Ok, so maybe I skipped a day. We started out in San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua, actually got a fairly decent start. Had about a 45 minute ride to the border, skipping the one and only gas station along the way because the lines were too long. Arriving at the border, we were greeted by the usual crowd of "border flies", several of which knew us by name already. Its quite entertaining at times to see how these guys operate. Some of them are pretty good guys and earn their pay. Others are just crooks, teaming up with official crooks, in effort to relieve you of your money. On this day, we knew we weren't pushed for time, and had a real good idea of what the "official costs" were. We proceeded to draw a pretty hard line in the sand, and most of our crowd slowly drifted away. The one that was left agreed to our terms, and went to work getting our paperwork passed in and out of various windows, signed, stamped, copied, and so forth. The only hiccup this time was that our bike import papers were somehow tagged as only going to a hotel in Managua, that wed never heard of. He said that we would have to go back to the capitol city to straighten it out before we could leave the country. Chip and I glanced at each other with the 'here it comes" look. Actually turned out not too bad, our guy said he could bribe the border worker sitting outside the food stand to stamp and sign our papers anyway. In the end, we payed what we expected to pay, and were riding down the road into Costa Rica.
Our goal for the day was to make it to Lake Arenal, a large lake next to one of the more active volcanoes in the region. I remember almost 18 years ago, sitting on the deck of the Arenal Lodge, with my now wife, and our good friends Ann and Jim, playing cards, an watching glowing red rocks roll down the side of the volcano. Originally I had thought it would be cool to go back there and see how things have changed. Well, they have, a lot. The price of a room there was about 3 times what we usually pay, and to top it off, clouds and rain have socked in the area, so the top of the volcano was hidden the entire time. That just makes us glad we opted for the $20 room further up the lake, where we could see the same clouds that were hiding the volcano, and hear the same rain.
Today is still considered a milestone day for us. Not because of distance, but that today is the first day we have been rained on since leaving the United States several weeks ago. Yesterdays ride had us on many miles of rough dirt road, covered in clouds, and threatening to rain most of the afternoon. We met the rain today, on paved roads luckily. Once we dropped out of the mountains after the lake, we could see clouds lifting off the valley below. A lunch stop allowed us to find a hotel to our tastes, and we settled in for the rest of the day. Hanging our wet riding gear over the railings of the upper deck. Doing our best to trash up the place. Walking around the town of La Fortuna, we found a couple places to eat a light supper, and gawk at the prices here. This is the most expensive country we've been in yet, and you really notice it after some of the countries we've been through. Tomorrow we are taking a zip line canopy tour near the volcano before we head out of town towards the coast. Were setup to take a 2 day rafting trip on the Pacuare river starting on Saturday. That's our last bit of free time for a few days. As soon at that trip is over we need to make some serious miles towards Panama City to start the paperwork process for shipping us and the bikes to South America, by sailboat. If things go really well, Chip may be able to visit the US embassy in Panama City to try to remedy his passport situation. Other than the 5 day cruse in the middle of it, we are running on a pretty tight schedule for a while. Hopefully the customs and paperwork side of things go smoothly, because as soon as the boat lands in Columbia, we need to be making tracks towards Ecuador to meet my wife for our trip to the Galapagos Islands.
There is so much more I could write, but its honestly not that thrilling to be sitting here staring at a computer screen tonight, so I think I'll wrap it up for now. With pictures of course.
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| Costa Rica, paved road |
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| Costa Rica, not so paved road |
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| Catching a glimpse under the clouds |
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