One Hundred Dollars a Day
As a tourist in Honduras you are allowed a 90-day stay in country with no penalty. If you want to stay longer you have two options: pay for a 30-day extension or leave the CA-4 (Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador) and reset your 90 days. I welcomed the excuse to travel more and chose to make my “visa run” to Panama.
Anyssa and I planned a five-day getaway to Panama. We had tickets in, tickets out, and a hostel booked for all the nights we were there. Our perfectly planned trip lasted approximately one hour before we experienced the first hiccup. While walking towards security in Honduras we were stopped and told we could not leave for Panama without the yellow fever vaccine. Confused and frustrated because our passports were already stamped for departure, we were led down to the immigration office by a Copa Airlines employee wearing a blue shirt and a pained smile. There we were given two new options: get the vaccine in Honduras and leave after it had been in our systems a full ten days or get the vaccine in Panama and wait out the ten days there. My visa expired in three days. I did not have time for the vaccine to incubate in Honduras. I looked at the immigration officer and started to cry. Anyssa laughed. We all have different ways of dealing with stress.
Several phone calls and tissues later we made a decision: we were flying to Panama for an extended vacation. The twelve days that followed are some of the most memorable from my time in Central America so far. Almost anything that could have gone wrong did, my luck not turning when I crossed the border. From confiscated peanut butter to closed clinics, ATM fraud to expired orange juice, I had some pretty bad traveling mojo. Luckily, when the tears dried, I too was able to laugh at the irony of my life and my series of unfortunate events made for good conversation with everyone I met.
“I need to get that vaccine too! Where’s the clinic?”
“They didn’t even look at our cards in Columbia.”
“Do you want some peanut butter?”
We spent each day with people we met at the hostel during breakfast. We introduced ourselves over pancakes and after finishing our coffee set off on adventures together. One day, we walked five miles in search of a park, where we then proceeded to go on a hike. I met another girl on a visa run from Costa Rica, many young backpackers from Europe, and several people who had quit their jobs to travel the world.
One of these world travelers chasing “the endless summer” was a man from Chicago named Michael. We met at dinner one night on the San Blas islands. Michael quit his job almost a year ago and plans to go “until the money runs out.” I had many questions for Michael as I have picked up the travel bug (but not yellow fever—now I am immune for life) and was curious to hear not only his stories but his motivations. When did he decide to do it? Why? How did he plan? What did he pack? And, Anyssa was curious, how much did he spend? He laughed, took another bite of his fish, and told us he budgeted for one hundred dollars a day.
As a volunteer at Montaña de Luz I receive a stipend of one hundred dollars a month. With no other jobs or supplemental income, I am essentially making one hundred dollars a month. This covers food when I am not up top or travel expenses if I choose to leave. One hundred dollars is enough to get by in Honduras, especially given my situation where my living expenses and weekday meals are taken care of by the organization. The yellow fever vaccine from the clinic in Panama cost one hundred dollars. We took two taxis and two Ubers that morning trying to find the right place. We had to change our flights to come back ten days after receiving the vaccine. I spent my monthly salary in a minute and the rest of the twelve days digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole.
As I talked with other travelers and listened in on conversations at the hostel, I learned many backpackers skip over Honduras when coming up through Central America. I heard, “it is more dangerous and looks just like Nicaragua and Guatemala, so why bother?” I would bother. What does one hundred dollars a day look like in Honduras? In my experience it is vastly different from one hundred dollars a day in Panama, and I can only imagine one hundred dollars a day in Switzerland. What about Thailand? Morocco? Columbia? In every country one hundred dollars means something different. It does not seem right to go all around the world and skip over a place where one hundred dollars could make a huge difference. It does not seem right to skip over one culture but see and experience everything around it.
Of course, I am biased, and wish everyone would travel to Honduras. I have now been in Honduras for one hundred days. I am spending money, not saving, but I am gaining knowledge. I am fortunate to have the money to travel and learn from experience. I realize there are many people who will not see in a lifetime what I have seen in the last few months. I hope those who are able choose to travel and use their one hundred dollars to see everything this world has to offer.