09/12 For the record, Costa Rica is not an island. You know who you are. I think people get it confused with Puerto Rico. Easiest border crossing ever. The guy didn’t ask one question and didn’t even look at me until he wanted $2. I noticed later that I didn’t get an entry stamp though. The only new stamp I saw afterward was an exit for Nicaragua. Hopefully just being in the system is enough because he definitely scanned my passport.

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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09/05 Made it safe and sound to the colonial city of Leon. It took a while to find a place to stay but I tracked something down right before it started raining. After grabbing a shower I went off to explore. The first thing I noticed were how few people were walking around. It wasn’t dead but there were a lot less people than I’d expect for a city of 140,000. Very few cars too. Not sure what happened to everybody. The historic area is quite charming and there are quite a few buildings dating back to the 18th century. The cathedral is the largest in all of Central America. Getting lost didn’t take long thanks to a lack of street signs but my uncanny sense of direction got me back on track.

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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09/02 Back in Honduras, but only for the night. It’s a short run to the border with Nicaragua along this stretch of CA-1–most riders only ever see this little section of the country since they tend to skip the northern section and ride the PanAm all the way down. Not me though (or Karin and Marten who ride all over the place like I do). I’m out of the mountain (elev: 434 feet–been a long time) which is kind of sad.

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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06/14 You better Belize it! I’m officially in Central America now. Crossing the border was painless. The lady just asked where I was going and I was on my way. It sucked having to pay an exit fee of $20 US just to leave Mexico but what can you do. Once into the country I followed the road about 7 miles to the town of Corozal. It’s a pretty quiet place on the shore of Chetumal Bay which opens up into the Caribbean Sea. I’m happy to see there are lots of Chinese restaurants here. Haven’t eaten at one in a while. Drank some new beer–Belikin it’s called. It has a Mayan temple on the front and it tastes pretty good.

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

Things couldn’t be better right now. My sister is walking around the hospital on her own and is expected to be sent home late next week. Her recovery went much faster than expected so they’re not even going to send her to a rehabilitation center after leaving the hospital.

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.