel on the water as we knew we would need a few down days to recover from the very long travel day.

The van then continued on dropping people off where they desired with a couple rugged souls actually pushing on further for an unknown amount of time to Antigua, Guatemala.

The entire trip for us took 12 hours with two fully assisted border crossings, with english speaking drivers and was safe, comfortable and having only 7 people in the 9 seater van gave us room to spread out and store our bags inside rather than on the roof rack. Any long road trip will take it out of you but we were more than happy with the shuttle service rather than the other travel options between the two countries.

Have a look at our five days in Léon before we left or find out a bit more about El Tunco.

As well as other Central American border crossings:

• Panama to Costa Rica
• Costa Rica to Nicaragua