Recently, I traveled from Guatemala to Nicaragua by bus via El Salvador, and was surprised that the immigration officers didn’t stamp my passport. I didn’t think of it immediately at the time, but no stamps could mean a little inconvenience for me. However, right then I was more dismayed at how there would be no evidence of my footprints through Latin America in my passport. Talk about priorities.

Anyway, the problem: I’d been in Guatemala for a month and was planning to go back for another month after visiting Nicaragua, and as far as I knew from the guidebooks, I could only be in the country for a month without a visa. So if I had no stamps in my passport to prove that I’d gone out of Guatemala… you see what I mean?

So today I went to the Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Relations in Managua, armed only with my amateur Spanish (I couldn’t find an English speaker but as it was I got by perfectly alright), and I was told that with a Malaysian passport I could move freely around Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua freely for 90 days without a visa (a month’s extension costs 210 Cordobas, about $USD 12). Otherwise I would have to cross over to Mexico or Costa Rica and turn around again before the 90 day-period expired.

Yes, the latest news is that they’ve amalgated the four countries - Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. I think it’s due to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).