Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama

Sorry for the long delay in writing.  Family time and general procrastination...  Here's a quick update and some pictures.

After leaving Ometepe, we headed for Mr. Ford’s house on the beautiful Pacific coast of Nicaragua.  Marion and I had first been there ten years ago with 13 of our closest friends for spring break.  We were super excited to stay in a familiar place for once and it was a huge luxury to have an entire house after the tiny hotel and hostel rooms we’ve been living out of.

The best part was that Marion’s parents and Lea and Matt all came to visit from Costa Rica.  We brought in groceries on the motorbikes, with a huge cooler strapped to my rack and all four pannier bags full of loot.  After another trip with the cooler to a local fishing / surfing village, Gigantes, we had 12 enormous fish and 12 large lobster tails to grill.

The family ventured out for several nice beach hikes while Marion and I tended to a list of motorcycle maintenance jobs.  A huge bonus from the visit was that Lynn and Jon brought us 2 brand new rear tires as their checked luggage!  Also in tow were products to clean our air filters, odd battery sizes that we needed, Deet, Yamaha parts (thanks Matt!) and new brake pads front and rear for the BMW.

We used our old toothbrushes to clean the chains, put a fresh dose of teflon on them and spooned on the new rear tires.  The bikes were clean and looking like new.

The family left early Friday morning, with M and I following about an hour behind them towards the Nicaragua - Costa Rica border.  Just as we reached the border it started to rain very hard (New Orleans style) so we got pretty wet and the sheep-skin seat pads on our bike got to absorbing all they could for our later enjoyment.

The rain actually helped a lot in expediting the infamous Nicaraguan Aduana (customs) process, as all of the several people you have to track down to sign off on your permit were all clustered under the same roof overhang and nobody had any interest in wading across the flooded parking lot to actually check our bikes or VIN numbers.  We got through in record time and together with the Costa Rican border it only took about 2 hours.  All of it in pouring rain.

Shortly into Costa Rica the rain stopped and it’s been beautiful ever since.  We made great time on the US-style roads and spent the first night in Jaco - a beach town on the Pacific full to the brim with gringos.  It looked to me like the panhandle of Florida and I didn’t understand why people would fly from all over the world with this place as their destination.  To each their own...  We stayed above a sleazy bar with a drug dealer / prostitution vibe and got out of there first thing in the morning, making it to Drake Bay 2 nights earlier than I had figured we would.  So that meant we could hang out with Marion’s family another 3 days on the Costa Rica side, as they were staying just up the beach at a posh resort called Aguilla de Osa.  They talked their hotel management into allowing us to join them for dinner each night and we had some great family meals at our own huge table.
Towards the end of our time in Costa Rica, I (Davis) got extremely sick and we had to delay our departure by a day while my body figured out how to work itself out.  We made it from Drake’s Bay across the several river crossings and into Panama to David in one day.  Then on to Penomone, Panama and the next day we arrived in glorious Panama City!

Panama City has been amazing and we really like the neighborhood we are staying in, Ancon Hill.  We have had the distinct treat of hanging out with Stephanie Lukowski, our friend from Tulane University, who is down here studying / finding fossils near the Canal.  Tomorrow we ship our bikes and ourselves to Bogota on two different planes.  And for $32 extra dollars, we’re flying first class!

New Continent !!!!



Here are some pictures -

Casa Ford in on the Pacific in Nicaragua - Gratis!

Marion getting used to it

The guest house for Lea and Matt

White Family on the patio

White Family hike on the rocks

Matt took this cool 360 degree panorama with his iPhone

Changing tires is not my number one favorite thing to do...

Everybody helping!  Marion revs her engine to power the compressor after we punctured the first tube.

Drake Bay, Costa Rica - View from the White Family's room at Aguila de Osa

This Windstar sailboat / cruise ship was in the bay for a day.  440 ft.

The White Family and Matt chilling out front of their room in Drake's Bay, CR

Sisters!  Marion and Lea on a hike in Costa Rica

The White Family before dinner in Drake's Bay

Expert Photog Matt.  Davis is deathly ill in this picture.  Kept asking, "am I the only one who's freezing here?"  Yes.

Panama City from the ferry to Isla Tobago, Panama

On the beach in Tobago, Panama with Stephanie!

¡Nica!

We've been in Nicaragua for a week and a half or so.  We're really loving being back in Nicaragua, which we've traveled to together multiple times before.  We just returned from a few days on the twin volcano island of Ometepe and are heading for the Pacific coast tomorrow morning to stay at Mr. Ford's beautiful house for a week.  Marion's family is coming to visit in a couple days and we are really excited!

Here are some pictures from the last week in Nicaragua.  Can't wait to watch the Saints game on Saturday!!!  GO SAINTS!

I navigated us to the wrong road between Leon and Managua, which turned out to be great fun!  After this there were sections of very deep, loose sand and Marion did great while I nearly crashed.

The small car ferry out to Ometepe in Lago de Nicaragua

The big one is Conception, still active.  The small one is Maderas, with a crater lake at the top.

Conception

The roads around Maderas were really rough.  Broke off an engine protector bar and nearly lost my side stand from the vibrations.

Conception from the Ferry back to Rivas

El Salvador - Honduras - Nicaragua, One Day

This post will finally put us up to date!

We woke up at 5:30am in Santa Rosa de Lima, El Salvador to get on the road at dawn.  We wanted to get both Honduras borders done in one day if we could, because we have heard they are the worst in Central America for corruption.  We check ourselves and the bike out of El Salvador in an astonishingly efficient process and arrive at the Honduras fronterra.  We pull up around 6:30am and are promptly stopped before the border by a guy with a gun who demanded all our papers (to keep!).  The thing is, at all these borders there are many guys - all demanding your papers to help you through the border in exchange for a tip.  They swarm you as soon as they see your fancy gringo big bike rolling up.  They grab at your important documents to try to hook you into paying them a tip for guiding you through the process.

So I didn't believe this guy was really an Aduana official.  He had a sort of uniform on, but it just said "Seguridad" on the front and a kind of home-made looking patch that was supposedly the Aduana logo on the sleeve.  He did have a small pistol and nobody seemed to mind that, so that was one thing going in his favor as an official.  I told him "No Gracias," that we would hand in our papers ourselves at the office.  But he wouldn't let us by.  I said I didn't think he was actually an employee of Customs and he just laughed and insisted he was.  So we had to hand over our papers - bike titles, registrations, passports, drivers licenses and our very important cancelled El Salvador vehicle import permits.  It's 6:30 am and he says - I'll see you at 8am.  Marion was thinking - "did you just give that dude all our stuff!!!?"

So, with not a whole lot of choice, we proceeded without most of our documents (got the passports back) to the actual border to try to at least complete the Migracion step of checking ourselves in to Honduras.  We completed that relatively easily because it was so early that nobody was in line.  Then, around 7:40am I walk back to the shack to check on our precious documents.  Turns out that the guy is for real and that he has to do this until the Aduana (customs) staff shows up for work.  They are supposed to start at 6am, but today the first worker rolls in around 7:45 and the guy with the gun finally lets me have my papers back so I can bring them to the window.

Getting to the border so early makes it relatively painless as we're first in line and we get our 50 copies of everything under the sun and finish the process - bikes checked into Honduras in around 2 hours!  There was one entertaining part where a guy claimed that he had bribed the Aduana lady for me so that she would be fast.  "Not much," he said, "just five dollars per bike, so you owe me ten dollars."  I just smiled as said, "pienso que no es la verdad" - which is my bad Spanish version of "bullshit" and he dropped it fast enough to make it obvious that he was not out of pocket $10 (a huge amount of money for the guys who hang out at borders).

Set loose in Honduras, we fly across the country - stopping only for grilled steak on the road side and for gas (but they had no gas at the station...).  In an hour and a half or so, we are at the Honduras - Nicaragua border to start the process all over again.  We are dreading the Honduras part, but it turns out the border is also empty and we complete the process painlessly.  A guy tries to change our Lempiras for Cordobas at a ridiculous rate and when I protest that this is not the correct ratio, he adjusts his exchange rate by 25%!  Slow day at the border so he was trying to earn a day's pay on us.

After some trouble finding the Nica facilities and momentarily not having enough US dollars to pay for our entry, we make it into Nicaragua in another couple of hours and even purchase our mandatory insurance from a lady sitting under a tree in the parking lot.

At the Honduras border we realized we were not at the border we had intended to go to, so we were nowhere near the city of Esteli, Nicaragua that we were planning to stay in.  Turns out the only way to get there is 100 km of unpaved road that was rocky and sandy and steep and exhausting.  But very beautiful, through Nica's cattle farms and low mountains.  Marion did amazingly and completed some of her toughest off-roading yet.  We arrived in Esteli exhausted and covered in dirt, so naturally we checked into the nicest hotel in town.  Much to the staff's amusement.  There are some more great shots of Marion's face when we arrived in Esteli.  We have enough for a series of dirty Marion faces for our hallway someday...

Tomorrow morning we're off to Leon, Nicaragua for a few days and then to Managua to try to locate new rear tires and some more oil for an oil change on the Yamaha.  It's great to be back in Nica!

Morning at the Honduras border

Bank "system" down, no sign for Migracion, no sign for Aduana.  Nice ceiling.  Overall, a top notch operation.

After 100 km of bad (but fun) off roading, we think the roads improve a bit

Big head Davis without a riding jacket.  Tsk tsk...

Marion is completely worn out by this point - but having a great time.  The road has greatly improved by this point to hard packed rocks.  It's amazing we didn't puncture a tire this day.

Antigua, Guatemala to El Tunco, El Salvador

We spent Christmas in the beautiful colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala.  We had booked one of the nicer hotels in town in advance so that we wouldn't have to spend Christmas in some dark hostel.  The city was great, but unfortunately I (Davis again) was sick and didn't really feel better until Christmas day.  In Guatemala they stay up all night on Christmas Eve and blow shit up for hours starting at midnight.  I'm pretty sure there is a lot of drinking involved as well.  Our hotel was great, but the highlight of our time in Antigua - strangely enough - was watching the Saints game at a sports bar where we hollered at the top of our lungs when Drew Brees broke Dan Marino's 27 year record for passing yards in a season.  I hope everybody knows that it's a fact that every time we miss an entire season out of the country the Saints win a Superbowl.  You can look it up.

OK...  After Drew broke the record we headed for the border with El Salvador, which turned out to be the worst border crossing yet.  The problem at this border was checking our bikes out of Guatemala, which required the attention of corrupt (and quite affluent looking) Guatemalan Aduana officials.  After waiting 4 hours we were basically told that there were still "80" (yeah right) truckers in front of us and that if we wanted to expedite our process a $30USD "propina" would get us through in an hour.  We conferred with our partner in misery, Carlos, and decided to just pay it so we could get started on the bike importation process on the El Salvador side at a decent hour.  Carlos is a moto mechanic from Ecuador who rode to Alaska, then turned around to ride to the tip of Argentina, and will then ride back home to Ecuador.  All on a 1979 BMW R 80.  Of course it ran perfectly the whole time.

Finally through the Guatemalan side of the border after five hours in the sun, the El Salvador side was very professional and after a long line at Migracion the dreaded bike importation process was delightfully fast (and honest!).  Still, it was way too late to make it to any decent sized town before dark so we pulled in to the closest beach town we could find just as it was getting dark and spent the night in the deserted town of Barra de Santiago for 26 dollars.  El Salvador uses US Dollars exclusively, so we don't have to make constant calculations for a change.

In the morning we left for the surf town of El Tunco, next to El Sunzal in the La Libertad area of the Salvadoran coast.  El Tunco is a great town full of surfers and backpackers and was packed full for New Years Eve.  We stayed at three different hotels, moving around as each full place kicked us out.  I don't usually like the towns full of other gringos, but we had a blast in El Tunco playing in the huge waves and eating great food.  The place is small enough that we stayed in or ate in almost every place in town.  On new year's day we headed out past the bleary-eyed hippies towards the border with Honduras.  We didn't take many pictures as we were wet and sandy the whole time, but here are a few from Antigua to El Tunco -

Cell phone shot of the Antigua Cathedral at night

Marion loved this carved doorway and I fancy the Rover.  They're both quite nice.

Our hotel in Antigua was built around ruins of a centuries old Spanish church destroyed by an earthquake

Guatemala-El Salvador border.  Our friend Carlos' bike - '79 BMW R80 S

All our bikes lined up at the border.  Here they stayed for 5 long hours...

A little Berkshire Hathaway representation at the border.  There was also an XTRA truck and a kid with a GEICO logo on his t-shirt, but I don't want to bore the blog readers too much...

Long line at Migracion on the El Salvador side of the border

Reached the beach town of Barra de Santiago just before dark.  Not bad.

Beautiful view from restaurant in El Sunzal, El Salvador.  I ordered their house dark beer and it is apparently half red wine, half beer.  This is not a good idea and should at least have it's own name...

Marion at the restaurant with her pitcher of Agua de Coco

M enjoying a cerveza "Pilsner."  The town is named for this rock formation, which the locals claim looks like a pig.

Surfers in the water at sunset.  Most of the waves had died down by this point.

¡Update!

Wow - it's been way too long since our last blog post.  I'll blame "the holidays" and leave it at that.  We all know how hectic "the holidays" can be...

So...  After the last post we spent several days on both sides of Lago de Atitlan, one of the most gorgeous lakes in the world.  I got a chuckle from the way Aldus Huxley described Atitlan -

"Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."


We stayed our first few nights in Panajachel, the biggest town on the lake, at an edge of town hotel owned by a Japanese family - most of whom seemed to be living in the hotel rooms.  They treated us to amazing Japanese meals and fresh sashimi every night we were there.  We toyed with the idea of eating something other than their sashimi each night and just couldn't bring ourselves to do it.  It was amazingly good and straight from the lake.  Across the street from the hotel was the best moto mechanic in town, so we got some work done on my (Davis) bike.  The BMW turned out to have a blown fork seal, which we fixed, a dirty air filter, which we cleaned and it needed brake fluid, which we added.  Then we discovered a massive leak of synthetic Mobil 1 oil in my right pannier bag which was the most difficult thing I have ever had to clean in my life.  Synthetic motor oil turns to some sort of strange, green solid if you attempt to clean it with soap and hot water.  I learned this the hard way.  Finally I was successful after several hours of work and a concoction of home-made degreaser that involved lots of dry laundry detergent and bottles of white vinegar.  My cold weather gloves smell like a deli, but they were salvaged.  We used the remaining oil to do an oil change and Marion won't let me carry oil in the luggage any more!  I tried to buy some oil today and was told, "No.  Buy it in Managua."  I was able to purchase huge zip lock bags and I'll make liberal use of those in the future...

We rode around the north side of the lake, well inland, and stayed in the popular village of San Pedro la Laguna for a couple days with a delightful German gay couple, Wolfgang and Fritz.  Two of their bungalows have been submerged by the rising water of the lake, whose only watershed is through little cracks in the rocks that lead to Pacific coast springs.  Rain water and especially hurricanes in recent years have caused the lake to rise several vertical meters, flooding many of the foreigners' homes while the elderly Guatemalan folks seemed to expect it.  This results in a strange situation where many gringos are "hoping" for an earthquake, since that's the only thing that can open up some cracks to allow drainage.

Atitlan is gorgeous and one of the deepest lakes in the world, around 1200 feet deep.  It was formed by a huge eruption some 84,000 years ago and I guess it's technically a "caldera" like the one at Santorini, Greece.  Here are some pictures from Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala -

View from our hike around the North side of the lake shore.

A few of the Volcanoes

Rising water levels covered the public path around the lake, so elaborate walkways have been built to preserve public access around the lake on foot.

Part of the public path gets very high from the shore and rugged.  M looking stylish hiking in a black dress and jeans!

Huge, quick altitude changes to get to the towns on the shore lead to fantastic roads to ride motorcycles on!  The GPS says this road to San Pedro is going to be a blast!!!  (~2000 ft elevation change seen here)