Greetings All

Yes it’s time for another mega email and this will be the penultimate email for the trip. At some stage after we get back I’ll send a final note when we have all the photos and other bits on the website. On with the news.

Today after many months we finally left North America. For some reason my brain cell had always associated Mexico as being part of Central America but officially Belize and Guatemala is where Central America starts.

Belize

Wearing my shiny new red Italika helmet we headed off to the Mexico – Belize border ready to do battle with the bureaucracy. Making sure that Kitty was processed out of Mexico was very important as they take down your credit card details when entering the country. Leaving without doing the paperwork can be an expensive surprise six months later.

Getting into Belize was a slightly challenging. Their immigration and customs people were very suspicious. Immigration gave us a five day visa and customs gave Kitty a three day permit.

Belize is not a very big country. Eduardo who we met back in Chetumal would transit the country in about five hours. We decided to stay in Orange Walk a town in the north. About 50 km south is the Mayan city of Lamanai, normally people take a boat just south of Orange Walk to Lamanai and see the ruins as part of a day trip. Looking at our map I could see a minor road that linked the two places and as we planned to leave the next day I thought we could go down that afternoon. After finding a hotel and unloading Kitty we headed off. Not long after I could see why it was marked as a minor road, it quickly deteriorated to potholes, dirt and rocks. After 40 km of bouncing from pothole to rock the Beloved was having second thoughts about seeing anything apart from a soft chair. After a short period of directional insecurity we finally made it to the site with about 45 minutes of daylight left, after briefly looking around we decided that we needed to come back the next day by boat.

One of the rules for overland travel is not to ride at night, especially on back roads, I wasn’t looking forward to the ride back with all the extra invisible potholes, rocks and free range horses but not having a whole lot of choice we headed off at high speed to get as far as possible before sunset. Apart from getting blinded by trucks on a couple of corners where the road vanished we had no other major problems but it’s something to be avoided.

The boat trip the next day was worth the extra nights delay. The trip down river was very pleasant with various stops for photos when they spotted wildlife on the river. They have a local crocodile in the river which led on to people asking if they were dangerous (not really) but how the salt water crocs in Australia were very dangerous. The guy running the boat thought Steve Irwin was great and his favourite film was Croc Dundee. “That’s not a knife this is a knife” he quoted. We kept quiet about where we came from.

 

It seemed that you can get any type of food you like in Orange Walk. As long as it’s Chinese, I’ve no idea why but for a small town it has about twenty Chinese restaurants. Go figure.

Playing the Blame Game

One of the challenges of the trip was that I knew it would be somewhat stressful at times and that was something I didn’t need. So I had the brilliant idea that if anything went wrong it would always be the fault of the Beloved. When I told her about the cunning plan she gave me that tired look that I know so well and said

“Yes Dear” And went back to ignoring me

But so far it’s worked quite well. Here are some examples

Getting lost – Well I’m not the navigator

Losing my helmet – Someone didn’t check to see that I had brought it upstairs.

Rear wheel problem – We were overloaded with souvenir table cloths

Engine stud failing – This is a tough one, I know it wasn’t my fault and there is only one other person around so by process of elimination…….

Now if you think I’m being unfair to the Beloved I figure that it will be my role to be wrong for the rest of my life so a six month reprieve is only fair.

Guatemala

Crossing from Belize to Guatemala was a painless affair compared to entering Belize with friendly and helpful customs people on both sides of the border. I had quite a conversation with the Guatemalan customs guy even though he spoke as much English as I speak Spanish. He wanted to know if we could swap bikes (he had a 200cc Honda) I wanted to know if the Beloved was part of the swap. He did give it some consideration but in the end kept his Honda and gave me my import papers instead.

The road leaving the Guatemalan border turned into bumpy dirt road with large muddy patches to avoid. We met another overlander coming towards us. Andy, riding a KTM950 from the US west coast was heading down to South America but was doing a detour via Belize. He had been travelling for a few months and I was amazed by his lack of luggage, not having much luggage was a good thing as he was having problems with keeping it attached to the bike due to a broken latch and some of the nuts and bolts holding his sub-frame and other associated bike bits had fallen out. I’m glad to see that Kitty was not the only misbehaving bike on the road.

Tikal was a must see destination for the Beloved with its Mayan ruins. Like Palenque the ruins are surrounded by jungle and while walking around you can see small hillocks covered in trees and vegetation, these are buildings still waiting to be excavated. One major attraction at Tikal is to see the sunrise from the top of one of the temples, one major problem is getting up at 4am to do it. I might have mentioned we are not morning people? After a two kilometre hike and a climb up the tallest temple we waited for sunrise and had a magnificent view of….the fog. I was under whelmed by the experience.

The beloved tried to console me by telling me that it was wonderful to listen to the Howler Monkeys, birds and other jungle creatures waking up to the dawn. This didn’t cut much ice as I said we could have heard all that from the comfort of our bed. Did I mention that I’m not a morning person?

One benefit of being on the site so early was that we avoided the hordes of other tourists and for several hours had Tikal to ourselves. It would have been an amazing revelation to the first explorers after climbing to the top of the one of the higher temples and then realising that the nearby hills were also ruins covered by the jungle over the years.

Riding south we called into a local Guatemalan family to pass on a message from Eduardo in Chetumal, he was stuck in Chetumal with his ankle in a cast after coming off his bike (DR650) while being chased by a local dog. Amazingly we found them with the aid of his hand drawn map (after the customs house, past the second river, first driveway on the right, and the second house on the right just past the school) and stopped by to let them know what had happened to him. They were very pleased to hear about him and were very keen for us to stay (as Eduardo said they would) but we had to push on to Rio Dulce.

Staying at the Backpacker Hotel on the river we met up with Peter from Denmark riding a KLR650 and Mike, a Canadian guy riding a bicycle. We had a pleasant evening on the waters edge comparing destinations past and future. It was interesting comparing solo travel to travel with company. Mike was splurging by staying in the backpacker dorm. Normally he would camp somewhere hidden away from the road and that after about 7-8 days of riding without a shower you don’t notice the smell any more. I later suggested to the Beloved that we could try the same idea to save money. I received the standard.

“Yes dear”

And she continued to ignore me.

As you might have noticed there are actually three of us making trip myself, the Beloved and Kitty. We each need to be fed, housed and looked after. The problem child among us is Kitty, mainly when it comes to finding a place to stay each night. Finding secure parking is the biggest problem and much to the disgust of the Beloved if it comes down to a hotel with hot showers or parking in the lobby, it looks like it’ll be a short shower tonight dearest one.

The next day we decided to take a boat up river to the port town of Livingston. The trip takes a couple of hours as they stop along the way if they spot any interesting wildlife.

After a very pleasant lunch and cooling cerveza it was time to head back to our riverside home and disco. Yes, we discovered the previous night that the next dock had a lively disco happening until the early hours of the morning. It must have gotten very lively in the past as there was a sign over entrance that said guns were not allowed to be taken inside. It adds a whole new dimension to the song “I shot the Sheriff”.

Honduras

Crossing into Honduras was also painless and we now have a system where I march off with my folder of paperwork and passports and the Beloved stays to guard Kitty and checks out the exchange rate with the money changers at the border.

We stayed near the border at Copan Ruinas for the next couple of days because as you guessed it, nearby were more bloody rocks but it was an interesting site with even more interesting people. Some idiot tourist dressed up in army greens decided to do his Bruce Lee impression on top of one of the pyramids by doing what looked to me to be some sort of Kung Fu style of kata (kata = solo practice) and spent the next twenty minutes punching and kicking the defenceless air, the local populace were amused at his skill at beating up an imaginary opponent. We just thought what a wan…….

From Copan we headed north to the Caribbean seaside town of Tela where I hoped to do some diving but had no luck in finding a local boat. So we headed south again.

The further south we get in Central America the more exiting the riding becomes. Normally on a straight stretch of road I’ll move to the outside edge of the lane so when trucks or cars approach us so they can see me sooner. When I do that in Honduras they seem to think it means they can pull out and pass the car in front of them. Exit stage right time.

Road rules down here are more like guidelines or sometimes even suggestions and signals here can have different meanings compared to what I have been used to. For example people do use indicators but not always as expected. I might catch up to a car and see a flashing left indicator. He may be turning left, he may be telling me to pass, he may be slowing down and turned on his hazard lights and only one is working, he may be turning right or he may not be doing anything at all. Who knows?

Our original boxing kangaroo mascot (named Alan) has been joined by several other friends during the trip. We now have a moose, a bear, Wily Coyote (named Da-vid) and a Christmas snow man (called Navidad) all cable tied around the headlight and this has become a great ice breaker with the locals. Especially whenever we get fuel often all the guys from the petrol station will crowd around and I will explain in very bad Espanola where we are from and that the toys are the Senora’s bambinos.

 

Usually the next thing they will ask is how big is the bike?

“Mi moto es mil cc” (1000cc)

And how much does it cost?

“Seis mil dollar” ($6000)

And there is mucho amazement.

Nicaragua

We next crossed into Nicaragua. As we approached the Honduran side of the border we were chased by a mob of money changers and border helpers. This was what I was a expecting a Central American border crossing to be like and I wasn’t disappointed! Although I didn’t really need anyone I “hired” Luis to help me run though the immigration and customs on the Honduran side. That done we went to deal with the Nicaraguan side and found them to be very friendly and helpful and twenty minutes later we were on our way.

The only problem we had was that somehow between the customs desk and the final checkpoint 100 metres down the road the receipt for the Nicaraguan motor insurance had disappeared and I had to buy insurance again, not a drama in itself (it was only $12) but annoying. I took comfort in the fact that even though the Beloved had not even seen the document it was still her fault. Remember the blame game?

I don’t understand why but very often the road to or from the border crossing would be terrible for up to 20-30 km then become good tarmac. It’s like they were saying

“Welcome to our country, have some crappy road”

The road leading from the Nicaraguan border was no exception to this rule.

Travelling south we stayed that night at Leon and for the first time found it difficult to get accommodation we ended up staying in our so far cheapest hotel ($4/night) near the local market as you can guess from the price it was a backpacker haven. Kitty spent a comfortable night in the hotel foyer after the manager gave me a hand getting her up the steps.

We’d heard that just before the Costa Rican border was a very pleasant beach town called San Juan del Sur so we made that our target for the day. The only obstacle in our way was the capital city of Managua, which by all reports was a place to be avoided. More by good luck that good management (which could be the motto of the trip) we managed to see the sign that allowed us to almost entirely bypass the city altogether.

San Juan del Sur is on a horse shoe shaped bay on the pacific side of Nicaragua and is a magnet for surfers and other tourists mostly from North American. The road running along the foreshore consisted of hotels, restaurants and real estate agents. Holiday home sales have become very popular over the last few years.

Having survived the rigours of our $4 hotel we had a splurge and decided to stay for a couple of days to sample the local sea food which we had heard was sensational. They were right.

Picture the scene. A palm frond ceiling restaurant built on the beach facing onto a calm sea. There is a sprinkling of small boats dotted around the bay. A gentle surf is rolling onto the beach. Its late afternoon with the sun low in the sky, the horizon is starting to turn a brilliant orange. The Beloved looking radiant in the glow of the setting sun has her usual Pina Colada and I’m sampling the local cerveza. Our friendly waiter brings over my grilled lobster and the Beloved’s local grilled fish.

It wasn’t quite a perfect picture as the lobster was a tad on the small side and the salad had beetroot in it and I really hate beetroot. But despite these imperfections I think that this would rate at least 9.5 out of 10 on the decadence scale. Yes it’s a tough life being on the road but………

After several days of suffering the hard life it was time to get back to reality and cross into Costa Rica. Approaching the border we came behind a line of trucks that was at least a kilometre long luckily we were able to pass all of them and jump to the head of the queue. What followed was a confusing 40 minutes of getting signatures and waiting in lines to have our paperwork processed. Eventually I managed to escape the bureaucracy with a complete set of paperwork.

Or at least that’s what I hoped.

The Boys in Blue

One of the things Central America is known for is the honesty of its local law enforcement or lack thereof. I’d been told stories how in Mexico one couple had their bike searched for drugs 14 times (obviously they looked like very suspicious or like refugees from the 60’s). Apart from a couple of military checkpoints in Mexico the first place we were stopped by the police was in Southern Honduras and then four times in Nicaragua.

We finally did get pulled over by some cops who were after a bribe. They asked as usual for my licence but then put it in a small red folder marked “invalido” or something similar. I knew then we were going to be here for a while. From what I could work out they were saying we had broken some law(s) and would have to go to Managua to pay the fine and get my licence back.

From what I had read before the trip I had been expecting something like this to happen at some time in Central America and depending on how the game goes there are several things you can do. First thing is never admit you did anything wrong, and in this case we hadn’t. The second thing is never mention anything about money. If you give the slightest hint about a bribe they know it’s only a question of how much money. After that the best thing is if you speak Spanish you can politely argue it out with them, but with my grasp of the local lingo strike that option out straight away.

That leaves me with plan B which is to politely argue it out with them, but to do it in English. The trick is not to stop talking. I was asking questions and providing my own answers. Be polite, be calm and at the appropriate time be confused about what they are saying, but keep talking.

Now the game is turned around and they have no idea what you are saying. The idea being they will eventually get tired of waiting for you make the offer of a bribe and want to get rid of you and this is what basically happened to us. After about 15 minutes they handed me back my licence and off we rode. As an extension of plan B in between the verbal diarrhoea you can make it obvious that you want to see their identification and make a show of writing down, I was just getting out my notebook to do this when they let us go.

Costa Rica

It turns out that the Nicaraguan side was going to be the easy part of this border crossing. After getting Kitty sprayed for what ever bugs they didn’t like from Costa Rica. We went to find immigration and customs. This was easy as there was a line of people about 70 metres long snaking out of the immigration building and it wasn’t moving very fast. In fact it didn’t move at all for about 15 minutes. After getting the Beloved to take my place in line I went to see what was happening.

I met up with a border helper named Eric who claimed he could get us through immigration in 15 minutes (for a fee) and then through customs (for another fee) and a fee for himself. I knew he would pocket the whole lot, but at the rate we were going it was going to take several hours so he had a new client. Getting through immigration was a matter of jumping onto the back of the next group of people as they were let into the immigration office, they only had one guy processing all the entry immigration, which explained the line up outside. Customs was confusing with visits to unmarked offices and buildings for visa photocopies, insurance and all the other bureaucratic rigmarole they wanted. After 2 ½ hours we finally managed to hit the road. One reason for the delay is that there is only one land border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica so every car, bus and truck hits here.

Immediately after crossing into the Costa Rica the scenery became much more tropical than Nicaragua with banana plantations and jungle lining the road. Trees grew over the road forming a shady canopy for us to ride under which was very pleasant as the sun was hot and the humidity high.

I was hoping to do some diving in the Caribbean and then cross into Panama at the smaller northern border town of Sixaloa rather that the main crossing in the south. I wasn’t keen to repeat what happened getting into the country.

A mountain range running through the centre of Costa Rica divides the country into two distinct areas, the Pacific and the Caribbean sides. As we were riding down the Pacific side we could see the mountains in the distance capped with heavy clouds from the north. Sooner or later we would have to cross over these cloud covered mountains, and clouds sitting on the ground are called fog and fog is wet, sometimes very wet.

And it was.

No matter which way we went it meant crossing the capital, San Jose. From what I previously read this was something to avoided, they were right. After taking the worlds cheapest toll road (50 colones or 10 cents) we landed in the middle of San Jose and immediately became directionally challenged when the signposts just stopped. There were some terse words spoken between myself and the Beloved as we had different ideas about which was the correct direction to go. It would have been helpful if we both had been planning to go in the same direction (north v east) and the same town (Guapiles v Cartago). In the words of Strother Martin;

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”

After agreeing to travel to the same destination and since all the signposts had disappeared we had to rely on riding in a northerly direction (I love my GPS) and Zen navigation, this involves following someone who looks like they know where they are going. This eventually did work as we stopped at a petrol station to get a drink and met Kathya and Lino who had his KTM parked outside. After chatting for a while they offered to lead us to the road we were looking for. What following was an exiting 10 minute ride through the streets of San Jose following Lino, I was at a bit of a disadvantage with the panniers on my bike making it difficult to filter between the cars which Limo was able to do with ease but soon we were heading north to Puerto Limon.

As we got out of town we climbed higher and went through the clouds we’d seen in the previous days. The clouds had looked very majestic back then but in reality we (I) got soaked. We were trapped in the middle of a slow moving convoy of trucks going over the mountains and it started to bucket down. Our wet weather gear was of course, safely packed away, there was nowhere to pull over and it was too dangerous to try and pass anything so we plodded on at 40kph (max) up hill and down dale. Meanwhile I just made Frankenstein monster noises when the rain got really heavy.

The hot shower at the hotel that night was very welcome.

The next day the Beloved took a fancy to a Japanese run hotel in the town of Puerto Viejo. Instead of room numbers they had room names such as the Shogun, Samurai, Mikado and Sumo. We stayed in the Ninja room. Some of the other rooms had more interesting names such as the Geisha, the Yakuza and my personal favourite, the Kamakaze. I went looking for the Hara-kiri room but was disappointed to find it wasn’t there. The Asian style food was excellent and Kitty had a safe home out the back.

While in Puerto Viejo I had the cunning plan to visit some of the nearby beaches maybe do some diving but the weather intervened with a string of tropical downpours so we were forced to sit around the bar/restaurant and watch the world go by.

From Puerto Viejo to the Panama border the countryside is covered in banana plantations as far as the eye can see. In years past transporting the bananas around the area and across the Panama border was done by railway which led to the construction of what’s locally known as the old banana bridge at the border between Costa Rica and Panama. Although from what I had heard from other travellers the bridge resembled an old banana in more ways than one. Long, bendy with soft spots in the middle.

While getting ready to sort out the paperwork for the Costa Rican immigration – customs people one of the local cab drivers pointed to Alan (our kangaroo) on the front of the bike and says “Skippy”. That damn kangaroo has been everywhere.

Panama

After clearing Costa Rican immigration and customs we had to cross the Rio Sixaola along the banana bridge to enter Panama.

The bridge is an old iron box style, similar in design to the famous Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland but only one lane wide with a set railway tracks running down the middle. Wooden planks on the outside of each railway track forms the roadway for the buses and trucks that use the bridge.

It was a bit like waiting to take off in an aeroplane, we had to wait for clearance to cross the bridge. If we had met a truck that was coming across from the Panama it would not be good thing. It’s impossible to pass any oncoming vehicle and just as impossible to turn around.

It’s not all that difficult to cross but with the occasional missing or broken plank but I asked to the Beloved to walk across instead being in her usual place. Even without a pillion it required a bit of effort to balance and manoeuvre the fat Kitty around some of the obstacles.

After getting across and parking the bike I went through the usual immigration and customs paperwork. I dealt with Clarence, a very friendly and helpful customs official. Although the Spanish were the main colonial power in the area from Belize onwards along the Caribbean side there is a very strong British influence with a large number of people of Jamaican descent living along the coastline. As a result of this there is more English spoken in these areas and that was fortunate as Clarence had many questions about how I was eventually going to take Kitty out of the country. Trying to communicate this in my limited Spanish would have been challenging.

After a small amount of directional insecurity (there were two roads leading out of town, guess which one we took first?) we headed toward the port town of Almirante along the way was another decrepit banana style bridge even longer that the one at the border. We slowly wobbled across this bridge, this time with the Beloved on Kitty as we had a line up of trucks on the other side waiting to cross and again there was only one lane.

From there we hoped to take a ferry across to the island of Bocas Del Toro so I could finally try some Caribbean diving. The ferry left the next morning and we had to be there at 7am. This meant getting up early. Did I mention we are not morning people?

As usual it was a case of hurry up and wait. Get their early, stand around and get on the ferry just before 8am. After a 2 hour trip we reached the port and looked for a place to stay.

Bocas Del Toro is a group of islands about 70 km south of the Costa Rica border. We read an old lonely planet book on Panama from 1999 about how it has 10 hotels and a future tourist boom. The future is here and the local builders have been busy but it hasn’t been completely spoiled and once away from the main town was very pleasant.

We went out for a day trip on a boat for some diving for me and snorkelling for the Beloved. A very pleasant day was had by all with visits to local beaches and lunch at a restaurant built over the water on one of the smaller islands.

All things must come to an end as we prepared to get the ferry back to the mainland in the afternoon and spend another night in the (not) delightful town of Almirante before riding onto Panama City.

Next day turned out to be a long one, instead of taking two days to get to Panama City we did it in one day, a distance of about 575km. We got to Panama City at dusk just in time for the evening traffic. It was an exiting drive through the streets with cars flying past me performing a slalom course though the traffic. For some reason the hotels were booked out and it took a while before we could find a place to stay.

The priority for the next day was to find a way to get Kitty home, purely by luck the freight forwarders I had previously contacted were within walking distance of where we were staying. It turned out to be a day of good and bad news. I could send Kitty home by ship (good) but it would be herself in her own luxury 20ft container (bad) for a large fortune (very bad). The other freight forwarder had earlier quoted me air freight (good) for a smaller fortune (bad) but at least I knew it would get back to Oz quickly (good) so it looks like Kitty will get back to Oz before we do. The next day I found a cheaper sea freight option (good) but the deal was already done (bad). And no, I wasn’t going to leave Kitty in Panama.

Did you know that Panama hats come from Ecuador? It’s true. I still wanted one so we got on the bike and went out to the Chorrillo area of town. If you want to ride a bike around Panama City I have two suggestions for you.

1) Keep your finger glued to the horn button

2) Take a taxi

The city is filled with psychotic bus drivers and dodgem car drivers. Main roads that dwindle away into tiny one way streets jammed with traffic that twists around like a cut snake. It was not a fun trip and just to make it interesting in between the dodgem cars and the road maze someone who shall remain nameless kept trying to distract me by pointing out pretty buildings. In the words of Rhett Butler it was a case of.

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”

I didn’t quite say it that way but you get the idea. After getting diverted off course several times due to the road maze we eventually got to where we wanted to go courtesy of some Zen navigation and my GPS.

I love my GPS

The Beloved was able to indulge in her second favourite hobby, shopping (the favourite is chocolate) and we headed back again into peak hour traffic laden with goodies. A couple of other local trips out from Panama City completed our tour.

And that’s all for this trip. The final bike journey will be out to the airport to get Kitty crated and sent back to Oz and then follow along ourselves. You can imagine how much we are looking forward to flying from Panama to Australia via Chile (with an 18 hour wait for the Chile flight) but eventually after letting the time zones settle back into place the major challenges with be remembering to:

1) Ride on the left side of the road, in fact

2) Put the toilet paper in the toilet not in the bin next it

3) Go to work

Thanks to all of you emailed back comments they were very welcome, and to those of you who didn’t, I know who you are and I’ll have words you with later.

Hope you enjoyed the trip as much as we did.

Ian & the Beloved