Another zoo border into Costa Rica, called Penas Blanca

Day 4 (490 km)

Left Ocotal, Nicaragua early in the morning around 7 am, I wanted to reach Costa-Rica, so we had plenty of miles to go. Decided to have a stop in the Masaya Volcano national park, which was almost on the way to Costa-Rica, about halfway and around 11 am arrived there and did the photo shoot and continued to the border another 2 hours away!

Once we reached the border on both side the pandemonium started to get useless copies of papers, pay non existing fees and put up with their crab for about 2 hours and left the border with a shit load of papers more and reached Canas around 6 pm in a little drizzle rain, not even enough to get wet, checked into a 
fancy $ 50.00 hotel with all the amenities and had Chinese food again with the necessary beers to lessen the thirst, had a good internet connection in the a/c room, what was nice for a change, last few days were bad or slow!

Tomorrow Panama, probably the city of David and planning to take the pacific coast road through Quepos, what is new to me, because 30 years ago this was a dirt road, we will see tomorrow, how the improvements are!

On a side note, I still have problems with the gas tank and we can not figure it out!

With a full tank , I can drive 140 miles only and the the engine start cutting out, normally I can drive 220 miles, before I fill up, so why is this happening, I know it is not water, so what is the reason? I am open for suggestions. 

After the engine stops, I wait 2 minutes and she will start up again, but only for a few minutes and cut off again, she only runs good again if I fill the tank up completely!

First hectic border crossing "Nicaragua"

Day 3 ( 157 km)

     Walked in the morning over to the DEI, which is the Honduran agency, which takes care of the motor vehicles, to see if our plates were in this office, the ones, we so desperately needed, after waiting in line and not having too much patience, they tended to me and showed him all the necessary documents (about 30 or so for our bikes and believe it or not, we ended to have to go to another office to finalize RTN numbers, we were actually doing their work! but anyway finally around 10 AM, I got plates, then Scotty went to look for his bank and after 2 hours he came back and 1 pm we left for Los Manos border with Nica, which was 2 hours away.

Arriving their, our police friend from last year was still there harassing  people and gave us the runaround and told us we can not come in again with our false plates, I smiled and showed us our brand new plates and he insisted that we had to mount them and asked us for any other paper, he could think about, for us to deny access to Nicaragua, but I had them all and eventually let us pass 2 hours later.

We made it to the next town, Ocotal and called it the day and we celebrated that we beat their system again with "Tonia" beer and a good steak dinner in a over priced hotel, "Hotel Fronteras", the name says it all!

Tomorrow we like to see if we can get to Costa-Rica, sofar no rain!

Carretera de Muerto, through Olancho

Day 2 (290 km)

     Early start and we had to backtrack from Olanchito a few kilometers to reach the infamous "Carretera de Muerto', I have been hearing about for the last 30 years and if you look on the map is actually the shortest road to get to the south, wasn't it, it was all dirt, but were looking forward to it and wanted to get in the mountains.

     After passing the police check point, just outside Olanchito, we made a right turn and then hit the gravel road and started to climb to higher altitude, eventually over 1600 meters and after a few minutes, we were in the department of Olancho, but of course there was no sign, that stated it. the road was hard gravel in the beginning, but soon it became a wash board with dry rivers in it and we had to slowdown plenty. Half an hour later, all bolts were loosening up in Scotty's bike and had to stop to fix this, then I start getting problems with the fuel and the engine kept cutting out. draining the carburetor  loosening the tank cap, clearing fuel lines,  the problem continued to persist. Anyway it was a nice 160 km  ride, but a nightmare at the same time!  Around midday we reached finally the paved road, had some lunch in a road restaurant and after lunch we were trying to get to Tegus, but the engine kept failing me, but after topping the tank off with gas, it seems it was doing better and finally reached Tegus around 4 pm and there was a traffic jam throughout the City. We reached the hotel and I had to get rid off all the dust we caught from all day and a shower did good and were soon ready for dinner again in town! The hotel Granada 2 we stayed by coincidence many times in the past and was a decent and cheap and you do not need A/C in this time of the year!

      We had to do some serious paperwork to do here on Tuesday (Getting finally our license plates!) and we wanted to leave before midday, to see if we could end up in Nicaragua, before dark and didn't want waste more time in Tegus as necessary, we still had to catch a cargo plane leaving Panama on Sunday!

Olanchito is in Yoro, not Olancho!

Day 1 ( 121 km )

Tonia c

Bikes covered up

     Sunday morning, we pulled up by the Tonia C to board our bikes again, But it was only Scotty and me, Chris could not make it due to problems with the bike and after securing the bikes, the boat set sail around noon in a drizzle for the mainland. 3 hour later, we reached the City of La Ceiba and disembarked our moto's, paid our ties ($6.00) to the Portuario for using their dock and were on our way to Olanchito Yoro, where we planned to stay the night. 

Scotty

     

Getting dark

  

Secured parking

      Olanchito, we reached in a little more of an hour on a decent paved road, we almost reached after dark, and thankfully it didn't rain, looked for an hotel and found one basic one for $ 15.00 with internet and a Chinese place around the corner, so had our dinner and a few beers before 7pm and talked about the "Carretera de Muerto", which is the route we wanted to take south towards the main highway from Catacames-Tegucigalpa. This road is all dirt and through the mountains and had a bad reputation for the last 40 years due to land disputes, which were solved Wild West style.

Yours truly

  Normally you will not see a person on this road and were wondering about the condition of the road after the heavy rainfall, we had in the last few days. We could have taken the La Ceiba-Progresso-Tegus road, which is paved all the way, but is kind of boring, after have done that a hundred time!

Prologue

We not sure, but heading for "South America" tomorrow!

Tomorrow, after a 9 month rest of our last "Mexico" trip, we decided to head south for a 4th time  and try to reach a different continent "South America" this time! And we will put in some serious time and effort to reach there.. To go to South America was the main reason, we bought the bikes almost 2 years ago and after some trial trips in Honduras, Panama and Mexico, it was time to make the big jump.

Chris ( That's if his bike start),                   Scotty ( Scottish Mike) and myself are taking off on Sunday from Utila with the Tonia C freight boat for the mainland to start our 7000 km trip. Chris will go as far as Panama City and then we continue by plane to Colombia.

    

     The 2 bikes, we maintained last week by Doug de Silva and he said every time we use his name, we get a beer, so his name will show up many times in the next few weeks!  The bikes are in top shape now, new tires, brake pads, oil, sprockets, chain and greased up to hopefully stay without mechanical problems during our trip South.   Thanks Doug, this is beer # 2 each! 

Packed and ready to go....

          We made actually no plans where to stay and will make decisions on a daily basis, where and how far to go and the first one will be, How to deal with the many border crossings, because believe it or not we still not have original plates, because of all kinds of bureaucratic problems in Honduras. The next big issue will be to find in Panama City a cargo plane who will fly our bikes to Bogota, Colombia and then get ourselves to Bogota with COPA or Avianca.

It is only a 90 minute flight, but they charge for each bike $900.00 and the ticket is $450.00 and that is one-way! Then hopefully within 2 or 3 days, get reunited  with the bikes, Deal with the Colombian paperwork in Bogota, to get the bikes on their road legal and get the mandatory insurance! 

Chicaron!

          To get ahead of the trip, the idea is to go north from Bogota to the coast, east to Venezuela, south to Brazil and the Guyana's, to see if they still like Dutch people in Suriname ( I still have my "NL" sticker on the back of the moto) and then end up in Manaus, Brazil somehow.

the cook

So to say farewell to family and friends we had yesterday a good old time "Hogfry"  with the necessary beer to get our belly full for our trip!

       

            
 I wish we could drive it all the way to South America but there are still no roads between Panama and Colombia to cross the Darien Cap, which is almost impossible to penetrate, even by foot! Last year we went as far as Yaviza, Panama, what is considered the end of the road in North America.

          Most bikers, take a sailboat from Colon, Panama to Cartagena, Colombia, but we will loose too much time to line this up and then living on an island, it doesn't appeal too much any more to sail for a week to get to Cartagena on a slow boat, besides that, the loading hassle of the moto's and salt spray, during the trip  , is nothing to look forward to. And then you still end up paying around $ 800.00 total one-way!

           

              The idea is that the bikes are not coming back anymore to Honduras, but will be stored where ever we end up on the 1st of December, which is the planned return trip to Honduras by plane and then return  every 2 or 3 months later to South America again to put another month or so in, to reach eventually the bottom of South America by ends of next year.

Hopefully we do not need Doug's advice during our trip too much and in the case, we brake down, I carried a surplus of tools and parts, to stay ahead of the game.   That is beer number 3, Doug.....make that 4!