THE SWEATRAL AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Playa El Tunco El Salvador 

to Honduras

to Nicaragua

to Costa rica

to Panama 
...phew!

Listening to   Talkin' Bout a Revolution  Tracy Chapman

A long time ago I played in a band and we did this song. Haven't heard it much since as stations tend to play the brilliant "Give me one reason". Give it a run or play them back to back lying in a hammock sipping on a Costa rican Guaro mixed with juice and humidity.

The Patient Shall Inherit the Borders

I stare upwards at the web covered air conditioners decorating the ceiling. Why are broken air conditioners always off tan instead of off white. Their smiling vents gape at me at different grotesque angles and seem to mock my suffering. Bastards. I wonder at how many years it'd been since they finally exhaled their last cool breath and became luxury spider condominiums. I'm losing it. The sweat just pours out of me and my clothes are sticky and sodden. Every dripping pore is dragging me ever closer to the dehydration pit. This is shit. The line moves slightly and we shuffle ever closer to the 'migracion counter'.  I've just gotta do this. I'm gonna do this. It's a mental test played out over and over at every border. A four part game...person out, then bike out...cross the border...person in, bike in. Always played in ultra hot and humid conditions in a foreign language with emphasis on ever changing fees, confusion and total discomfort...your only weapon...

...patience...patience...patience

Siguiente Per Favor...Pasaporte Pasaporte!

This is Chris. His bike has been relieving itself of coolant
since he had a slight unplanned altercation leading to cosmetic and
personal  lacerations and redesigned crash bars. It also likes a drink of
oil on an extremely regular basis. He's off to Ushuaia by January and I wish
him well...aaah the confidence of youth.

I wanna get to Panama...soonish.
This is a long read of a long process that takes a long time but hang in there you'll be finished before long and maybe even longing for more...
sorry it's the heat...

Chris and I decide to get close to the El Salvador border and then rise early and have a go at crossing Honduras in one day doing the two borders together. The ride across El Salvador is pretty ordinary and we end up at La Union about forty K from the border. We leave for the border at about six thirty and it's already seriously hot. We fuel up so we don't have to stop in Honduras and tackle the border. Oddly the audana (the bike out bit) is well before the border. It's just a tiny hut thing with a window with little signage. There's always a long line of semis but we just ride to the front and show our passports to the disinterested guy standing on the road. You then park up head to the window, get stamps and forms, head to the photocopy hut get copies and pay, then go back to the first window, get stamps them remount and go to migration. Line up, more stamps and copies then across the border for another dose. Get on the migration line and get yourself stamped in. Back to another photocopy shop for more multiples of passport, licence, bike title, forms with their stamps etc. Then head to another line at another window to get the bike in. Hand over multiple copies, wait an age while the bike details are typed in, then wait for a form stating the fees to be paid at a bank. Find a money changer to exchange some US for local as the  bank will only accept local currency. Head off into the crowds and heat into town to line up at the bank for ages to pay for the temporary import permit. Head back to the copiers to get a copy of the paid receipt and then back to the line at the window to hand over the latest bundle of paper. Depending on the border you may also have had to have the vin number inspected and or photographed before going to the bank, or got your bike fumigated with who knows what at your expense, or had to take all the bags off the bike and then all clothes out in the car park amongst the fixers and money lenders to check for contraband. All with almost no air conditioning in crippling humidity! It takes about three hours and we're off through Honduras. It's about a hundred and thirty K's across Honduras and the final road to the border is an absolute pot holed shocker. Semis, cars,motorcycles and three wheeled taxis weaving all over the road trying to avoid the rim bending potholes. It's an intense ride in the heat as hitting the wrong hole will easily bend a rim. There are so many that inevitably you hit a few in the shadows but we survive. The exit entry from Honduras to Nicaragua is the same run around although, there is air con in the Nicaraguan audana...oh thankyou! We ride on to Leon in Nicaragua arriving late afternoon and crash in the Lazy Bones Hostel. I am seriously stuffed. I have never drank so much and passed so little! 
Two borders and Honduras done in a day, sorted.

This is El Salvador early in the morning before the
Honduras border. El Salvador and Honduras were
both pretty ordinary on the route we travelled.

Outside the Nicaragua audana  when finally finished with borders
for the day. On the ride to Leon in Nicaragua dehydration and
old age kicked in big time!

The pink building is the lazy bones hostel. Good people who let
us park our bikes inside. The pool and the general ambiance were great
 but the room was pretty ordinary, more of a totally windowless sweatbox/prison cell.
The breakfast the next morning though was outstanding.

The next morning I got up early and headed into the
city square for a look around. Hmm

It's quite a cool place with multi coloured streets and a bit of
a European feel to it. There was a band practising in the square
early in the morning...I think the drummer  girl is gonna be late.

The bikes were filthy but blended in with the jungle theme
in the Lazy Bones Hostel.They really have been doing it
tough in the heat and rain.

More from Leon centre square. 

About People...
So when I wandering about I'm always in a dream looking here there everywhere. My love of looking at stuff is evenly matched by my habit of forgetting stuff like...where I'm staying and where I've put things. Aanyway I'm wandering about Leon and I get lost, nup, can't remember how to get back to the hostel, oh oh. I head into a shop and ask the lads behind the counter for directions but cop a large serve of couldn't care less. Back outside I ask a girl where the Lazy Bones Hostel might be in sign language and she answers "Oh yes, ze Lazee Bones Ostel,  follow me". Now the girl is obviously going to work but she turns around and heads back in the opposite direction. I apologise in Spanish but she cheerily waves it off and we have  a sign language chat about me riding the "moto" all the way from Canada. Ten minutes later she delivers me to the street, smiles, waves, and zooms off to work.
I turn to go and...find my camera missing....
...aargh panic.
I then remember leaving it on the counter of the shop where I had asked for directions. Back to the shop I go grabbing a bottle of water on the way in. No one appears at the counter and after an extended wait I head out the back where I find all three staff examining my camera. Hmm. I ask for it back thanking them for finding it and we all head back out to the counter. Suddenly it gets nasty and they demand money for the return of the camera. Aaaha, here we go. I've already got a note worth about triple what the water is worth (about five dollars) in my hand so I chuck that on the counter, reach for the
camera and head off...in the right direction..
...people...good ones...average ones...

Listening to  Nessun Dorna  Giacomo Puccini
Sung by Luciano Pavarotti. 
Big man, big lungs, big finish. 
Play it and you'll know it.
We all know more opera than we think.

On my own again, Leon to Liberia.
After my early morning adventure in Leon I load the bike and say farewell to Chris. He has people to visit in Costa Rica and other stuff to do so I leave him still lying on his bed tapping at his laptop mumbling something about Nicaraguan beaches and borders. After a huge breakfast I'm feeling bold...yep another border. It's about three hundred K to Liberia in Costa Rica. It's not raining, it's still bloody hot, time to fire up old Rattles the KLR and let's go. Being on my own is kinda liberating again. Hmm, what was in that breakfast? The run across Nicaragua goes pretty smoothly. The roads are pretty good most of the way and traffic is light.
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The scenery is that classic Central American vista of round rolling peaks encircled by endless cloudy mists and deep green roadside vegetation. Lazy scattered villages harbouring  kamikaze three wheeled taxis,  sprawling fuel stations with  bored young uniformed pump attendants, and roadside food vendors tending smoking hotplates punctuate the patched potholed highways . Crawling fuel tankers pump black acrid diesel fumes as they slowly crawl up the slightest incline backing up long lines of battered sedans and trendy four wheel drives. Thunderstorms rapidly appear and disperse leaving steaming concrete and bitumen, misting your visor, and filling your nostrils with a thick greasy vapour filled fug. 
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 Before the border the road runs along Lake Cociboica or Lake Nicaragua. Its the biggest lake in Central America and the road along it is pretty good as most roads to border crossing are usually pretty battered. I stop before the border, take a long drink and remove my jacket and gloves to try to keep cooler at the next border melee. The crossing goes haywire as it is Sunday afternoon and there is multiple tourist buses and locals crossing the border at the end of the weekend. It takes about four hours and I even hire a fixer for five dollars at one stage to get through an inspection that  seems to be a bit of a scam between the fixers and inspectors...I watch for a while and figure OK this is how it works. And it did. You gotta do what you gotta do. It involves unpacking the whole bike, taking out all your clothes, camping gear,and computer stuff outside in the car park amongst the gathered throng, while watching that nothing gets pinched. Then put it all back together and back onto a line for more stamps and kerchings...and this was just to leave...huh? That night I scored a good cheap hotel in Liberia. When I opened the door and saw it had aircon...and hot water...
  Woo Hoo !
Time to get MacDonalds express delivered and watch the F1 highlights on cable TV...heaven.

The towns are infested with these little three wheeled Taxis.
Enter at your peril!

This is along Lake Nicaragua just before the border.

Roll roll up for the Sunday arvo border scam. Hire 
yourself a player and suddenly all is possible!


Listening to
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Written by Eric Bogle
There are so many people who have covered this song. If you don't know it pull it up on You Tube and revisit it on Anzac day every year. So many versions there's one for everyone.  My favourite is off a compilation album listing the the band as Diggers Rest or maybe The Bush Tucker Singers on Spotify. No idea who it is but what a moving rendition of a great Australian song.

Bus...ting to cross Costa rica
It's time to cross Costa rica. I've figured the weather turns crap about three o'clock every day and then rains all night. The plan is to get going earlyish and head to a place just over four hundred K's away called the Purruja Lodge near Golfito. I set off with a breakfast of muesli bars and water and hit the road. Just out of town I decide to give the chain a lube and find somewhere flat to pull over without too much garbage. I spin the chain and oh oh...
Hmm...the chain master link clip is missing! 
 Right, don't panic, there was a moto shop back in the Liberia. Backtrack twenty K's and head into a modern motorcycle and car accessory shop Costa rican style. I sign language the clip and they have one. It was an interesting process. First you ask a sales guy for what you want. He finds it on the computer, makes a sales docket, and sends it to the cash register girl. You go there to her little window and pay and then take the receipt to the parts guy at another counter. He then disappears and comes back with hopefully what you asked for way back. You then take the receipt and part to the door guy and he checks it and lets you out...must be fun when it's busy. So all good. I fit it and off we go an hour lost. Now it's time for Deano's luck to kick in. Fifty K's down the track I round a bend and find traffic banked back as far as I can see. Huh? It's now about half past ten...two hours later I'm about another thirty K's further after riding down the wrong side of the road along the longest traffic jam I've ever seen. Yep it's the national Costa rican bus protest. Literally hundreds and hundreds of yellow school buses staging a protest by going walking pace on all the national highways. 
Aaaargh!
By the time I clear all the banked semis and buses it's mid afternoon and of course it buckets with rain on the last hundred Ks into Golfito. The road in is infested with fuel tankers and mixed in with roadworks I get covered head to toe in mud and spray. We're a sorry pair Rattles and I when we arrive and Walter, who is the lodge's owner, has the kitchen fix me some left over rice and soup
...woah I needed it. 

I asked about the bus strike when having lunch at this cafe and
 the waitress told me in hilarious English that Costa rican traffic
 is "always sheeet!"

 The Pacific Ocean on the Costa rican coastline
Just about to rain hence the darkish picture.

The Purruja Lodge and Golfito
The lodge is a beautiful place. Set in the jungle a couple of K's from Golfito bay the setting is a stunner. I'm the only one there due to off season and Walter lets me use his garage to service the bike and the ladies there take care of my laundry. They have monkeys there and all sorts of native animals. Unfortunately I just couldn't get a photo of the monkeys. I met a older German guy named Joachim who lives there and we had a great conversation. He was originally from East Berlin and had just escaped to the west when the wall came down. He was some kind of journalist and stayed at the wall for months covering all the conversion from east to west. A very interesting time in history. I jumped on the local bus with him and got a guided tour of Golfito. It's a beautiful little protected bay. The Americans are moving in big time with a yacht club and marina and there's an interesting balance going on as the town also has a drug running history with the associated influx of money. Offset this with old money from the Banana company days, big investment in bars and restaurants for the fishermen and tourists and a local government that seems to work better with a bit of palm greasing it's a place with shall we say, character?

I was a bit of a mess when I finally arrived at the Purruja Lodge.
Many thanks to Walter and the ladies there for some reviving soup
and rice.

A wonderful scenery shot for tired motorcyclists.

Rattles getting a bit of love with an oil change, airfilter clean 

and chain lube. It was kinda nice to spend a couple of hours

doing maintenance under cover on my own.

Golfito Bay taken from a restaurant I had lunch at with Joachim.

Looks like another thunderstorm on the way. It gets dark 

here around five thirty this time of year.

This is the oldest original bar in Golfito. It's still open and 

left over from the Banana Company days.

Going back up the hill out of Golfito the bus got so slow I 

thought we were going to have to get off and walk to the top!

A hundred metres from  the top we'd run out of revs and gears

taken to lurching along at less than walking pace.

American money has sponsored infrastructure like footpaths etc

helping to grease the rails for their soon to be completed gated marina.

This is Joachim at a little coffee place on the water. Still haven't found

coffee as good as ours though.

It's an idyllic spot attracting lots of characters

from all over the globe.

Burning out in Panama

After two nights at the Purruja Lodge it's time to tackle Panama. I head towards the border but don't realise it's so close. I almost zoom into the Panama zone and completely miss the Costa rican migration and audana. This brings all the fixers running out and pointing back to Costa rica which is really quite funny. I crack a U turn, head back, and the border process on both sides is goes really smoothly...it's all going so well! I set sail for a hotel near  Santiago which is a couple of hundred K's into Panama. Twenty K's before I get there, yep I can almost smell it, I get hit by the biggest thunderstorm yet. Boom and within thirty seconds I'm drenched. Imagine getting a garden hose, turn it on flat out, and just sticking down your shirt...you just can't keep that much water out. I get to the hotel drenched. I have to head out again a little later to sort some cash for the air cargo people as there is a daily limit on my card and the amount they need is way over it. It's back on the bike and ten K's into town to find an ATM. Oh no...yep...once again an even bigger thunder storm hits. I eventually have to stop under a shop awning for cover as riding in it is just too dangerous. It takes about an hour just for the rain to slow down. I just can't describe it. Even though it was draining well the volume of water falling was such that as it fell it on itself it built up to about a foot deep on the roads before dispersing...nuts!

 That night I have to admit I'm a bit over it... probably a bad time to make decisions....

Once again everything I own is scattered all over the hotel drying. Hmm and for some reason the airfreight thing to Bogota is bugging me...it's all a bit rush rush. On a whim I shoot off an email to a sailing vessel called the Stahlratte. It's an old sailing vessel that transports people and bikes through the Caribbean Sea from Carti or San Blas Panama to Cartagena in Colombia and back over four or five days visiting some islands on the way. They winch your bike on to the deck off the wharf and it's pretty rough and ready but what the hell...and it's a little cheaper than airfreight.  Chris is travelling on it but had thought it was all booked out. I get an email back promptly from Captain Ludwig telling me that if I can shoot some paperwork and two hundred  bucks deposit to him by nine am tomorrow

 he can get me on...bugger.

 Hmm...I toss and turn all night...I'm seriously tired...

I have a sook to Marianne on facetime...

shit I dunno...and then...

...I send the Captain the paperwork of course... 

Oh oh...jumpin the rails again!

Jumpin the Rails Again

I've left the rails 

wavered way off course

unshackled unfettered undone 

my hands at the wheel

are just not responding

oh the joy of not knowin what's to come

Dean

This is the Costa Rican migration. Not much to see huh.You get stamped out 

here and then head over the road to pay a leaving fee.

This is where you go to pay across the road under the yellow sign

 behind some roadworks. You stand in the dust and push some 

US dollars through a window to get a stamp. 

After that you go back to the top photo and go round behind

the  migration office to get your bike stamped out...and then off to Panama.

Thankfully Panama wasn't too bad but still had to head to another ramshackle

booth to purchase liability insurance and get some more photocopies.

Took some photos at this border as there were no guns in sight!

Reality Check No. 10

I'm in Panama city laying on the bed in a hostel called Panama house bed and Breakfast. I've got a couple of days up my sleeve before riding to the more remote coast of Panama to Carti to catch the boat. I'm maybe halfway through the trip and looking back through my photos the other night Montreal seems so long ago. So much stuff. I'm in OK health and although I've had some down days I'm going OK. To be honest the alone thing has been much harder than I thought it would but it's not bothering me so much now...hmm. Oh well onwards and upwards then...no that'd be north...OK onwards and downwards then...

...hmm maybe shouldn't say down if I'm going on a boat. 

Te veo en Columbia...See you in Columbia!

Next blog hopefully from Colombia. In the meantime I've got a sailing ship to catch and hopefully keep my lunch down at sea! Pretty sure there's no wifi for a long time so the next blog might be a bit late. 

Many thanks for your all your comments.

Cheers Dean