Nicaragua , Take 2

We are back in Nicaragua after a decently long day's ride which included one border crossing. We thought that we might get into Nicaragua yesterday but we took the 'coastal route'. It ended up being 50 km of washboard dirt road including three stream crossing and a 3 km beach road. I must say that parts were pretty fun, although Pete loves the big bad dirt roads and all they stand for more than I do. But happy to report that both bikes stayed upright even with the one lane bridges and gravel turns.

At one point we asked for direction ( shocked aren't you), and a helpful guy looked at our bikes and said ' you might be able to take the beach road'. So we did, it had a few moments of front wheel sand plowing and /or rear wheel sinking but it was fine. The exit was even marked with a makeshift sign by the locals. Pete rode through the deep loose sand at the exit path, I looked more like a guy trying to tame a scalded cat, but even without any style points it worked.

We were pretty high up on the coast a few times on the dirt road, which led to amazing views. The road turned to pavement and we found a little town with a hotel and a bank. Then we cleaned our chains. ( for sale: 2008 Suzuki DL 650 V Strom as is. Only taken on one trip. registered in 9 countries. Needs some cleaning.)

This morning we headed for Nicaragua and were greeted at the border with a line of several busses worth of people clearing out of Costa Rica immigration. The wait was approximately four hours. A 'helper' said for $20 he could get us on our way in 10 minutes. He did. He knows people. He walked straight into the building and came out with all the paperwork and stamped passports. We stood by the bikes. Hmmmmmm, sometimes you let the 'system' work for you and don't ask too much.
Entering Nicaragua was quite simple as we had been through it before and had the old paperwork. It was not even that hot out, mid eighties which makes Central America border crossing fun and delightful.

We found a decent spot near the Pacific, and plan to get into Hounduras tomorrow.

Take Care.

Tony

Beach road ending. Mostly hard packed but with enough loose piles of shells and dry sand to make it interesting.

Path from the beach road to the 'road'.

Scene from one of the twisty gravel hairpin turns.

Line, or mob, waiting to get into Costa Rica immigration. Once inside there was a more organized mod.

Trucks leaving Costa Rica and entering Nicaragua. They never stop, just snail along on the dirt road as direction by agents.

Back in Nicaragua. We had just ordered something, which turned out to be decent. Pete is staring at a poster for a local beer and wondering how to ask if he can have it 'cause it would look great in his garage. He now owns the poster.

Surf's up dude !!!

The last few days have been relatively simple in terms of the packing, riding, unpacking dance that we have been doing for weeks. After a big push leaving Panama ( 550 km day plus a border crossing... btw 550 km in these parts is a push), we stumbled upon a great place to relax in Costa Rica and rest a bit before heading north. We were looking for a little town of the coast and missed the turn ( to a side dirt road) during one of the many rain forest type downpours they have here during the 'dry' season. It was good luck though as we found a good clean place being run by a Canadian and two of his daughters. Gilles, Maude and Angie cooked us a fantastic supper at the restaurant the normally operate for only breakfast. Gilles was a great host.

We stuck around for the next day, it was nice to not pack up. The hotel had boogie boards in the room so we tried our mad boarding skills out. Does medicare cover the surgical removal of sand from places that sand should never be able to get in? Pete also found out his suntan lotion was completely disolvable in water.

We went up the coast yesterday, took a small ferry to a jut of land in the Pacific and found a sppot for the night. This is a wierd town, surfers and pot heads and the type of start up businesses that support surfers and potheads. Pizza joints, surf stores, t-shirts, small hotels, bakery, bike rentals. we even saw lots of commerce happen at the table next to us a dinner last night as one young man tried to make a profit. trouble is most of his profits were going up in smoke as he operated his 'store'.

The road in and out is dirt, the main transportation is walking or small dirt bikes, the average age is twenty something ( at least until I arrived ), and , of course, there are the always present roosters try to out do each other starting around 4 am.

Today we will leave and likely exit Costa Rica for Nicaragua, and start a bit of a push for Mexico.

The chains need cleaned right away and the tires need to be replaced as soon as we hit Texas. Nothing will clean the helmet liners or riding pants.

Take care.

Go Canada Go ( Men's hockey)

Tony
The beach a short walk from our hotel. If you squink you can see Pete's suntan lotion washing away up the coast.

This little fellow crawled out from under a bush as I was hanging up laundry behind the hotel. I very nearly had more laundry to do.

Our hosts, from left, Maude, Gilles, and Angie

Pretty senic spot to pull over for a pee break. If you squint you can see Pete's, ah never mind.....

On the ferry we took we met Elvis. He is alive and looking young and hanging out in Costa Rica.

two ferries that pass in the afternoon.

Not really the end of the World...

While I think it is exceptionally wicked that we have ridden our bikes as far as you can go from Fredericton (without a plane or boat), I have a few observations that make me giggle, and disappointed at the same time.

1. Riding east of Panama City to Santa Fe, which literally is about 50 miles from the end of the road, we got a hotel with AC, ate fries and beer for diner at a chinese restaurant, and settled into back to back episodes of Two and a Half Men on Satelite. Not exactly the remote jungle I was hoping for....

2. The perfect tarmac that lead the middle of nowhere was a bit of a let down. We got knobbies expecting the worst, but other that a few huge potholes, the road was a breeze. Maybe later I will appreciate the road, when the bike rattles apart in Mexico, but I really thought it was going to be tougher...

3. It was cool, however, actually sitting around in Yaviza, Panama, about 7000 miles from Freddy, saying: "Huh, I guess it is true, you can't really go any further...is it beer o'clock yet?"

A few pics from Panama:


The Panama Canal, a hydrologist's wet dream.


The last town at the end of the road. Kinda like Holtville, NB.


The first thing I noticed in Yaviza; a poorly designed and constructed culvert.


The second thing; kids teasing monkeys.

It was 9:30 AM in Yaviza, but it was 5 o'clock somewhere.

We are now in St. Theresa, Costa Rica on our way home. 50 miles of dirt tomorrow, then the Nicarauguan border. Should be a large day.

Pedro

End of the Road

The last few days we have gone from one end of Pamana to the other. And drank buckets of water, Gatoraide, orange juice, beer and pop. It is friggin' hot. I know, I know... what did we expect. Good thing I always stay level headed, pleasant, calm, and personable when standing in motorcycle riding gear ( aka snow suit) in 100 degree F , 100 % humidity afternoons.

We checked out the Panama canal yesterday morning and say some of the bigger ships getting ready while a few private sailboats went to the Pacific. Honestly, the canal was really neat, but the real story is not that they did it, but WHEN they did it. They built this thing 100 years ago, thousands dies of yellow fever and job related accidents. They built 1905 style temp train systems to haul away the dirt, a great deal of which was dug by hand. Can you imagine, digging a canal by hand in the jungle in 1904? Many of the workers were peasant farmers working under American direction in exchange for meals. My job is awsome.

We navigated Panama City in a rainstorm, got lost, got more lost. The cars and buses seem to leak more oil than home, and the streets were really slick. Piloting the bikes through town was awful close to work . Super safe though Mom, no issue there. No close calls, that is for sure.

We went onto a very small town called Santa Fe. I think there are other Santa Fe's in the world. This is the smallest one I think. And hot. Our masonary room was like an oven, so...... ( ok this is embarassing)..... I looked up the spanish word for 'fan' and went to the front hut and asked the kind lady if we could have a fan. She looked puzzled. She asked if the air conditioner would do. Air Conditioner? So... went back to the room and there it was through the wall, a new air conditioner. Worked great. The good news is I understood what she was telling me about the A/C.

Today we carried on to Yavisa, in Darien Province. This is the end of the road. From Alaska on down you can always drive further south, until you get here. There are 80 km from Yavisa to Columbia of mountain jungle and no plans to poke a road through. They call it the Darien Gap. There is a system of river and some people live out there. Trouble is some of those people are hiding from people in Columbia and other places. The heavily armed Panamanian Army is everywhere and we had to report in a Yavisa, plus clear 3 checkpoints. Nobody goes into the jungle legally unless they report. Of course the flow of drugs and illegal people is a huge problem.

The actual town was very calm, at the end of the road there is a foot bridge connecting the houses on both sides. we saw people swimming and washing in the river, mining beach sand, and so on. A howler monkey wandered into town and the local kids were teasing it as their parents told them to leave it alone.

We kinda, sorta stood out again. We ordered lunch of ?? and ??. Who knows, but it was not bad.

After a few hours it was time to head north. We will take a different route back through CA, more to the Pacific.

The bikes ( knock on wood) are working well. Pushed hard in the heat they haven't missed a beat aside from a long ago fixed electrical issue in Mexico with my bike. The tires we mounted in Texas will be shot when we get back to Texas and we will reload with new street tires to cross the states. But there are many miles before Texas.

Sail boats in the locks at high level.

Twenty minutes later they are ready to sail out at the outlet water level.

Entering Darien Province.

Our new best friends. I actually don't normally take photos of guys with rifles and pistols. These guys are on our team. They guy on the left with the headband and sunglasses said nothing and didn't let go of his gun but smiled a few times, and waved as we drove away.

End of the Road, foot bridge across Tuira river

Bathing and washing clothes in the river

A howler monkey gets chased in Yavisa

Tuira River

Scooping sand from a canoe into buckets to take to shore.

Welcome to Yaviza

End of the road is 6793 miles (my bike reads miles) from Fredericton on the route we took.

Sloths and Mon-Coons.

Hi all,

I haven't posted in a while, Tony has a way better camera and takes way more pictures that me, so it is probly best that he posts more....besides, all my pictures of my bike anyway and about how great it is, and how great I am, and who the hell wants to hear about that...

It has been a busy few days, with border crossings and heavy mielage days, but I manages to get a few pics.

These are from Costa Rica:

This thing looks like a cross betweena monkey and a racoon. I will call it a mon-coon.

Here, we have a mon-coon and Silver, with the Arenal Volcano in the background.

Not sure if this was a joke or not, but it is a sloth crossing. There was a sloth zoo, interpretive center, rescue center etc, so if it was a joke, they have taken it pretty far. Far as I can tell, a sloth is like a seal with claws.

I have uploaded a few new videos aswell. They are not that exciting, more moto-porn than anything, but it gives a glimpse of what we are doing down here. I have a video of the rickety bridge crossing, I will get that up a soon as possible.

Cheers,

Pedro.

The last two days have been busy. We travelled to a remote border crossing between Costa Rica and Panama, did the usual bike export, immigration, bike import, immigration dance. This time it took about three hours in 95 degree heat. It isn't the heat, it is the humidity. Pete and I 'kinda' looked like we weren't from there. we looked like we were from the planet "Pasty White and Soaked". There were a few Mexican travellers and a few from north of Mexico, but the crossing is used mostly by locals.

The area is where the world grows bananas. The ride to and from the border was often through banana plantations, and the road cluttered with trucks hauling bananas.

The big banana companies used to use trains to move good to the ports ( before WWII ), and one of the relics of this system is an old 1906 train bridge at the border. No trains run anymore, so they laid some rough planks ( no nails, so the planks shift around when you ride over them, with the rail ties below. Next thing down is the river). Locals seem to walk to and from the villages on both sides of the bridge without going to immigration. Big transport trucks crossed to move bananas and other goods. The officials wave off foot traffic to allow a bike, car, or truck to cross. It was nervous ride, not too slow, not to fast, not off the planks, don't look at the water......

Today we rode 400 km over a mountain range on the Carribean ( literally up the clouds), and to the dry flatlands near the Pacific. We rode along the Carribean in the morning and along the Pacific in the late afternoon. The east side of the mountains were rainy, full of mucky construction and dirty roads, and the west side of the mountains were warm and sunny. It raised 20 degrees in 20 minutes as we started down.

We were very lucky tonight to find "The Canadian" hotel an hour before Panama City. Presently we are doing laundry while watching the Superbowl ( english with very loud Spanish ads).

Tomorrow more kms, in a day or two we will be at the end of the road, The Darien Gap.

Tony

Banana Plantations in Costa Rica. Nice of them to put our road right through.

Bananas grow in rain forests and have deeply ditched rows between trees. I assume these run heavy during the rainy season. They all wear rubber boots in the plantations. This shot is of a store at the border, rubber boots front and centre.

The 1906 converted train bridge and the border. Those are loose planks, kinda sorta placed end to end. They bounced around while we rode over, and there are seperate enough to allow the front tire to drop down to the railway ties.

A local heads home to Panama with a bag of bananas from Costa Rica. He had just stepped off the planks. nobody walked between the rails and there are enough ties missing to make the spacing sketchy.

We stopped for a coffee in Panama, and noticed a bus pull in with cargo on top. Pete noticed one piece of cargo was a dog, in a bag, tied on top.( Dog is leftmost pice of luggage).

This is the dog unloaded. They put the dog in a basket, put dog and basket in a bag, and poked a hole for the dog to just be able to stick out it's head. We followed others similarily loaded dogs on other vans. A bit strange having a dog look down at you from the top of a van.

A little girl was hanging around the bikes, asking for 'plata' (silver).I know you can't save the world, and don't want to encourage a situation that might be dangerous for her, but we did give her some plata.

Mountains, wet side.

xxx Mountains, dry side.

Borders and Volcanoes

Tonight is our second night in Costa Rica. Last night we stayed not too far from the border on the Pacdific, and today we rode into the mountains and to the Carribean.

we were advise to expect the worst at the Nicaragua / CR border and it was pretty bad. To start, it was 110 deg F in the shade. Essentially we had to clear immigration to exit Nicaragua, export our bikes, clear immigration into CR, buy bike insurance for CR, and import the bikes into CR. It took 3.5 hours.

I think a reasonable teenager could go through the process and make ten suggestions on how to makes things run smoother and improve commerce for both countries. The trucks were lined up 5 km before the border on a two lane road, making for some interesting 'euro' style center lane bike riding. And one has to consider the paperwork as a test. For example, to export the bikes from Nicaragua we needed a form signed by a person that inspects the bikes ( in my case I found an official searching through a tourist's backpack and explained in very broken Spanish what I wanted ,complete with hand signals and the twisted throttle movement to identify 'moto'. He never did look at the bike, just signed), then we needed a policeman to verify the first signature ( I guess) and we found him under shade tree, then we took all the signatues and original bits of paper to a lady so she could pass the pile to the person beside her. There, bikes exported ( actually importation cancelled).

During the afternoon I needed to use the 'banos'. This was a healthy sign and it meant my kidneys were still working in the heat. We were the only ones lugging around 2 litre bottles of water. I found one , locked. A kind old janitor lady that said she could open the door, for 3 Cordobas ( 8 cents). I paid. She then said for the change remaining from the 10 Cordobas I gave her she could get paper. I assume she wasn't getting me a Globe and Mail. Since I fortunately didn't require any sort of paper I declined.

We were beat when we were set to role. we went a short distance into CR and crashed (as in slept).

Costa Rica is of course similar other nearby countries but yet different. It is much cleaner, and seems more orderly. The towns and businesses seems much better off. Nicaragua is desperately poor but Costa Rica seems better off. Of course tourism is a big deal here and the goverment is stable and democratic. There were relief groups in Nicaragua here and there but in the mountains of Costa Rica there is a great number of USO trucks and other organizations.

We are not in a particularily touristy area. We are in the jungle and there is a bit of Eco-toiurism around. I tried to swing a deal with the hotel owner tonight to allow me to do laundry in his machine but he said he depends on rainwater for laundry and since the dry season is here he doesn't want to use the water. At least think that is what I asked for. I may have asked if I could marry his cat.

Tomorrow we head a bit north to the Puerto Limon, where the U nited Fruit Company started the whole banana exportation thing 100 years ago. There are banana plantations all around, but it is a run down port and will just be a drive through on the way to a northern Panama border complete with a train bridge crossing ( planks laid down for cars and bikes).





Town Square in Grenada, Nicaragua

Granada, Nicaragua

This tree shows how windy it is on the main highway in the valley. The bike is in a constant lean.

Volcanoes on a island in lago de Nicargua

La Cruz, Costa Rica

An Active Volcano, Arenal in the mountains of Costa Rica.