On Thursday night, firecrackers exploded in machine-gun bursts along Leon’s streets. In the city's main plaza, the cathedral teemed with people. The largest in Central America -- a bulky and dilapidated Gothic structure, mausoleum like -- was lit with Christmas lights. For once, is seemed welcoming.

Through the open doors, and the crowds of on-lookers, we could see a nearly-life size statue of the Virgin, draped in a blue robe and surrounded by angels with golden wings. The altar was in honor of "La Griteria Chiquita," a holiday that celebrates the day, in 1947, when the city struck a deal with the Virgin Mary: if she protected it from the erupting Volcan Cerro Negro, the residents would honor her every year with altars and a Halloween-like frenzy of door-to-door gift giving.

Instead of candy, there are all matter of gifts. Our guest house was offered boxes of matches, which they'd piled high near the front door. A house nearby was giving away ice cream. Some houses, clearly, are more popular that others with the children -- hurried parents in tow -- that raced from house to house with backpacks strapped to their fronts.

Among the "dangers and annoyances" listed in one of our Central America guidebooks is this word of caution: Unlike Mexico, it says, you won't find many animals on the roads. People are too poor to risk their livestock. But, they warn, drunks wander the roads, day and night. Be careful.

Nicaraguans are poor, but there's no shortage of animals -- goats, dogs, cows, horses, pigs and mules -- wandering Nicaragua's pot-holed roadways. But there are also people, lots of them, drunk and sober. There are few cars and many bikes. Along every road, urban and rural, there are scattered parades of pedestrians, going to work or school or church. They carry groceries, seem impervious -- without umbrellas -- to the pounding tropical rain and pay interest to oncoming cars only when absolutely necessary.

Mule on the mountain, above San Lucas

There was my triumphant return to reporting, a road trip on a highway with swimming pool-sized potholes and a run-in with an ant, which left my foot swollen to roughly the size, shape and rosy color of baby’s butt.

All during my interview with Paul Rice, the founder of TransFair USA and the man who brought the fair trade movement to the United States, my foot was swelling. By the time IPaul Rice, of TransFair USA made it back to Hotel Miraflor, it had grown too big for my right shoe. It hurt and itched at the same time. My sandal straps strangled my toes, turning them bright red and numb. Sitting on the bed, looking at my overstuffed sausage feet, it seemed possible that my skin would stretch beyond it’s capacity and split open.

Earlier in the day, I’d seen a dog laying still on the sidewalk. It had tumors bulging everywhere from its body. One had grown so large that it had burst open, exposing the white, fatty mass beneath. Since then, I can’t keep the image away. So gruesome, so sad. But also fascinating, the way all gruesome, sad things are.

Nicaragua has the same ability to throw me into tailspins: emotional, political, psychological, physical. We arrived just over two weeks ago, The valley below: San Lucas, Nicaragua rented a place to live, month-to-month, and have begun to settle in. I love it, but it also scares me. Nicaragua is not Mexico, a place that feels familiar, and therefore comfortable, in comparison.

Nicaragua is safe. Much safer than Mexico, especially for journalists. But the poverty here -- the roughness of the infrastructure (the only functional highway is the international Panamericana), the way water is always running out, the way Nicaraguans are still waiting, hopeful, for the promise of the revolution to arrive -- frightens me. Not for more, but for them. Seeing the Sandinista’s red flags flying from street lamps and their red swaths painted on city streets, Nicaragua feels sad, like a couple that was once in love, but now just trying.

But then, I’ve only just arrived.

Our new home, courtyard and all, in LeonYesterday, Tim was sick with something that resembled a sinus infection. Whatever it was, the sickness made him sprawl sideways on the bed and groan like a dying dog for two days. Meanwhile, the power was out at our house (actually a hotel, mid-construction) and all through the neighborhood. A transformer had exploded somewhere, leaving us without the two most luxurious features our new home: a ceiling fan, with five speeds and blades as long and robust as wings, and the internet that I steal from a nearby “ciber.” It was a slow day, without power in the baking city, and only Scrabble and old New Yorkers to entertain us.

Because Tim was sick, and not up for the three block walk to Salman, our new neighborhood grocery, I went alone to buy drinking water and ice. We usually buy water in bulk, for $1.40 / five gallons, but we’d run out and had been buying liter bottles of bubbly water, one liter at a time, for two days.

At Salman -- because I was there and because I was hungry -- I bought a few extra things, including a large bottle of Extra Lite Flor de Caña rum, which was deeply discounted, for no apparent reason, along with the spoiling meats and cheeses. Limping along, barely managing my two bags, pain jetting up my already injured right arm, I peered at the city that is now my home and felt weak and overwhelmed. Everything was heavy.

But despite the heat, the throbbing arm and the cabin fever that I’d settled into during Tim’s sickness, I was weak not with exhaustion, but with that goofy kind of kid-like wonder. Maybe I was just dehydrated, but I felt drunk.

I was romantic at the color of things: the way the old tin roofs are green and the new tin roofs are orange, the way the clay tile roofs look like so many fingernail clippings stacked one on top of the next. I was overwhelmed by the palm trees and long, banana leaves crawling out of unseen courtyards -- the courtyards remind me of the forts that I used to make, that every kid makes. They remind me of how it feels to hide away, behind blankets and chair legs and table tops, with the light of the house coming in through the sheer, over-washed sheets.

Yesterday, the color of the Leon sky was terrifying in it’s crispness. It was a beautiful day.

Now, water is obviously necessary for our survival. But the ice is necessary only for ice coffee (also, in a way, necessary for survival). And the rum is necessary for nothing, but good for many things, including Scrabble. But walking with those bags was a feat, and I had to stop often to set the ice and the bottles on this stoop or that, while I let the blood return to my fingertips and my elbow throb a big “Fuck you” to my love for ice coffee, rum and bubbly water.

While standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the pain to fade, a kid on a bicycle rode by. He was maybe 10. Or 12. I’ve never been good at guessing kid’s ages. He could see, as clearly as anyone could see, that I was not a Leones. As he passed, he said, in big bright English -- television English -- “Hello, bitch.”

I thought of my brother and I and how, when we were that age, we delighted in Spanish swear words. I remember once, on a family vacation, I opened the door of our rented minivan and triumphantly called out, “Ching-a-te!” To me, the word sounded like the quick, smooth sliding of a door opening. To anyone who understood, it sounded like, “Fuck you.”

Later, when I was 15 and my brother was 12, in Mexico, just days before Christmas, Marco became obsessed with the most insulting of Mexican slang. By then, Marco and I were growing into our separate adolescent lives. He was quicker than me to adapt to the freedoms of adulthood. He beat to me to sex, drugs and almost everything else. And in Barra de Navidad, he spoke Spanish with a fluency and passion that I wouldn’t muster until years later. As we walked the tidal wave ravaged streets, looking for churros and other Christmas-time treats, Marco recited his newfound vocabulary: Pendejo! Puta! Chinga tu madre!

But, as it sometimes happens, if it's not one thing, it's another.

As a rule, in a situation like this, it’s best not to know Spanish -- best to be completely, rather than only mostly, inept at the language of our adopted region. Tim and I had learned this along the way.

So, when the smug, pebble-faced man asks, with great seriousness, if we have a triangulo on board, we shrug, look to each other, shrug again. We stare expectantly at the office and he stares back. Another stand-off. But this time our opposition is armed.

Tray-ayng-oolo, I repeat. No entiendo. No hablamos espanol.

Of course, we do understand. This is a shake-down so famous, it's written about in guidebooks. For only the second time on our trip, just a few hours from Leon, petty corruption has us in his grips. The most notorious of the many shake-downs in Latin American police lore -- save, perhaps, the "Oh, look, I found a [planted] joint under your seat" -- is hard to dispute.

The officer holds up a tattered little booklet containing the country's traffic laws and points to #10. Indeed, drivers are supposed to carry a warning sign with them, in case of an accident or blown tire, to alert fellow drivers. Drivers are also obligated to wear seat belts, stop at stop signs and drive one way on one way streets. But none of these rules are followed, much less enforced. Yet, it's hard to argue with black and white text and an armed officer in a shabby blue uniform.

Instead, we persist with our blank stares and butchered words. We go round and round with him as he points to cones on the road, TRIANGULO, draws a triangle in his book and pokes his pencil again and again at the image, like a frustrated Pictionary player. Finally, he turns the book over, and points to a pencil-written "fine" of $30 US. We owe a fine, una multa, he tells us, for not having a triangulo.

We shrug, look at each other, and back to him. We shake our heads, in total confusion. Frustrated and red-faced, his voice gets louder and more shrill with every TRIANGULO he spits at us. But finally, he can't do it anymore. He's missing over potential victims as they drive on by. He waves his hand, sickened. He lets us go.

We felt victorious. Pathetic, but victorious.

And, for the record, I no longer hate Honduras.

Inside the office, there are beastly metal desks and a small line of people. A mother and her teenage daughter stare at me the way I stare at the mangy, broken dogs I see on Central America’s streets. Pure pity.

Boat Shoes returns. He shuffles a few papers. Stamps a few forms. Thrusts them in the hands of one of the other border guys, and sends me on my way. There’s a few more hoops (the agent has to check the VIN on the van, and I need to make a few copies), but then we’re on our way, driving south west, Nicaragua-bound.

As we’re putting our documents back in their case, I find a $50 bill, the emergency money I forgot we had.

Note: To read from the beginning, click here.

With computer problems solved, Boat Shoes returns to my forms, forms he's laid eyes on three times now. Then, there's a pained face, gurgling and groaning. He says there's a problem -- a big, big problem. His finger bounces between two lines on the form, lines where I'd confused marca (brand) with placa (plate) in the vehicle information section, realized my mistake, carefully crossed out my plate number and wrote "GMC".

The woman at the data entry office had been able to read it -- and take my last $11 for typing the hand-printed form. But, No, said Boat Shoes, this will not do. No, no, no...this will not do at all. He hands me back my forms, stamped and payed for, says a quick something to Jerry-Curl and turns around, back to his work.

Jerry-Curl and I look at each other. Anticipation like a Western movie duel. I'm waiting for him to tell me what's next. He's waiting for me to understand what just happened and react, as he knows I will, in panic. It's me who flinches: What do I do now? Can I have a fresh form? I'm sputtering like a wind-up duck.

Yes, you can have a new form.

Relief.

But you'll have to repeat the entire process -- with the bank, the data entry office, the stamps. You'll have to pay for each again.

He smiles a wicked half-smile. He has me.

This is where the logic hurts: even if we accept this $53 extortion, in the name of sanity and our desire to reach Nicaragua, there isn't another $53 to spend. Not today. We withdrew our last $200 from our international checking account in San Miguel; we're waiting for a transfer from our second, American checking account, to go through before we could get more. That wouldn't happen for days. We'd figured $200 would be more than enough to get from San Miguel,  to Leon, with a full tank of gas and a 10-hour drive. We were wrong.

Jerry-Curl is enjoying this. I should have paid to have the form completed for me, since clearly I don't understand the language. There's nothing he can do, I simply have to pay again. It's the rules, he tells me. He's not being cruel, just professional, like Boat Shoes.

This is when I realize that this isn't going to be easy.  It's definitely not about a scratch on th form, but it might not be about money either. This is punishment, or sadism. Whatever it is, it's not a matter of smiling warmly, apologizing for my mistake.

And if Jerry-Curl refuses to let me pass, we'll have to turn Dolly around and return to San Miguel, two hours away, where we can use our credit card on an overpriced hotel room and wait for our transfer to go through. Then come back to the border and do it again.

So, with nothing left to do, I beg. I tell him we're out of money, that we're only passing through. We just need to get to Leon. He's unmoved. He has me follow him out of the office, across the street, to an unmarked building. He goes in, motioning for me to stand outside and wait for him. When he comes out a few minutes later, he shrugs. Nope, like I told you before, there's nothing we can do. He's been with the administrator.

I stand there. Blink a few times in silence, and start to cry.

It wasn't a proud moment, but the combination of overwhelming frustration coupled with some small knowledge that crying might save me, took hold. It's pathetic, I know. A humiliation I'd like not to have granted. But this is how it goes, when logic is against you, you use what you can.

Well, can I speak to the administrator? He shrugs, disgusted, and opens the door.

To be continued...

Note: To read from the beginning, click here.

 Immigration offices, care of: www.guanacosonline.org
Boat Shoes “helps me” first, giving me the multi-layered and multicolored carbon copy form required to take Dolly into the country for the three hours it’ll take us to cross through the Honduras' southern tip and into Nicaragua.

There's an office across the way can fill out the form for me. But I opt to do it by hand myself. The service, I figure, is for the illiterate. No reason I can't do it myself. He watches me pull a pen from my purse and deliberate over each line. The form, a rainbow-colored bureaucratic wonder, requires multiple stops and multiple stamps. But I don’t know that yet. All I know is that a form is a form is a form, and I have filled out plenty.

The border is open 24 hours a day, but the bank that processes the border fees is not. This logic, see, is just too much for me. I join the line standing vigil outside Banco Occidental, watching a small girl chase a cockroach along a ledge with her finger.

When the bank finally opens two guards with large barreled, pump action guns escort us into the lobby, three at a time. They use metal detecting wands and brisk hands on the men, but let us women pass without a groping.

Inside, it’s cool and shiny, somewhere I'd like to stay awhile. Instead, the teller tells me I’m in the wrong branch. This office can't process the money I need to pay for the Vehicle Certification. She points me down the street, in the direction from which I’ve just come. At the main customs building, there’s a closet-sized room with two tellers and it’s own, less vigilant security.

Again, I'm turned away. I can't pay the $42 vehicle permit fee until I’ve been to another office, where a private company enters the information on the Vehicle Certificate into “the system." I don't know what this means, but it sounds very important. She points me toward a tree, obscured by a giant truck. Over there. She waves me off, a bug in her ear.

Photo care of: www.guanacosonline.orgTim’s reading Didion’s Salvador behind the steering wheel, with the window up to keep the vendors and street kids and money changers -- the present horrors of El Salvador -- from distracting him from the horrors of twenty five years ago.

At the data entry office men wait, leaning against the window, holding folders thick with forms. They’ve been there an hour, waiting to hand over their packets of someone else’s papers. Finally, a large women, eyes and lips painted in blue and hot cherry red, slides open the glass window without a word. The men shove their arms in between metal bars, dropping their papers onto the counter. Nobody speaks. One of them, the only one wearing a pressed shirt and slacks instead of jeans and a grubby t-shirt, grabs my arm and shoves it through the crowd, depositing my papers at the top of the stack. Chivalry, even at Amatillo.

A half hour later, the data entry woman slides the window open again and my papers appear, along with her open hand: $11 US for typing the information I’d filled out and printing it on a separate, stamped piece of paper, along with a stamped receipt. I give both to the teller at Banco Occidente, along with Dolly’s rainbow-colored visitor’s permit. I only have dollars, El Salvador’s official currency since 2001. But this Honduran bank doesn’t accept and will not change dollars. She waves me off again, pointing to a fat man with a four-inch thick wad of bills, sweating on the street outside.

I pay my $42 dollars in Honduran Lempiras and the teller stamps the many layers of multi-colored forms -- then hands me another form for good measure. Back across the street, Boat Shoes is working hard to get his computer to accept an illegitimate password.

He enters it again and again. After half an hour of entering digits, with careful pecking but no luck, he gets a cell call and leaves. I pray it’s tech support, but upon his return, he resumes the half-hearted pecking -- typing starred digits, hitting Enter, then entering them again.

Finally, he makes the call--the call that will save me from murdering this man with the rimless glasses. Or so I hope.

To be continued...

El Amatillo border station, El Salvador-Honduras, care of: kariandadam.comThey say that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. The same, it seems, is true of extortion. There are small extortions, like being over-changed a few dollars on a multi-course meal, and large extortions, like those perpetrated by presidents. In between, there’s a room with peeling beige paint, a dysfunctional computer that operates in a DOS-like language and a pigeon that flies in through the open windows -- in between is the El Salvador-Honduras border crossing at El Amatillo.

But we’re heading South, so no lingering.

Time to drive.