Posts From Central America

Norm's ford had a flat battery this morning, and it took a little while to charge it using the Tiger and our jump leads. However, even with that hiccup we were on the road by 6:30 am.

We had a surprisingly comfortable night at the border. The weather was pleasant and not too hot, our parking place was almost flat, and the noise was not too bad. Fortunately Nina did not hear the nine gun shots in the middle of the night. Norm later heard that the police shot a local gang member - Nina Says Sorry no photos.

We spent today in the area around our Water Park Automorisco.

This morning we set out at 8:00 for a visit to the city of Antigua in Norm's vehicle accompanied by the two children from the water park and the hair dresser lady mentioned in the previous entry.

This day was a complete right-off for me. During the night I started getting stomach cramps with the usual consequences of such feelings. With some foul tasting medications to punctuate the day I did my best to sleep for 24 hours.

I was pleased to awake feeling a lot better this morning. Which meant that we would be moving on. The plan was to cross into El Salvador and drive to a government Work Center near La Libertad. These centers are provided as vacation destinations for locals and visitors alike.

We had a surprisingly comfortable night, the noise of trucks did not disturb us, and our $9 Wal-Mart fan kept the climate tolerable.

We awoke to the clouds misting around us and drifting across the car park, and a bit of light rain accompanied breakfast. By 8:00am the first bus load of workers and tourists arrived, among them the man who controlled the main gate, so now we could leave.

A correction - the place we are staying near La Libertad is called Centro Obrero or workers center and is provided by the government for "workers" and visitors.

This morning Nina decided to stay at the camp while Norm and I went for another look at the antics of the fishermen and their boats. Being Saturday did not seem to make any difference to the level of activity.

Another day in La Libertad. I am sitting in the passenger seat of the Tiger, the engine is idling to charge the house batteries and as a side benefit the air conditioner is on. The vehicle thermometer says its 88°F outside but that does not do justice to the feeling of heat and humidity.

Another quiet day at the Centro Obrero La Libertard. Nothing hopeful seems to have happened in Honduras over the past few days, we will wait a little longer before looking at radical options.

We moved to a new location today, but since it was only about 50 miles away we started at the civilized hour of 8:00 am.

The only thing of note today was some work we got done on the Tiger. Norm had suggested that we should get a cover for the propane valves that are visible on the side of the Tiger; his thinking - the shipping company may not notice the propane and ask us to empty the tank. This is of some importance as (apparently) propane will be hard to find in South America.

Norm has injured his ankle - I don't think he knows how he did it - but it's definitely swollen and appears painful. So this morning we spent some time at the local hospital and pharmacy.

It's the afternoon of July 14th and I am sitting in a nice room at the Camino Real Hotel in Managua Nicaragua. The last 4 or 5 days have been a bit of a trial and it is a pleasure to have some comfortable surroundings for a brief period. Its also good to be past the question mark of Honduras and now - we hope - definitely on our way to Panama and thence South America.

At breakfast Norm offered to conduct todays city tour himself rather than use a local tour company, and we accepted.

At dinner last night Norm suggested we stay at the hotel another day and spend today touring the nearby city of Granada - about a 50 minute drive from the hotel.

Getting out of Managua and towards Lake Nicaragua Norm got stopped by a radar trap and paid US $40 in "fines"

Last night Norm paid a local man to sit guard over our vehicles throughout the night. I am not sure that this was necessary but he certainly carried out his part of the deal as he was still awake guarding us when we woke at 5:00 am this morning.

Apparently the monkeys made some noise over night - but I did not hear them.

The morning dawned clear and with no sign of the rain and cloud of last night.

Again the morning was clear with no signs of last nights rain storm.

Yet again, last nights rain is gone, and we are now convinced of the Panama rainy season weather pattern. Clear in the morning and storms in the afternoon.

Today our priority was to get started on the paper work associated with shipping the vehicle to Colombia. The latest information we have is that the ship will depart from the port of Colon - on the Atlantic side of Panama on Friday 31st July and arrive in Cartagena Colombia Sunday 2nd August.

After early morning coffee at the local McDonalds we settled down to wait for news on the progress of the police inspection and other paper work.

Today was the Canal visit - I am sure everyone who comes to Panama City visits the canal and locks at some time. Today we took what is called a partial traverse. Which means we started in Gatun Lake, the highest point of the canal, and descended 31 meters through Pedro Miguel locks and then through another 27 meters in each of the two chambers of the Miraflores Locks to the Pacific Ocean level. In the process we passed under the.

We visited an indian village - Tucipono - today situated east of the canal. The people are called the Embera and migrated from the Darien region about 40 years ago and settled in the forest east of the canal where they continued their traditional life style of slash and burn farming. In the mid 1990s the Panamanian Government created a National Park encompassing this region and as a result the Embera people where prohibited from continuing clearing land to conduct their farming. Now they rely on tourism for their primary income and this allows them to continue a way of life that is close to their traditional existence.

Today was the big day on paper work, late in the day we heard from the customs agent that all was complete and Nina's passport had been stamped to indicate that she could leave the country without the Tiger. In each of the countries we have traveled through Nina - as the owner of the Tiger - got two entry stamps in her passport, one for herself and one for the vehicle. This prevents her from leaving the Tiger behind when she leaves the country. Thus to leave Panama she needed to have the vehicle stamp effectively cancelled.

We have heard a lot about Colon while we have been in Panama, almost all of it bad. We have heard that it is ugly, poor and dangerous. We had also heard that the train ride between Balboa and Colon is very interesting. Just to emphasis this we would learn later that an American family staying at the hotel visited Colon today, catching the train over and a bus back. At the Colon end the local police insisted on giving them an escort between the train and the bus, and the bus driver would not let them open the windows of the bus even just to take a photo. As we would learn first hand the ugly and poor part was evident.

It is amazing how a one hour plane ride can take up the entire day!!

We got the Tiger from the port of Manzanillo today, in what turned out to be a surprisingly easy exercise; though it was only easy because of the assistance we got from the folks at Wilhelmsen Ship Service. After a brief stop at the Wilhelmsen office in Howard Panama we went to their office at the port of Manzanillo (100kms away) were we were guided, by a Wilhelmsen employee, through a series of steps at various port and customs offices. By 15:00 we had the Tiger and were on our way back to Panama City through yet another tropical rain storm.

Last night I downloaded renditions of the song On the Road Again by - Willie Nelson, The Loving Spoonful, Canned Heat, Bob Dylan and Tom Rush. We had them playing this morning as we drove across the Bridge of the Americas and out of Panama City. It is good to be back in the Tiger and moving again. Three weeks waiting in hotels is too much.

We heard last night that there would be a young dance group performing at the RV park tonight so we decided to stay another night. To fill in the day we drove to a nearby town named El Valle situated in the cone of an extinct volcano. From the highway a minor road wound up into the hills for about 30 km climbing 2000 ft through lush green country. We spent some time walking a jungle trail to a nice waterfall and had coffee at a shop that advertised gourmet coffee - it was good.

It seems strange to me that one crosses Panama by traveling west. The US is supposed to be North!!

In addition to some chores in nearby David we spent a much of the day exploring Bouquete. This town is famous as a retirement place for all manner of foreigners. Apparently some years back a US magazine rated it the best place in the world to retire. With this reputation we were curious to see what it had to offer. The town itself is small, consisting of only two main streets and square and a bunch of not very impressive shops - oh and a number of real estate agents. We explored the roads around the town climbing up into the mountains among the coffee plantations. The country side was beautiful and the weather balmy. We made the obligatory stop at a local coffee shop before returning to our camping spot. All in all a nice place but we don't see what the big attraction is. We did not put down any deposits on retirement villas!

The border crossing turned out to be quite straightforward though a little slow - details are given below in the camping section. Once into Costa Rica the road deteriorated into winding two lane black top with frequent large deep pot holes. The key task of drivers on this road is to avoid these holes - they would do serious damage.

We spent some time at a mall this morning getting another months supply of our various medications. All without prescription and for about the same price to us as in the USA - but with no insurance company contribution!!

Our goal today was to see some of the Pacific coast beaches of Costa Rica and see if we could understand what makes this country such a tourist attraction. Hence we headed south west from Liberia towards the Nicoya Peninsula. In turn we visited the beach towns of El Coco, Junquillal, and Samara. Along the way we had some navigational adventures and got to try the Tiger's 4x4 capabilities. One thing we discovered was that Costa Rican coastal minor roads become a quite interesting challenge during the wet season. The weather was grey and raining off and on all day so the beaches were not shown at their best. Even so we could see their attraction. The beach towns were humble, and a bit funky - or some would say with character - with generally low to mid budget accommodation. We did see some up market hotels and gated communities but these were away from the traditional towns on their own land.

This morning it was raining and the heavy clouds convinced us that it would rain all day so there seemed no point hanging around the coast. So we headed for the border. This turned out to be a good decision as heavy rain persisted almost all the way to the Costa Rica/Nicaraguan border.

We were on the road by 7:30 this morning pleased to leave our curbside camping spot and have the vehicle air conditioner going.

We spent the day planning our route through Honduras and Mexico back to the US.

Our drive got off to a rocky start today as we were pulled over by a police officer who insisted that we had committed an infringement by not driving in the curb side lane of a multi lane road. We spent perhaps 20 minutes debating this with him - he in Spanish and we in English insisting that we understood no Spanish. Eventually we (should I say Nina) proved more dogged and he gave up and waved us on.

The morning was a pleasant drive through hilly country with small pine forests dotting the hill sides. We took a short side excursion to the small village of Yuscaran noted in the guide book as a good example of a colonial mining town. It was perched on the side of a hill and had narrow cobblestone streets that made driving into the central square a bouncy affair.

The 70 km drive into Copan this morning showed lots of evidence of the impact of recent rains on the roads. We passed many landslides and there were many places where the road surface had been torn up by water.

Our plan today was to visit the town of Jocotenango which is next to Antigua. We had been given the names of a family there by some friends in Washington. We thought this would be an easy excursion to fill in a bit of the day as we wanted to have two days camping at Amatitlan.