The land of border crossings.....

After Skill hunts and gathers some yoghurt and yes you guess it, Chiquita bananas for breakfast, I pack up and get organised for the day ahead, another border crossing and another new country.We get away by 8.30 am and hit the border around 9.00am after two military police checks for paper work, we encounter a hotchpotch of buildings and with no signs of official presence we wonder if we have taken a wrong turn somewhere, after a few questions we discover we are actually in the right place and begin the exit procedures for Panama.

Officials, what officials, crossing out of Panama

Within 20 minutes we are done, we cross the new dilapidated bridge (apparently the old one was something to behold) and are welcomed to Costa Rica by a SIGN. Amazing!!!! Once again immigration is a breeze but Aduana (Customs) is a long arduous two hour marathon of paperwork, with Skill walking backwards and forwards to the photocopying place countless times, finally after waiting another half hour for the non operational printer to become operational, patience pays off and we are finished, free to go. I am soaked through as I have been waiting with the bike outside while Skill has been patiently filling in ridiculous amounts of repetitive paperwork, fortunately in air conditioning.

Welcome to Costa Rica

We hit the road pleased to be in a new country, first impressions are that Costa Rica is very picturesque and the locals seem friendly waving as we pass by. We enjoy the short ride to the bohemian seaside village of Puerto Viejo Talamanca. Although enjoying the ride I comment to Skill that the road surface seems very bumpy, he says it is not too bad and maybe there is a problem with the bike, he will check it out on arrival. As we have gained an extra hour upon entering Costa Rica we are actually quite early and check into the great Hostel Pagalu and seek out an extraordinary lunch at Flip Flop which is to become our gringo restaurant of choice.

We really enjoy this hostel and are disappointed that we had already booked another hostel for the next three days, which turned out to be a huge disappointment, a nice enough place but very surly, uncooperative owners.

Puerto Viejo is a great place, with lovely little protected beaches for swimming and more exposed beaches for surfing, people are friendly and the restaurants are great. We spend a lot of time swimming, eating and generally chilling back, one day we head out to the beautifully set up “Jaguar Rescue Centre” run by a pair of Swiss (I think) biologists, their main aim is to rehabilitate animals and return them to the wild. While there are currently no jaguars at the centre we are impressed with the number of other animals and also with the quality of the facility, I swear the kitchen where they prepare the animals food is cleaner than most hostel kitchens we have used.

We manage to get up close and personal with some beautiful baby monkeys, they seem to take a liking to my red hair, unfortunately no photos as we couldn't take cameras into the enclosure.

Squirrel with a gammy leg

Viper

Anteater

Viper

Toucan

Ocelot

Sloth

Toucan

We spend two more nights in the township returning to our original hostel which we so enjoy. It is on our return here that Skill gives the bike the once over and discovers our rear tyre has a major problem, it has major splits around the blocks. Hmmmm not good! After lots of research we come up with a few options but finally decide we will head to the capital San Jose to get a new tyre.

Disappointing!!!! The tyre has huge cracks

On our last night in town we get a message from Martin (whom we met in Panama), he has just ridden into town, so he joins us at the hostel for a few beers and a long chat, he really is a lovely guy and we hope we will cross paths again. We leave early next morning and enjoy the ride along the coast to Limon, unfortunately after that, it is a fairly truck laden road which makes for slow going up over the pass, but at least it is not raining and we find the tyre shop in the capital run by the gregarious American/Australian Greg who helps us out.

Now I guess I should explain my relief at being able to find places in the big cities. It is the bizarre nature of addresses in Central America, there are few street names and no numbers on buildings. Large buildings, churches, roundabouts and traffic lights serve as reference points and then locations are described in terms of direction and distance from these. So our directions for the bike shop are quatro cuadras (4 blocks) East, dos cuadras (2 blocks) south of Mueseo del Ninos (Museum for Children). The hostel is even more complicated our main address reference point doesn't exist any more, “de donde fue Cine Juan” from where the Cinema Juan used to be 4 block Souths and 1 block East. What bloody hope does someone from across the other side of the world have with this? Nada, Zip, None!!! You can now understand our obsession with GPS coordinates for the places we need to get to!

Anyway we organise to have the tyre fitted the following day and take our leave to find (with GPS co-ordinates) the dodgy Hostel with its dungeon like rooms, we manage to unload just before the usual Central American afternoon downpour which continues bucketing down for the rest of day. As we can buy alcoholic beverages at the hostel we can't be bothered venturing out for dinner in the soaking rain so have a beer and our emergency 2 minute noodles instead.

Next day Skill heads out get the tyre fitted, while he is there he also fits the new spark plugs that he bought in Panama City (from a very, very grumpy Panamanian shop attendant but that's another story), he has everything sorted by lunch time and arrives back at the hostel just as the afternoon storms hit. In the afternoon we go for a walk in the rain to look around the traffic clogged streets of this bleak capital city with not a lot of redeeming features. The only bonus is that I manage not to be mowed down by a motorist, close run thing though and we also buy an English “Mexico Guidebook”. We cannot wait to get out of this place.

The following day we are about to get on the road but have a slight problem we cannot find the bike keys, we turn the room upside down, pack and repack our gear before coming to the conclusion that Skill must have dropped them in his haste to get out of the rain yesterday. After some questioning of the staff they produce the key (much to our relief) handed in by someone and we are on the road by 8.00 am. We take about an hour to get out of the heavily congested city but once on the freeway it is plain sailing before we turn off for a glorious ride over the mountains to the small tourist town of La Fortuna famous for it's active Volcan Arenal which dwarfs the town with it's presence. We find the delightful La Choza Inn and check in, before venturing out to find the supermarket where we find the makings for a chicken and tomato sandwich, oh the simple things in life.

Volcan Arenal

View of Volcan Areanl from La Choza Inn

The grounds of La Choza Inn

We plan on spending two nights here and go for a few walks about town and explore the local surroundings. On Saturday afternoon Skill goes down to give the bike the once over. He reappears and says “You are not going to believe this, they have put the tyre on running in the wrong direction” He is very cross at himself as this is something he always checks, but he was distracted by his spark plug installation and the impending storm in San Jose. He contacts Greg who is incredibly apologetic and goes out of his way to help. Fortunately we have it under control and unbelievably the local tyre place is only 100 metres from the hostel and they have a machine. The only snag is they are now closed and won't reopen till Tuesday morning as Monday is a holiday. Bugger, we settle in for another two days, enjoying our location, the views and the local restaurants.

Left Our new tyre is not running in the right direction Right Now it is running in the correct direction

On Sunday the rain is unbelievable, apparently we are catching the tail end of a hurricane, the water is running down the streets popping the man hole covers, unfortunately it is on this night we had decided to eat out, needless to say we got absolutely drenched on our walk home. Our room also springs a leak but it is in the bathroom so no damage is done.

Finally on Tuesday morning skill manages to take the rear wheel off, the tyre shop takes the tyre off and refits it in the correct direction and Skill puts the wheel back on, all by 8.30 am for the princely sum of $1.50 and we are on our way towards the border, once again it is a lovely ride through the jungle, right round Lake Arenal before we rejoin the Pan American,

A nice ride through the jungle

A nice ride through the jungle …..... in the rain

by the time we reach the border town of La Cruz it is 3.00 pm, so we opt for a stay in non-descript but expensive hotel, with promises of hot water and internet, needless to say neither eventuated and they refused to move us to another room with working hot water, although there were plenty available, as I say some days you win, some days you lose. There is not a lot to do in town so we go for a bit of a walk, seek out dinner and breakfast supplies at the local supermarket and read up on the history and politics of Nicaragua, our next destination.

Up and at em, we are packed up and away by 7.30am arriving at the border by 8.00am, all goes smoothly, even though we have trouble with the machine to pre pay our exit taxes for Costa Rica, the nice immigration guy helps us and we are stamped out of Costa Rica. The official insist we have to pay the $6US exit taxes using credit card, so we do, unfortunately this will later cause us some problems of which we are now blissfully unaware. Next begins the hunt for the elusive Aduana building so we can get the bike stamped out of the country, after riding around in circles for over half an hour and being pointed in completely different directions we are helped by a fixer, no wonder we couldn't find the building as it was completely obscured by the 100s of trucks waiting to cross. Once that is sorted we head to Nicaragua, our fixer wanting nothing for his efforts so we give him the last of our Costa Rican money.

On the Nicaraguan side we firstly have to pay to have the bike's tyres fumigated, a complete joke then we are helped by a fixer, (the first border crossing in all of our travels) not because we don't know the process but because the buildings are virtually impossible to find, nothing is signed. We pay him a princely $5.00 for his time, the crossing still taking us over an hour and a half with help.

At the Nicaragua border

By this time it is 10.30 so we high tail it to Rivas where we get out some local currency, find some fried chicken lunch and then it is onto San Jorge where we just manage to catch the midday ferry by the skin of our teeth, they are still tying the bike down as we motor out onto the lake. The views are outstanding and we enjoy the hour ferry ride.

The boys in action tying the bike down

It's not going anywhere

On the ferry on our way to Ometepe

On the ferry on our way to Ometepe

Once on the island armed with Jim and Caroline's instructions we easily find the Hostal Playa Santa Martha and enjoy an afternoon reunion with the two of them.

Now we must confess we spend 5 nights with Caro and Jim and we do very little, in fact I can honestly say I didn't leave the grounds of the hostel. It is lovely to have their company and we just chill back. Every day Skill and Jim ride into town to hunt and gather food as the hostel's menu, while Ok, is pretty limited and after a month Caro and Jim look like they are growing feathers, chicken, chicken and more chicken. We manage to resurrect an old BBQ and Jim has diligently been collecting wood and storing it out of the weather

On their first outing the boys come home with charcoal for the BBQ, ingredients for coleslaw, fresh bread and …... chicken, but are confident they have a lead on some Cerdo (Pork). I raid my travelling gourmet top box and find soy sauce, honey and ginger powder so make up a marinade to put a slightly different twist to the chicken and so begins our five days of gourmet BBQ dinners. Unfortunately the pork never eventuates but the boys do find sausages to break the chicken monotony.

Lan and Caro preparing dinner

BBQ Time

Jim taking care of dinner, oh and a few rums

Caroline's impressive scar. One on each side of her ankle

As I have done very little research into Central America, where we are going and what we should see, Caro and I have a few planning sessions with the intermittent internet, but mostly we all just chat and attend to daily chores like “THE WASHING”. It rains most afternoons and we just watch the tranquil Lake Ometepe world go by.

Our rooms at Hostel Playa Santa Martha

View from our room

Wildlife in the garden. Lucky he doesn't end up on the BBQ

Idyllic afternoon sunsets

And the ever present Volcan Concepcion

We are sad to leave this little oasis and even sadder to say goodbye to Caro and Jim,

Bye Caro and Jim

but on a Monday morning we head back to Myogapla to catch the 10.00am ferry, after being told by a very rude and dismissive young lady that the 10.00 am ferry is not running and we would have to catch the Che Guevara at 11.00 am. No problem (with the exception of me wanting to take the mobile phone out of her hand and throw it in the lake or, …........ worse), we go and buy the 4 bits of appropriate paper work and wait amidst the swarms of midgees. At 10.30 am they load the bike and we go upstairs and grab a seat and finally at around 11.15 a very, very full, dare I say overloaded ferry heads for the mainland.

Our Ferry – the Che Guevara

Once we arrive we go and refuel, find an ATM and are on our way to Granada. The ride is really pretty and at one point we pass through a police checkpoint where both police officers are lazed out on the seats at the front of the police hut snoring their heads off, needless to say, stopping was superfluous. We arrive in Granada easily finding the very clean, friendly but bizarre GM Granada Hostel, the weather is stifling as is the room (where the toilet and basin are next to the bed, (forgot to take a picture) even with the fan running at full blast, we have a swim before heading out to explore the pretty town.

The bizarre turtle pond at the bizarre GM Granada Hostel

We find the wonderful El Pizzaiol (also known as Pita Pita) Restaurant and plonk ourselves down for the afternoon, 3 hours later after eating our way through the menu and chatting to the wonderful Israeli owner, we are replete and we meander our way back to the hostel. It is a pretty long, hot, sleepless night.

Next day is another scorcher and for some reason I am feeling pretty ordinary, that is to say I keep having dizzy spells, we manage to find the supermarket then I don't venture far from the pool. Unfortunately (as is the case in Latin America) we have a problem at the hostel, that is to say we have no water all day, apparently the whole town is out, this doesn't seem to faze the 5 staff (there are only 4 guests including us) who continue to play pool and watch the soap operas all day. Meanwhile the toilets are getting grosser by the hour. Some days!!!! Later in the evening when it cools off slightly we venture out to check out the sights of Granada.

Granada at night

Overnight there is a huge thunder storm which does cool things off a bit and we do get some sleep. By 9.30 next morning we are off heading towards the capital of Managua. We manage to bypass most of it but of course Mr Zumo chooses a different road to the one I have chosen, it is not too bad to start with but as we progress there are more and more roadworks, in fact about a quarter of it's length between Managua and Leon is under construction. At one point we come to a stop because a bus is bogged in a huge mud hole on a Desvio (Detour), we wait patiently in the oppressive heat while the impatient traffic try weird manoeuvres to get to the front of the queue. Eventually the bus is freed and we make our way to the bog hole, I get off and walk across the quagmire while Skill waits for two more vehicles to get bogged and freed, then after a bit of a slip and a slide he is through and we continue on our way to where our preferred road from Managua joins back into the road we are on - UGHHHHHHH.

What the????, vehicles trying to get to the front of the queue

Bus being freed by a huge machine

We make it to our Leon hostel (which I had emailed earlier about accommodation and parking with promises of both) but after some discussion it is quite clear that there is no parking so we take our leave and so begins the hunt for a hostel with parking, we are both absolutely exhausted and perspiration soaked. Five hostels and an hour later we luck in on the Hostel Via Via which happily lets us park the bike out the back, but firstly we have to jump the gutter and step then manoeuvre our way past the pool table interrupting a game, then past the bar and restaurant complete with dining patrons, and park near to where our room is. The staff are great and can't do enough for us.

Another perfect parking spot

We happily toss our wet, smelly riding gear and stinky helmets to one side, grab a shower and out to the bar for a beer, only to encounter our next problem - NO BEER!!!!! Today is a Catholic Religious Festival and no one is allowed to sell alcohol, not even the Supermarkets. Cursing the Catholic Religion under my breath, we unhappily opt for a pineapple juice, well actually two of them and some lunch, then we retire to our room as the heat has really zapped us. Later in the evening we go out for a very quick tour of Leon before we find a Gringo hostel selling beer (don't know why they are allowed to sell it when no one else is, but we're not complaining) and enjoy a cleansing ale before we hit the hay early. We know tomorrow will be a big day. We plan to travel through three countries and do two border crossings in one day. I must confess I am a little nervous about the short 120km ride through Honduras, we have heard so many stories of corrupt police and officials over the years and even a few from travellers we have met on the road recently, so I must confess to a rather sleepless night.

We awake to pouring rain and discuss our options, do we stay or do we go, in the end we don the wet weather gear and hit the road, it takes us about 1 ½ hours to get to the border. We refuel then run the gauntlet of touts and fixers, it is still pouring rain so trying to keep paperwork and passports dry is a problem, but we manage to exit Nicaragua easily with the unwanted help of three eight year old boys who get pens and our left over Nicaraguan cordobas which amounts to about $1.00.

It is then onto the Honduran side where we do accept a fixers help and so begins the 2 hour crossing, immigration is, as usual a cinch, with a $3.00 fee to enter. There are huge signs in English telling us the fee and that we are to ask for a receipt and report any official who tries to charge us more on a given telephone number. I go back the bike and wait under a tiny bit of shelter managing to stay out of the worst of the rain while Skill begins the photocopying marathon, no less than 14 photocopied bits of paper are required by the officials and about $40.00 in fees but after countless toing and froing we are eventually right to go …...............one border crossing down, one to go!!!!

Honduras Migration

We are both absolutely rain soaked, our old riding gear is up for renewal but at least the up side is we are quite cool and not suffering heat exhaustion or dehydration. Our first impression of Honduras is that it is green and reasonably clean but the road surface has deteriorated somewhat, and after the vehicle swallowing holes of our last ride in Nicaragua that is saying something. The potholes are enormous and deep. To add to the excitement is the oncoming traffic which is constantly on our side of the road avoiding the same potholes. There is a reasonable amount of traffic but we manage to make good time. We pass our first police check but are waved through as we are for the next seven …......... so far so good. As we get closer to the El Salvadorian border the rain abates but we are also pulled over for our first police check. Two very young policeman smile and welcome us to Honduras then ask us if we are Americano to which we respond “No, Australian”, they then ask for “Documentos” and check our bike temporary import but indicate that we should put the other documents away, including our passports because of the impending rain. They then check out our country stickers ohhing and ahhing and wish us a pleasant journey. We can't believe it, what about the attempted bribes, the unending need for non-existent obscure paperwork, the need for a triangle and fire extinguisher and all we get is two pimply youths who want to chat and wish us a “Happy Journey”, I cannot tell you how happy I am, now in hindsight maybe we should have stayed in Honduras longer??????

We travel the last 10 km to the border and begin the arduous exit/entry task again, it is all pretty simple to leave Honduras and this is done in under twenty minutes as is the immigration entry into El Salvador.

We leave Honduras

And across the bridge we enter El Slavador

We then have to go and get some MORE photocopies done (what do they do with all this paper) and ride 3 kilometres down the road to the Aduana where we begin the hour and half process, while relatively simple it takes time because of the huge amount of trucks being processed. As it is now close to four o'clock and we haven't had anything to eat since a yoghurt breakfast, we have a tuna and cracker lunch, followed by a snickers bar and coke. Despite the basic nature of our not so appetising lunch, it really hits the spot and the sugar hit gives us the necessary energy for the last 90 kilometre push to El Cuco.

One thing we notice about El Salvador is the change in road conditions, the roads are instantly better and we make great time on a very pretty untrafficed road to the small resort style hostel of La Tortuga Verde at around 5.15 pm. It has been a pretty long day and we cannot be happier to be in this beautiful spot right on the beach. After getting out of our wet smelly gear which we discard to the little porch, we drink a litre of water and then go and down quite a few beers and just chill back, then it is a sumptuous fish dinner.

Our lovely room and enclosed porch at La Tortuga Verde

We are so happy to be at La Tortuga Verde – El Cuco

We are so happy to be at La Tortuga Verde – El Cuco

Just as we are about to retire two young Aussie lads Ben and Maurice, ride in on a couple of KLRs, after a quick chat we agree we will meet up with them in the morning. As we get into bed the heavens open up and we are woken quite a few times in the night by massive thunder claps and lightning strikes, we finally drift off, so pleased we're not camped tonight.