Driving to Nicaragua

We have made three trips from the USA to Nicaragua and two back up.  It takes 3 days to cross Mexico.  We choose to drive dawn to dusk and stay on toll-roads as much as possible.  We also detoured around Mexico City.  Southbound, we try to hit the US/Mexico border at morning twilight and get as far south as possible the first day.  Guatemala is great, but there are lots and lots of landslides often causing backtracking and detours.  Border crossing into Honduras ALWAYS seems to be a major pain in the butt.  The worst border crossing is from El Salvador into Honduras.  Normally border crossings take about an hour, but the El Salvador into Honduras will take you a minimum of 4 hours.  They always seem to try to extort money.  We now swear never to drive through El Salvador again, both because of the border hassles, and it feels like there are an abundance of death-defying aggressive drivers with a bad attitude there.  Easier to wander past Mayan ruins at Copan in Honduras rather than getting stressed from suppressed road rage in ElSal.  Only the very last entry into Nicaragua have did we have to remove absolutely everything from our car for inspection.  Before our first trip, I was anticipating this at every border crossing.  So once in 24 border crossings is really nothing to complain about.