Penas Blanca, Nicaraguan border crossing and still not making any friends.

 Day 29 (266 Km)

   Had a good breakfast and then took the ride alongside Lake Arenal to Canas, Took almost 2 hours to do this 100 km scenic twisted road through a nice rain forest, After Canas it was north to the border on a dryer and dusty highway, due to road works. Arriving @ the border around 1 pm, we processed our bikes and ourselves out of Costa-Rica within 30 minutes and then crossed over to the Nicaraguan side, where all hell soon broke loose.

Lots of people, all with badges to show that  they are “legitimate” are not offering, but harassing you  to fill out your papers upon entering Nicaragua and as my standard way of procedure, I always refuse every-one and go direct to Immigration and customs to do my paperwork myself.  After receiving after a while my entry stamp and having an argument, that I was not paying a one cent to enter, because I was a resident of Honduras and that there  is free of charge border crossings between the CA-4 countries, they gave in and let me in free of charge on the end, but were pissed off, Scotty of course had to pay, by not being an Honduran resident yet after 20 years!

    Then we went to the Custom area to do our bike and presenting all the papers, he wanted to see the signed customs declarations of each of us and when I  asked for the forms, he said, you have to get this form  from one of the “people” outside, After looking for an half an hour for someone that had these forms, they send Scotty back to the Costa Rica area, where all the loafers were trying to push you papers earlier and finally reached the guy what had the empty forms, He didn't want to give the forms to Scotty  and start cursing his mother out for not getting it an hour ago. (The guy just had a T-shirt on) He said you not getting one now, because you did not wanted one earlier, so they had an altercation! Finally Scotty came back with only one empty form,  so then I had to go back to do the same thing. So arguing there the same point and listening to his crap, I told him in my very best Spanish, what I thought about him and I called the police standing around to put an official complaint against the loser, and took everybody mug shot for intimidation and a few minutes later the boss came and processed our papers after sending us first to secondary inspection of our motorcycles for narcotics. End of story, 4 hours later we drove away from the border to San Juan del Sur about 40 km away in Nicaragua, a sea town on the Pacific side.

    We had been there before, so it was easy to get a hotel, food and a few beers!

La Fortuna ^ Arenal for the 2nd time.

Day 28 (171 Km)

       We made a Sunday easy short drive towards Volcano Arenal, close to Fortuna. We went there already on the way going south 3 years ago and  the place had some good restaurants and many hotels in the small touristic village and it was only 150 km away from San Jose and we took the scenic road first to Volcano Poas and just before reaching that , cut across to Arenal. The whole drive still took more as 4 hours, but was worthwhile and  passed the small mountain roads to get there.

        We reached 2 pm and found a suitable hotel with A/C and WiFi and could park the moto's covered in front of the room. What more you want! Later we will have some good  food here, because the many restaurants cater to tourists here!, and is probably the last decent meal till I get home. Tomorrow Nicaragua and looking forward to cross that border zoo!

Did not make too many friends in Central America yet!

Day 26 (509 Km) and Day 27 (390 Km)

    Left the Hotel By the Panama airport @ 8 for the long haul to David, about 500km away and soon hit the first toll booth to get to Panama city and saw before I entered, I had to pay $ 1.20. Up to my surprise the girl told me, that I had to buy first a rechargeable card for $ 10.00, because they cannot accept cash anymore! I refused to pay the $ 10.00 and soon I had 100 cars behind me and I still refused to pay, I told her take the $ 1.20, she still refused and I asked Scotty, if he could bypass the tollbooth, without hitting the boom, he nodded and told him lets go. Told the girl “Kiss my as#” and we took off, only to get confronted 20 minutes later with another toll booth, had another little stand off about the same thing and soon bypassed this toll booth also, leaving everyone behind us in disbelieve! Having done this road about 4 times now in the last 3 years, we knew every few miles a motor police man, is hiding behind a tree to give motorists fines for speeding in their classic set up, reducing the speed limit from 100km to 40 km in the middle of nowhere, but this time, I smiled and waved to al of theml, when I passed them and around 5 pm we reached David. Half the people, I asked directions for the centre of town, didn’t know where the center is and not long after that, I decided to go towards the border and soon we saw a hotel on the side of the road and checked in , left the bikes packed in front of the room.

                                                          

   Next morning, an half an hour later we reached the zoo of Paso Canoas in 40 C and of all the border crossings in the world, this is the most grueling, time consuming one , but having this border done a few times already, I started in good spirit. The Panamanian side was not too bad eventhou they made a big deal about,  to see our yellow fever cards, because they noticed, we been to Peru and Ecuador according the stamps in our passport. I told the guy, you should have asked me when I entered Panama, not when I am leaving….., so he got pissed off. Then the sniffing dogs of their narcotic team, did not wanted to get up and sniff our bags for about 15 minutes and finally after a stamp here and there , they let us go to the Costa Rica side and I knew here all the crap will start , because they want from everything a photo copy and like to send you around to 10 different places and on the end you have to go back again to collect stamps. You would say having everything computerized in Costa Rica and considered the most advanced of all Central America, they should not have all this red tape, but they must have hired the most ignorant, incompetent people they could find to fill these positions to do this useless job and you could see none of them really wanted to work, especially on a Saturday       ( Must be Political) . Anyway, on the end the clerk was so upset, felt intimidated and even crying, after I told her in a “friendly “  way, what I thought about her work ethics, that we had to use Scotty as an intermediater between the two of us to process my papers and it was a good thing Costa Rica is one hour earlier as Panama, so we left this border around 10:30 am Costa Rica time. I must have lost 10 pounds of sweating in the last 3 hours intense heat and abnormal temperatures and my clothes were soaked, nowhere on this whole border, there was an A/C or fan to get any relieve and there was no breeze as well!  So 10 minutes later we stopped by a roadside bar to get some cold drinks and some crackhead wanted money for watching our bikes while we got our drinks and we were only sitting 10 ft away from the bikes and we were the only customers in the place. Actually we were watching him, so he did not steal anything!  After an half an hour, when we were leaving, he demanded money and I gave him 2 bitchlicks and that solved his problem for the day. Sofar this day, I made no new friends yet!

  On the narrow badly paved road, I saw a sign that San Jose was 350 km away and we decided to go there through the mountains to get out of this heat and 2 hours later we were @ 3300 meters and it was actually chilly, but the road was magnificent with very nice curves and vistas. Around 5 pm, we reached Carthago , a city with at least with  100000 people, but has no hotels and an hour later we decided to go to San Jose and reached there almost in dark, found an hostal and after 12 hours on the road, I was tired!

    

Central America, back to rice and beans again!

Day 23, 24 & 25 (0 Km)

      Repacked all the bags and after fixed Scotty's electric and gas problem, we took off to the airport to see if we could ship the 2 moto's to Panama. We arrived @ Girag freight company and went to see the office people to find out what they need from us to ship it. It was the same company we used 15 months earlier from Panama to Bogota, but the procedures are different in Colombia. Here you need a broker and after getting the address about 10 minutes away from the airport, I visited LynCargo and all went fast there and an hour later I had paid the $ 1030 freight for each bike and the told me to go back To Girag and someone will come there to finalize the process @ 2 pm from LynCargo. So the guy came @ 3 pm and we did the running round with him to get a stamp here and there and around 8 pm we were finished and the bikes were inside the warehouse. The only thing short was the next day of the police to search our luggage and that happened @ 8 am next day, so we had to go back again to be present.

   We found an Hotel near the airport to save on taxi's in a run down area and ordered our online tickets from United Mileage Program, But after I had my ticket secured for Thursday 9 am, I could not get Scotty's ticket for the same flight, but found one @ 2 pm to Panama. 

  Next day Thursday, I left 6 am for the airport and took my COPA flight to Panama and walked through immigration, when I received an email that the bikes were already in Panama and ready to be picked up. So around none I was @ Girag cargo terminal and around 2 pm I had both bikes out of the customs and were delivered to me and also got a police permit to drive in Panama, so all was set ready to go!

    Went to the Hotel, near the airport where we stayed many times now, got a room and picked Scotty up around 5 pm coming from his Bogota flight and after this, we went to pick up his bike by Girag terminal as well. I had his bike already earlier parked outside the gate and 6 pm all was done and now it is beer time!

It was hard to believe all went this smooth the last few days and tomorrow we will be on our way towards Costa Rica.

Bogota, made it where we started in South America!

Day 22 (482 Km)

       Took my last $ 5.00 bone crushing session @ 7 am, had breakfast @ eight and left @ 8:30 am.

Got some help from some locals to put the bike on the road and after a photo session.

 I started a little nervous the 30 km descent on a dirt road to La Plata. Only used the second gear, because I still can not shift with my stiff left leg, although I attached a rope from the shift pedal to the handlebar and if necessary, could pull with my right hand to shift to higher gear. With the weight from my foot I could easily downshift! After a while I got the hang of it and after we reached the paved road, it became easier .

      I decided to go as far as possible to Bogota and around 4 pm, we started to look for an hotel and that was about 100 km before Bogota. We ended up on an main access road to Bogota, starting from 500 meter and ended up 2800 meter high and had a traffic jam for the last 100 km with standstill traffic and we had to ride between the standstill traffic in between the traffic lanes and on the side and this must have been the national sport for all the motorcycles in Colombia!

     Anyway 8 pm we reached Bogota and Scotty's motorcycle has been cutting out the last 2 hours, due to probably bad gas and his electric system is not working as well irregular, looks like the battery poles are loose, but then I never believe, two things happen on the same time and will

find out tomorrow what the problem is, but finally we reached the hotel, a taxi driver showed us and I believe, it is near the airport, so that was good, because we have to check out tomorrow, how we get these bikes to Panama again.