When you leave Honduras, do not arrive at the border anywhere near lunchtime. If you are thinking that lunch could be eaten any time between 10am and 2pm, you are on the right track. Add 30 minutes on either side of that window for safety.
You will have to pay US$3 for the privilege of having your car smogged at the border, just like you did in Guatamala. I don't know if they are trying to kill bugs that carry Dengue Fever, or just like laughing at gringos coughing from the smoke as they drive away.
Then you will have to pay US$3 per person for the privilege of exiting Honduras. Make sure you get the vehicle stamp in your passport canceled. This will take extra long if the customs official is at lunch. Once he cancels your import certificate, you will have to make copies of it--it's a border crossing, of course there are copies to be made!!-- and then deliver them randomly to other people you have talked to since being smogged.
They charged us US$12 per person for the privilege of entering Nicaragua. I am not sure why, as supposedly the CA-4 Visa is a one-time thing for all of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. But you give a bureaucrat a uniform, a little office with a movie theater ticket window, and a spot at the border and they can charge you whatever they want, international rules or not. They did make a point of telling me how much more they were NOT charging me because of our CA-4 visas.
As soon as you get to the Honduras/Nicaragua border, men will run up to your car and try to sell you Nicaraguan car insurance. They will tell you that you HAVE to buy this insurance. The border agents ignore them. It is really difficult trying to find your way through the maze and bureaucracy of the border crossing with insurance agents constantly harassing you. They are even more persistent than the "helpful helpers" that try to charge you for guidance through any border.
If you avoid the insurance salesmen long enough, one of them will go get a cop, that I'm sure is on the insurance company payroll, and the cop will take all your paperwork and insist that you buy insurance before you can proceed. I suggest you pay attention to whichever insurance agent tattled to the cops, and make a show of buying insurance from one of the other parasitic agents running around.
The insurance costs US$12. The insurance guy will write your car information on a form and then use his pen to write a phone number on the same form. He says, "If you have a claim, call this number." The one you just wrote on the supposedly "official" insurance form with pen? Right.
(**An afterword: we have been stopped by police in Nicaragua more than any other country and a couple times they actually did ask to see the insurance document. Whatever we paid $12 seemed to satisfy them.
**We crossed at the border just West of San Marcos de Colon-- supposedly this crossing is pretty chill compared to others.)
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