May 24th, 2:00am local time
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
GPS: 

We weren't able to get through Costa Rica and Nicaragua in a single day, like we'd planned.  We'd been told by many people that Costa Rican roads are lousy, but the country is TINY, and we'd mostly scoffed at these nay-sayers.  Unfortunately, they were right, and we were wrong.  But not in the way you'd expect.  

Costa Rican roads are, indeed, lousy – but they're in great condition and mostly fast to drive on.  The problem is the incredible amounts of traffic funneled on these two-lane roads.  We'd constantly get stuck behind trucks moving at 30 kph and be unable to pass for miles and miles.  Not to mention the speed limit everywhere is set at 60kph, the slowest we've encountered anywhere, on any highway.  Road construction was rampant, and at one point we were forced off our main highway into a desvio, and got lost for an hour before we were able to get back on track.

During this unintended tour of the Costa Rican countryside (beautiful, I'm sure, but it was cloudy and rainy all day, from the moment we got on our bikes until we stopped for the night), we encountered some of the steepest and most winding roads on this trip.  We were navigatin inclines we wouldn't hit while popping a wheelie while turning 90 degree twists up canyon walls.  Dad hit a slipper patch on the road, and drove his bike into the ditch.  Not usually too big a deal, especially going as slowly as we were, but these ditches are pretty close to six feet deep, and this road was barely six feet wide.  We had to dodge heavy trucks and other road traffic while we were hauling dad's bike outta the ditch.

We stopped for lunch at this little restaurant that had a pharmacy next door (Justin has been suffering from some digestive issues).  We talked to the owner of the place about what we were doing, and they comped our meal!  Good burgers, too, and the coffee was amazing.  We also ran into some Americans at the next table, and had ourselves a good little chat with them.  It's nice to speak english to people that I'm not related to.  We were behind schedule, though, and had to vamos pronto and get back on the highway.  Dad's bladder had other plans, though – instead of going while at the restaurant, five minutes after we leave, Dad announces that we have to find a place for him, and right quick.

Justin didn't think that was too cool, and made him wait for quite a while before we pulled over at a Denny's restaurant.  I almost dropped my bike several times during that hour, watching dad dance from one foot to the other while waiting at traffic lights, trying to not pee all over his bike.  

Speaking of traffic lights, there's something interesting I've noticed about the two short people in our group.  Robbie and Sean can NOT make it through intersections on the first attempt.  They both stall their bikes out at almost every stop.  I cannot count the number of times i've watched their headlights flicker off and back on as their bikes start up again.  If they manage not to stall their bikes, though, it's 'cause they forgot to put them in gear, and i get to listen with amusement to their racing engines going nowhere quickly.

When we'd started this journey way at the south end of the world, freezing our butts off in the snow and rain, we were talking about how warm it would be at the equator.  Not so – today we climbed ten thousand feet – as high as our plane flew on the way into Panama – and the temperature plummeted to ten degrees at the top.  All our cold weather gear is, of course, packed away securely at the bottom of everything, so we had no choice but to suck it up and push through.  Fortunately, it was only that cold for about an hour.  At the very peak of that mountain pass, of course there'd be construction.  It was a very, very steep road, and half of it was shut down for one-way-at-a-time traffic, and we were fortunate enough to get to wait for half an hour while this old semi wheezed its' dying way up the mountainside.  Being on motorcycles, though, we skipped past all the vehicles on our side that had lined up to go through.

Since we'd been so long getting out of Panama the day before, we were behind schedule, and had decided that we'd try to push on into Nicaragua.  Friends of ours have relatives that live in Nicaragua, and Justin had been in tenuous email contact with them.  Brian informed us that the border closed sometime after 8pm, so we needed to get there before then if we were to make it into Nicaragua and stay at their place.

At 8pm the sun had set and we were still about an hour from the border.  Dejected, we stopped in at a hotel, but they didn't have any rooms available.  While trying to find a place that did have room, Justin noticed that it was but ten minutes after seven.  We'd crossed another timezone moving into Costa Rica, and we were able to successfully push on to the Nicaraguan border, hitting it about ten minutes after eight.  Brian met us there with Eunice, and he totally smoothed our way through the borders.

I can't say enough nice things about Brian and Eunice.  They went out of their way, late at night, to meet some strangers (they're the aunt and uncle of our good friend, Amandha Richter) and they opened their hearts and their home to us.  We broke out a bottle of Nicaraguan rum and frittered away a couple hours chatting about Latin America, and the differences we've all noticed and encountered.  We even got some a late breakfast dinner, courtesy Eunice.  

Apparently we are fortunate to come into Central America at the very beginning of the rainy season.  Brian tells me that if we'd been through a week earlier, we would have been able to enjoy blue skies and warm weather the whole way through.  As it is, we can expect rain every day until northern Mexico.  We're also 'fortunate' in that apparently this is an unusually wet rainy season, due to some kind of el nino effect that's setting record rainfalls in Colombia and all-day rainstorms when the rainy season consists of twenty minutes of showers every afternoon.  

We're all getting used to being wet, though, and our hands and toes have taken on a permanently swollen, raisin appearance.  I am the anal retentive member of this group when it comes to the rain gear.  I'll stop and put everything on when it starts to rain, and i'll try and take everything off when it stops raining.  Unfortunately, every time it's 'stopped' raining and I strip down, it's a temporary respite, and i'm soon soaked.  Eventually I gave it up for a lost cause and just rode in my regular motorcycle gear.

Riding in the rain, i've discovered, really chaps my ass.  Seriously – it feels like my bum is on fire, and it's painful to adjust my position, even after a cold shower.  While we were waiting for the customs BS to get finished tonight, Eunice was telling us some things about Nicaragua – like how it's apparently very difficult to get hold of water heaters.  So difficult, in fact, that they don't even have a water heater, and instead they have what is called a 'suicide shower', in which direct 220V AC current is run through a heater built right into the shower head.  Frightening to think of, and more so when she casually mentioned that sometimes the wires get wet and catch on fire.  That's why my shower was cold.  I'll desperately need to find some baby powder tomorrow.  I don't know how I'm gonna go on with this.  Robbie won't even let me borrow his chapstick.

We're all incredibly smelly, too.  I hate putting on my helmet and catching that hot stink of mildew that hits me in the face like a wet glove.  Our boots are well on their way to disintegration – they weren't that awesome to begin with, and this is going to kill them.  Our boots are one of the bits of gear we're really starting to dislike.  They're not waterproof – in fact, they're more like sponges-with-tread, and for the better part of the last two days we've all had small pools swishing around out feet.  The soles are starting to separate from the toes of Robbie &amp; Justin's boots, and the eyelets for the shoelaces are razor sharp, and we've all torn our way through several shoelaces already.

Anyways, our feet are so stinky that we're throwing away our socks rather than carry them around for a week, even sealed away in ziploc baggies.  I'm considering throwing away my underwear, but this is almost like a cycle through the washing machine, right?

Since our hosts are familiar with central america &amp; mexico, Rob and Justin sat him down for a few hours and picked his brain about the best routes.  Near as we can figure, he's saved us several hours with his most excellent advice.

I managed to catch a bit of a buzz off the Nicaraguan rum – i think, in fact, that everyone did.  It was so incredibly nice to be able to relax and chat with friends instead of keeping up on the run all the time.  We stayed up a bit too late, though.

Time for bed,
Ryan Noble
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua