After a couple of nights in Antigua, Guatemala we decided to see what the dirt roads were like. We had a route mapped out that would take us to the eastern part of Guatemala. We found our way out of town but it wasn't on the road we had mapped so we changed our plans and decided to take a dirt road that skirted Lake Amatitlan to the south. We took the exit to Amatitlan and could not find the road leading south so after stopping and asking for directions, we ended up back on the highway again. We chose another route and stopped for directions to a town called Santa Rosa Barillos. The reaction was 'you want to go there?' We were sent on our way, starting on a paved road up the side of a volcano. When the paved road ended, we stopped to ask a man if he knew how to get to Barillos. He told us that the road was 'muy malo' (very bad) and suggested we take the long way around on the pavement. We thought we would ride the dirt for a short distance and if it was too bad, we'd turn back.
The road was hard packed dirt and very rutted from the recent rainy season. We took it slowly and marveled at how well our bikes handled in the dirt. We would stand up through the difficult sections and were having a great time. The road continued to get narrower and whenever it forked, we would stop at the next village to confirm that we were headed in the right direction. The consistent response always seemed to be 'you want to go to Barillas?'. At one particularly tricky corner with a rutted, downhill, sharp right-hand turn filled with rocks, Deb took a spill. She didn't get hurt but her motorcycle was nearly upside down and the windshield was broken. The two of us were able to get it upright while a couple of women and some children looked on. Out came the duct tape, the windshield was fixed and off we went. As the road ascended, it became more difficult and several times Dave would ride his bike through a bad spot then come back and ride Deb's bike through.

Deb's Crash in Guatemalan Highlands

Dave was out of sight and Deb heard him say over the radio, 'just stay where you are'. She got off her bike and walked up around a corner to see a very steep hill with Dave near the top and his motorcycle on its side. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt either and his bike didn't seem to suffer any damage other than dents. He ran out of traction on the way up the hill, and after coming to a momentary stop he got to ride a 550 pound sled backwards down the hill with both tires skidding on the rocks. After a short distance the bike decided to throw him further down the hill. We were able to pick it up and lean it against the dirt embankment at the side of the road. Deb sat down by the side of the road while Dave took Deb's bike back to the last small village to see if he could find some help to get the bikes up the hill. As Deb was sitting there, an old man carrying a load of wood on his back and a big machete in his hand came along. He stopped and said a lot but she couldn't understand much of what he said. Then a man in a shiny new SUV came sliding down the hill. He stopped to talk, but Deb again found her spanish inadequate, lacking the words for 'motorcycle too heavy', 'hill too steep', 'big rocks', 'need to put motorcycles on a truck'. The man in the SUV left with Deb sitting by the side of the road waiting for Dave to return.

Dave rode into the last village and eyeing a flat-bed truck in front of a house, talked to the owners in very broken spanish and asked if anyone had a truck that could haul a motorcycle to the top of the hill. The best he could figure, the answer was 'nobody in town has a truck that can get up that hill.' Just then, the shiny SUV pulled up and Dave walked over to talk to the driver, suspicious of someone with a vehicle like that in such a poor farming area. After an animated conversion using lots of sign language, the man said 'regresa a su esposa' (return to your wife) and he would find help to push the bike up the hill. Meanwhile, while Deb was waiting on the hill, a group of women with children came by carrying various things balanced on their heads including dozens of eggs. Deb stood up to walk to the other side road and fell on the loose rocks. She was certain they were amused by this clumsy gringo.

Dave returned and they started carrying the heavy side cases up the hill to lighten the load on Dave's motorcycle. A few minutes later, the SUV returned and out piled 5 men, one short-barreled shot-gun and a machete. That's when we started to wonder if we had met the good guys or the bad guys. The driver gave instructions to the others and soon they had Dave's bike upright and slowly moving through the worst section of the hill giving him enough momentum to ride through the next two turns to the top. Dave then walked back down to the bottom of the hill and rode Deb's bike up with the front tire skipping around in the rocks and the rear-end sliding around. He made it all the way to the top without assistance and realized it was finally time to replace the rear tire on his bike. The guys helped bring the rest of the bags to the top of the hill and when we offered to pay them, they refused. The driver said something we couldn't understand, then paused while he searched for another word and came up with 'asalto' (assault) and that we needed to travel 'muy rapido' (very quickly) out of the area. The men waited while we got our luggage reloaded and were underway before they left. It was then that we wondered - when the first man we met told us the road was bad, did he mean that it was dangerous? It turned out that we were not far from Barillos and we rode as quickly as we could back to the main highway and then about another 100 miles to the town of Jalapa in the eastern highlands.

Dave in Eastern Guatemala

After our off-road adventure, we decided to stick to the pavement, even if it took us from one side of the country to the other. The next morning we had a very pleasant ride on twisting roads to the border with Honduras at the town of El Florido. Dave went inside to complete the paperwork while Deb waited with the bikes. A couple of bus drivers asked where we were going and when she said, 'La Ceiba', a town on the Caribbean coast, they said, 'you can't get there'... 'no road'...'maybe tomorrow'. We were disappointed to hear this because we wanted to take a ferry out to the Bay Islands to do some scuba diving. The border crossing was quick, about 50 minutes. We rode to the town of Copan Ruinas just a few miles into Honduras. It had been raining and some of the streets were dirt so slip-slided our way to a wonderful little place that cost $4.50 per person. It was the cleanest place we had been in so far and had secure parking. The town also had some excellent restaurants. We decided to stay two nights hoping the situation on the coast would improve. We visited the Mayan ruins of Copan about one mile from the town.

Mayan Ruins in Copan, Honduras

Copan Stella

When we left Copan, we rode north toward the town of San Pedro Sula, about 50 miles from the coast, but towns were still flooding and roads were washing away, so we decided to just go south to Nicaragua. We drove past Lake Yojoa where the fishermen selling their catch along the side of the road. We stayed in a town called Coyamagua, a nice colonial town with limited choices for hotels but found one we were happy with. There must have been elections coming up soon because there was a long line of cars, trucks, and motorcycles flying red and white flags and pictures of a political candidate while honking and yelling as they traveled every street in town. The next day we rode through the capital city, Tegucigalpa. It was surprisingly easy to get through, taking only about 15 minutes. We continued on to the town of Danli where we spent our last night in Honduras. The ride to the Nicaraguan border at Los Manos was another very pleasant ride through the lush mountains.

We crossed the border into Nicaragua expecting the roads to get worse but were very surprised to find them in excellent condition. When we arrived at the intersection with the Pan American highway, there was no traffic in either direction. We turned on to the PanAm and had an exhilarating ride down from the highlands to sea level. There wasn't much traffic and it was very exciting when Lake Managua came in to view. We were still riding downhill and seemed to actually be dropping below the rim of the lake. We eventually reached the town of Granada on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. It is a lovely town with a beautiful Central Park and many old colonial homes that are owned by wealthy Nicaraguans.

Granada, Nicaragua

One day, we went into a bookstore and found it full of Canadians. We spent time chatting with them, learning about living in Nicaragua. The owner told us about a school for handicapped people that had been operating for five years and were about to be evicted from the dilapidated building they were using. We went over to visit the school and watched them making pinatas, beaded jewelry, and weaving. They were so delightful, their personalities were just like our students in Indiana. The money earned from selling the things they make goes toward buying more supplies and to help the families of the students. The director and volunteers were very worried about losing the use of the building and said they will not go down without a fight. They had just had a fundraiser the day before we arrived. They raised $250, which they seemed to be pleased with, but it is woefully short of the $30,000 needed to buy their own building. This population of students, ranging from the deaf to those with Downs Syndrome, are referred to as “minusvalidos” which translates to – “less valid.” It is difficult to get this population accepted in the United States and Canada, so just imagine how they are valued in the poorest country in Central America.

Handicap School - Granada, Nicaragua

The director has made arrangements with a bank to accept donations from outside the country. We want to take this opportunity to ask you to support this worthy cause. Donations in the form of check or money order can be sent to the following:

Made payable to: Asociacion de Minusvalidos Artesano Nicaragua
On the memo line: BancoCentro, account # 451600710

The mailing address is:

Casa San Francisco
Attn: AMAN/EEAP
Calle Corrales, 207
Enfrente de Mr. Pizza
Granada, Nicaragua
Central America

They also have a website at www.eeapnicaragua.org if you are interested in learning more about them.

We enjoyed Granada so much that we spent 5 nights in town before moving on to San Juan del Sur, a beach town on the Pacific coast where we relaxed by the ocean.

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

The next day was Sunday and we decided to cross the border into Costa Rica then assuming we would have additional fees to pay rather than wait until Monday when the fees should be lower and the regular staff would be manning the border crossing. The exit from Nicaragua was fairly simple as we had to pay $1 each for us to leave and $2 to export the bikes. We then rode to the "aduana" to officially import our motorcycles into the country. We met a man outside the building and he told us that the office was closed on Sunday and he didn't know if immigration would be able to handle the importation of vehicles. As most people cross the border by bus, not in private vehicles, this was not a problem for all the others that we saw at the Costa Rican immigration office.

Well, we eventually did find an official that did all the paperwork for us and gave instructions take all his paperwork with us and ride father down to road were we would find another office with a computer where the official importation documents could be printed for us. Surprisingly this process only took about one and a half hours and cost us only $11.00 each for insurance for our bikes. We rode out to the Pacific coast again, this time in Costa Rica, and spent time on a beach called Playa Hermosa.

Costa Rica is the richest country in Central America, so we expected good roads, but had heard that the Pan-American highway was in poor condition. Having this information helped us with the decision to avoid the highway and continue down the Peninsula de Nicoya before crossing over the gulf via a beautiful bridge paid for by the Taiwanese government as a gift to Costa Rica for recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. We then rode north on the Pan-American Highway for 12 miles, which was farther that we cared to ride on this piece of pavement with pot-holes the size of small cars. To avoid the pot-holes involved weaving from one side of the road to other. Riding the road on a bike is easier than a car, as we didn't have two sets of wheels to try maneuver around these suspension-wrecking holes. The problem was that the oncoming vehicles used the same technique and since the cars and trucks are bigger than us they always have the "right-of-weight".

After the short ride back to the north on the Pan-American highway, we turned east and road into the mountains and then rode along the shore of Laguna de Arenal to see the Arenal Volcano. La Fortuna is a town that has embraced tourism and is a very friendly community. As we did a lap through town looking for a hotel a man stepped into the middle of the road to flag us down. He said a friend of his that lives in town rides the same bike and with the same colour helmet and he thought that David was him. We talked for a while then asked for his recommendation of an inexpensive clean room with safe motorcycle parking. He told us to follow him and he walked one block to a place where we got a room with a private bath for $14 per night.

Volcano Arenal - Costa Rica

We liked La Fortuna enough to spend two nights there and took a canopy tour in the mountains. The day was clear and sunny and started with a horseback ride part way up the mountain to a platform where we donned our climbing gear, then continued up the mountain on foot to a higher platform. Our guides, Carlos and Adonai, gave us instructions on the gear, then Adonai clipped onto the cable, stepped of the platform, and with the sound of the pulley buzzing he disappeared across the canyon. Deb & I rode 10 cables back and forth across the canyon, the longest of which was half a mile long. The scenery was fantastic with one of the cables passing over a water fall.

Deb on the Canopy Tour - Costa Rica

That evening we went for a guided walk in a rain forest were we saw a three-toed sloth, howler and spider monkeys, iguanas, several types of toucans, and an explanation of the different types of vegetation found in the forest. We exited the forest on the active side of the volcano just after dark hoping to see the glowing lava in the night sky. Unfortunately the clouds came in and covered the volcano while we were hiking, so we could hear the rocks tumble down the side of the volcano and only got a momentary glimpse of the red glow through the clouds. Our last stop was at Baldi Hot Springs. This is a resort with about 10 thermal pools all fed by water from the volcano. The pools ranged in temperature from 37 to 67 degrees Celsius or 98 to 153 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a very relaxing place to spend a couple of hours after a rigorous day in the mountains.

We continue to learn how small the world is as we met a group of people here that we had met several times before - at a hotel in Granada, Nicaragua; stopped on the road in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua; and a hostel in Zacatecas, Mexico. It is a group of ten people on a six month trip from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and we hope to meet then again somewhere on the road in the future.

Leaving La Fortuna in the morning heading to San Jose, we had a spectacular ride through the mountains on some very twisty roads with views into the canyons. At one point there was a layer of clouds above us at the mountain peaks and another layer below us blocking our view of the farms below. It was quite a neat experience. After some trouble figuring out how to use a phone card with instructions in Spanish, Deb got in touch with her mother's cousin Elsie and she came to meet us and lead us to her house. Elsie moved to Costa Rica in 1957 and homesteaded a farm in the southernmost province. She has so many interesting stories to tell of her life here, the Pan American highway wasn't completed yet and they had to fly to get there from San Jose. She said the most interesting visitors they had were a couple that walked from Texas to Panama. She now lives in San Jose. About 20 years ago, the government took her farm along with many others and she is still fighting to get compensated for it.

Elsie and Deb in San Jose, Costa Rica