The Journey Home, Part I

After three years in Nicaragua, you'd think I would have learned that planning something a certain way is by no means a guarantee that it will go that way.  Despite that, I had planned my trip home to go down like so:

Bus from Nicaragua to Panama
Fly from Panama to Ecuador
Fly from Ecuador to U.S.A

My flights were all booked, I only needed to buy my ticket for TicaBus.  It's website was down, and their number wasn't picking up, but I felt confident, hearing enough from other travelers, that I would get a ticket at the office in Managua a few days before I needed to go.  Two days before my travels, and the employees at the front desk told me that they were booked solid for three weeks.  I later learned from a fellow traveler that when he took TicaBus the very same day I meant to travel, he had a whole row to himself, so I have no idea what info they were going off of, but they refused to sell me a ticket to Panama.

"We can get you a ticket as far as Costa Rica, and then you can figure it out from there," the lady at the counter said.  "I just need to see your id."

I handed her my residency card, and she started processing my ticket.  It wasn't until her coworker, who leaned in far too close to her, instructed her on the finer points of checking identification that we ran into some problems.

"Now, see, did you check when her residency expires?"
"No, let's see-it expires in two days, on the day she wants to travel."
"Now, see, we can't sell her the ticket."
Wait, what?

"But my visa is good for another three months, and I'm leaving the day my residency expires, I don't understand why this is a problem," I protested.
"Now, see, we've had this problem before, we've sold tickets to people and we've gotten in trouble for it."
"How could you possibly get in trouble for it if I am leaving the country on the day that I am no longer a resident, and three months before my visa expires?"
"Now, see..." at which point I just stopped listening.

When I got back to the office and told the staff, they said they had never heard anything like that before, and if it were the case, no volunteer would have been able to leave the country at the end of their service.  Ever.  So I guess that made me special.  I sure didn't feel special when I had to shell over about four times as much cash I had intended to pay to book a last-minute flight to Panama...but the next few days were soon to change that.