Rio Frio Crossing, by boat only!

Sunday 26 June 2011

    We left Zarcero on Sunday morning early and the town was preparing for a religious procession, took som pictures and headed for Los Chiles, which is the border town,  from where you had to take a small boat to San Carlos Nicaragua, no cars is possible to cross and the 2 countries just had a border dispute what was more or less settled in international court in Den Haag. It was about the rights and protection of the river "San Juan", which forms the border from the Atlantic to Lake Nicaragua. We reached Los Chiles and checked the scene out and asked around How to get to Nicaragua and were advised to take the small river boat at 3PM

   After checked out of Costa Rica, we were waiting and the boat actually showed up and after talking to the captain and agreeing on the price of $60.00 for bike and our passage each, we start boarding the bikes, what took an half an hour and secured it with ropes. The trip was about an hour and was very interesting with the poor settlements on the banks, the monkeys howling and passing the Nicaraguan army post. Fanally we reach the lake and to the right we saw San Carlos and docked up pretty soon after that. Everybody was curious about the motorcycles including police and customs and were prepared for the worse.

Our insurance for Nicaragua on the bikes was still valid and they didn't give us the hassle with the plates, I was fearing, so an hour or so later we got a police escort to the hotel, he recommended and he was putting on his siren on to impress the local population and us and in no while we reached the hotel, said goodbye and told him we would buy him a beer later in town if he was still there. Checked in the crappy hotel with a loud A/C, but it was cheap and realized again everything is half price here compared to Cost a Fortune.

Had the best evening meal sofar this trip in a nice champa type restaurant on the waterfront, called Lagostinnas and at the same thing (Freshwater shrimp/lobster), the beer was cold so the night was pretty good for us