I didn’t beat the rain today even though I was on the road at 7am and only stopped for 20 minutes. The worst part is having the sweat run into my eyes and almost blinding me. It’s still coming down now.

The shoulder on the PanAm is amazing. It’s usually at least 4 feet wide and there are no potholes. There’s a bit of glass to watch out for but nothing too bad. I’m glad it was pretty flat today because my knee is a bit sore from yesterday.

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The people thing bugs me the most. People here are either really uptight or they just don’t like acknowledging strangers. Sure people in the touristy areas are nice enough–they are paid to be and certainly not everyone comes across as rude but when I look back at every country I’ve been in the only other place even comparable was the States. This country is basically like a mini-USA now anyway so maybe that’s why people are this way.

I’m pretty happy I didn’t get run over today but I think I might be a bit of a crackhead for riding this way. My route today could have stayed a lot flatter but instead I ended up climbing right back up into the mountains.

Found a perfect motel for $20. Think I might stay here and chill tomorrow. It’s the Cabinas Francis across from the cemetary. It’s one of the cleanest rooms I’ve been in.

Drinking and driving is legal here I found out. You just can’t be intoxicated and drive. That’s awesome and explains a lot.

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I wasn’t a big fan of the highway on the north loop around Laguna de Arenal. I’ll call that section the Boca Raton of Central America. Manicured lawns, cutesy little expat-owned stores, hotel signs every 50 feet and hotels every 30 feet (slight exaggeration). It was definitely way too overdeveloped.

Things were a little better past Arenal (half way point). There was a lot less development and I managed to see some wildlife including some parrots, a bunch of toucans and a cool looking White-nosed Coati. The Coati was walking next to the road and I managed to take couple pictures before some cars showed up. The driver of the first car coming toward me stopped next to the Coati and actually opened his door and dropped a handful of freaking potato chips on the ground for it to eat. Boy was I pissed. I yelled “Hey!” at the guy (I don’t know the Spanish word for dumbass) and started to ride toward his car. He drove off and I gave him a nice dirty look. People can be so stupid. It had already eaten one chip so I picked up the rest of the chips and threw them in my garbage bag. An older couple who had also stopped said, “Good for you.”

Stopped for lunch at Cascajo’s del Arenal about 1 km from the hot springs. Great food and the chef even came out to say hi. Nice guy. A few miles outside town a guy on a mountain bike rode up who turned out to be a pretty helpful. He knew the town like the back of his hand so he pointed out some cheap places to stay. The Sleep Inn fit the bill at $10 so here I am. The owners also arrange hikes up to Volcan Arenal. The next tour was in an hour so I paid up, ran to the store to get a beer and then ran back to the hotel to take a quick shower.

The volcano ranks right up there as one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. It easily dominates the area at 5300 feet and the clouds cooperated a little so I could actually see it. The first good view was when I was riding over the dam that formed Laguna de Arenal, which is what I rode around for the better part of the day. Why they built a dam so close to a volcano that’s been active almost daily for the last 40 years seemed odd but whatever. When it did erupt in 1968, after being dormant for over 400 years, it destroyed 3 villages and killed 80 people. Now it’s one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world. Lava doesn’t spew out of it all the time but there’s usually something going on.

The tour was surprisingly good. I was a bit apprehensive after my last volcano tour. No shotgun toting guides this time. As we hiked through the jungle the guide did a great job of showing us all the plants and animals in the area. It was pretty amazing how in those few miles of jungle trail we saw so many kinds of plants could be used as natural remedies for dozens of common health problems. Kind of a shame that we’re chopping all the jungles down.

In the early 1990’s Costa Rica had the highest rate of deforestation in Latin America. 80% of the forest cover had been lost (through conservation measures its at 52% now although man-made forest isn’t nearly as productive as natural forest). The remarkable part is what more than 30% of the lost forest cover was cleared for. Cows. Specifically, cows whose yummy beef was shipped to the United States in the form of fast-food hamburgers, TV dinners and pet food.

The highlight of the tour was when the volcano let out a huge burp of gas and black soot. Even people back in town saw it. Also managed to see more parrots, howler monkeys and some kind of pit viper snake (no good pictures–too blurry, besides one bite would have been enough to end me so I didn’t keep trying). No lava so I’ll have to track down the next active volcano and head that way.

My site is officially listed as a reference on the Answers.com page for Montana. I’m #27. It’s a mistake but it makes you wonder how the pages get generated.

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The new rims held up today but the mechanic didn’t see notice that the magnet for my bike computer was attached to my old spokes so at 7am when we were leaving I was rather dismayed to see it was gone. The shop probably didn’t open until 10am so I would have been stuck sitting outside waiting for 3 hours. Marten happened to have some spare magnets so he gave me his and used one of the spares on his bike. That guy is like my guardian angel. First he gets my bike rack for me and now this.

After turning off the PanAm toward the mountains, things went from flat to almost solid climbing for the next 20 miles. The scenery was decent but I think tomorrow is going to be much better when I ride around this huge lake before getting to the volcano.

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September 15th marks Costa Rica’s 189th anniversary of independence from Spain (along with the rest of Central America except Belize). To commemorate the holiday a torch is carried all the way from Guatemala to symbolize the spreading of the news of independence throughout Central America. Back then it took a month for Costa Rica to find out it was independent. Eventually the torch will make its way to the old capital city, Cartago, where President Laura Chinchilla will receive it. It arrived in Liberia this evening where a massive crowd was waiting to see it at the plaza.

Along with the torch were hundreds of people on bicycles and motorcycles who had ridden north during the day to meet the torch at the border with Nicaragua and follow it back to their home towns along the route (PanAm highway). I was wondering what was going on when I saw so many riders heading north and finally found out from someone later what they were doing.

Leaving tomorrow would be out since my bike won’t be ready until noon and leaving on the 15th might not be a good idea. So maybe I’ll hang out here. Heavy rain is forecast for the next 3 days anyway and there are big cans of Rock Ice beer and bags of gummie bears available at the nearby supermarket so I’ll have sustenance.

Liberia is pretty much like heading into any city of 35,000 people in the States. All the fast food places are here, there are fancy restaurants/hotels all over and the sidewalks/roads are in great shape.

Karin and Marten are nowhere to be found but I think they took the northern route along the lake so maybe there’s no internet. I’m kind of worried because I haven’t heard from them in a couple days though.

Update: I rewrote the whole entry because my English sucks sometimes. Karin and Marten are in a hotel a mile out of town! Somehow I passed right by them yesterday without seeing them. I Skyped with them and we’ll meet up tomorrow.

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Crossing into Costa Rica was like someone had flipped a switch labeled “Jungle: On:. Almost immediately both sides of the road were lined by huge trees and extremely thick ground cover. Camping is going to be fun if I get the chance. I’m going to have to remember to ride with my mouth closed more. I ate like a dozen bugs today.

There are some things here I’m going to have to get used to. Apparently it’s safe to drink the tap water. I guzzled down a gallon of it already so we’ll see. That should save some money at least. The exchange rate to the US dollar is crazy. US $1 gets you about 514 colóns (the colón is named after Christopher Columbus BTW). Now I have all these bills in denominations of 10,000. I went to the bank and took out 100,000. Lunch with 2 Cokes was still US $7 though. A little pricey here.

La Cruz is in much better shape than a similar sized town in Nicaragua. The tourist dollars sure make a big difference when it comes to infrastructure. The roads in town are all paved, the sidewalks are in decent shape and the fire truck I saw looked as good as any in the States. The TV station picked up channel 10 from South Florida so I could watch some news from the homeland. I’m going to miss the food in Nicaragua though. Lunch and dinner were bland. Best food in all of Central America, including Mexico, was in Nicaragua I think.

Kids in Costa Rica don’t like getting passed on their bikes either. 3 of them were walking up a hill when I rode by. Having none of that, they jumped on their steeds and rode right behind me for a good mile before the smallest kid gave up. The other 2 didn’t last much longer. I gave them some props because they actually hung in there a lot longer than I thought.

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Woke up to fireworks and a freaking marching band parade at 6am this morning. Its 5pm now and of course more fireworks are going off. If they were actually fireworks I might not care so much. Real fireworks are kind of nice to look at. The things they set off here just explode and do nothing except make a bunch of noise and set off car alarms.

Stayed at the Hotel Don Mario in Chinandega last night. The hotel was OK but there’s a tendency in this country to keep business entrances closed up with locked steel gates so I had to find someone whenever I wanted out of the hotel. The city itself was definitely not my favorite. Garbage all over the place and it was loud to the point of maddening. Also had stupid little dogs with high-pitched yelps that I want to run over and taxis/cars that honked incessantly. My wake up call in the morning was a chicken bus slamming on its 120db horn at 5:15am.

The garbage situation so far seems to be limited to the populated areas. I haven’t seen any piles of it out on the road so I think people are content to throw it out on the street or next to their house. In Chinandega I saw a horse-drawn cart collecting bags of garbage but from the looks of it I think they need a lot more horses and some education to go with it. One middle-aged guy walking with a lady friend tossed a plastic bottle off a bridge like it was nothing. That’s one reason I don’t like buying drinks/food from the roadside vendors along the highways. They rarely have garbage cans and instead just take whatever it is and toss it in a pile.

An old lady selling Coke at one of the stands warned me about wearing my necklace. I’m going to keep it on though. If someone decides to rob me they’ll do it because they’ve seen my bike/gear and there’s nothing I can do about that. As far as cities and getting mugged, I avoid bad areas just like I would in the States and I rarely go out after dark.

Great scenery yesterday and again today. Coasted along next to the Cordillera Los Marrabiois, a range consisting of 10 volcanos, some active, that rise up from the lowlands. Clouds obscured the tops so pictures didn’t turn out so good but seeing it up close was still impressive. This area is actually the most volcanic region in all of Central America. A lot of the land is flooded, especially on the west side of the highway where the water comes down from the mountains. The highway design has a lot to do with it I’m sure. There were very few places for water to keep flowing under the road so of course it has no place to go but up.

One thing I found interesting was a bridge in the town of Choluteca. I read that the US Army Corps of Engineers designed the bridge in the 1930’s and that when Hurricane Mitch hit in 1998 the bridge wasn’t damaged but that miles of roadway leading up to it were. 94 bridges in Nicaragua were actually destroyed during Mitch. That hurricane was just devastating for the countries in Central America. In fact I’m kind of shocked that I didn’t realize just how bad it was. Over 19,000 people were killed from flooding and mudslides (almost 15,000 were in Honduras). The Army Corps is still here helping to rebuild the damaged infrastructure. The wifi password at the hotel in Chinandega was 1998mitch…

I’m feeling pretty bad for the people up in Guatemala right now. I’ve been following the situation with the rain and mudslides pretty closely and its a shame to see a group of people having to endure so much tragedy over and over again.

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My worries about crossing from El Salvador were unfounded. The border agents spent quite a bit of time examining my passport but they didn’t say a word about the missing entry stamp. I handed over my $3 to the Honduran customs people and sped off.

Some police stopped me at a “checkpoint” not too far after crossing. There were 2 of them but only the younger one came over to talk to me. The other older, chunkier officer didn’t get up the whole time. At first he wanted to know where I was going so I told him. Then he asked to see my passport. He flipped it open and looked at it for 10 seconds before giving it back. For the next 5 minutes he basically just looked at my bike while letting all the cars/trucks go by without so much as a second glance. I knew something was up at this point and this was confirmed when he pointed at my bike and said, “mucho dinero” and then clearly checking out my gold necklace. He asked for my passport again and read off my name for me immediately followed by a request for a $10 exit fee. I looked at his name tag and read his name (Roberto, R) and then asked if I could have a receipt. I guess saying his name and asking for the receipt did the trick because he waved me off and went back to looking for more bribe money suspicious vehicles.

Rained all day and quite hard for a good bit of it. I was warned to stay away from one motel here (Hotel Bonsai) so I found a place called Hotel Kali that is amazing. All new furniture, clean bed, great wifi, AC and friendly owners. No hot shower. Only $14 and change. The place last night was bad. Spotted 3 cockroaches, one was so big I thought it was my bike moving across the floor. The AC was horrible and I ended up turning it off at 1am because it was so loud.

I’ve been reading all these weird books lately: An Inquiry into the Nature and Wealth of Nations, The Earth as Modified by Humans, Youth, The Invisible Man and The Science of Human Nature. I downloaded War and Peace but I can’t bring myself to stare at the screen for that long. Grabbed them for free using the Stanza app for my swell iTouch. I kind of wish I had a Kindle…

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On the road into town I saw a dead Tapir, the largest land mammal of the American tropics, so I can add that as my first exotic road kill. Hopefully I’ll see some live ones. And Toucans…there are a lot of them here. Actually Belize has so many things that can seriously mess you up that I’ll have to be careful. There’s even an ant that’s described as causing “waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours”. No more dropping Oreo cookie bits and seeing how many ants I can summon during a rest break.

It’s weird speaking English to everyone again. Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official language. The population of Belize is pretty mixed: Mestizos comprise about 34% of the population, Kriols 25%, Spanish 15%, Maya 11%, and Garinagu 6%. The population is small, only 320,000 so it enjoys the lowest population density in Central America but sadly it has one of the highest population growth rates in the western hemisphere. When will people learn?

Stayed in the lake-side town of Bacalar last night. Didn’t have anything exciting to report so I didn’t write up a blurb about the day.

GPX Track

Since things are stable up here I booked some flights to get me back on the road. First stop after I leave here is Atlanta to visit my Dad. I’ll be there for a couple days and then I’m flying to Fort Lauderdale to see some more family and hang out with my friends.

On June 2nd I’m booked on a non-stop flight via AeroMexico to the city of Merida. From there I’ll hop on a bus for a 3 hour ride to the town of Hopelchen where my poor bike has been awaiting my return. I’m glad its flat in that section of Mexico because I suspect the first couple days are going to be tough. I’ve been eating like a pig up here and might have packed on an extra pound or two.