Guatemala to Honduras: Corinto, closest border crossing to Costa Garifuna

Honduran Tourist Office freebies
Honduran Tourist Office freebies – you’ll need the sweat towel but only because of the heat.

Not so much on the internet about this border but it’s an easy, quiet one and if you want to stay on the Costa Garifuna, Corinto is where you want to cross between Guatemala and Honduras. The broken bridge sometimes still mentioned on old blogs and forums is just a bit of road over a ditch – it probably got replaced moments after it went down. Our only concern was whether this was going to be our first insane Central American frontier crossing. But it wasn’t – pretty much the opposite. The Guatemalan side was easy and even had the English Premier league showing on a flat screen for the queue to watch. Then it’s a 7km drive to Honduras and within seconds of parking up next to the passport control office, we were besieged by workers from the Honduran Tourist Board offering us free maps and a sweat towel. I started to help out a guy with a flat tire, chatted with a taxi driver about Stoke City Football Club, looked up and we’d all finished the passports and vehicle ingress and were ready to go.

There should be a couple of money-changers on both sides. Entrance for passports is US$3, payable in Lempiras or Quetzals – the receipt comes in dollars so I guess you can pay in that. For the vehicle you need the usual copies of passport, driving license, vehicle registration and you get a choice of paying the Lempiras as US$40. The fumigation on the way out costs something up to 100 Lempiras, depending, I think, on how large your wheels are and how many of them you have. Then there’s a little police passport check and the quickest of snoops around the bus.

Junction on CA9 leading to Corinto.
SAT Office to register/de-register your vehicle with Guatemala.
Guatemala Passport Control
Halfway down the 7km drive from Guatemala to Honduras, this is the fixed bridge.
The building on the left is Honduran Passport Control. On the right is the vehicle check-in.
Just before the cops is a fumigation unit because they have ‘bad virus in Guatemala’.