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Central America or Bust!!!! H3 -2003

now on to the nicaraguan side and another hour of paperwork. this side would prove to be more enjoyable, they had some lovely young ladies working the counter, and the border station was pretty deserted. not much traveling traffick, so we just shmoozed our way thru and made the ladies laugh and they got our paperwork done that much faster. funny how flattery will get you everywhere. they would move us up in line....and unlike american service, where first come first served, well, it can be different down here, as we saw. they pulled a few favors for us, and moved us thru nice and easy. here's us with the obligatory welcome to sign.....

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once thru the border checkpoint, and receiving all the approval stamps...we moved on, towards costa rica. a few hundred miles, and we'll be there.

these are some roads as we weaved our way thru the mountains.

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we bypassed the main cities of Managua and made our way along the shores of Lake Nicaragua, which is an impressive body of water. Nearest to the western shore there is two volcanoes in the middle of the Lake. you'll see them in one of the photos. the crazy part, is that as far as they look from our view, they are twice as far from the opposing shore on the other side of the volcano. (i get mixed up explaining, it means that basically the volcanoes are closer to the shore we're standing on, as opposed to the other side)

the road was cool, because for many miles it wound it's way right along the shores of the lake. beautiful hills, and forests, with lake front homes.

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no matter how much technology we may have, or we might have brought with us, we were always reminded that so many people the world over live with less than advanced technology....this guy was cool, and stopped to let us take his pic. i'm in the background, as I didn't want two oxen stampeding...hahaha.

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before making it to the lake, we stopped for some breakfast at this cool little cafe. home cooked meal, and local cuisine. we ate everything. never worried about getting sick. just ordered hot food, fried, or boiled, and ate it. caught up on the journal...Dear Diary today Paco was riding faster than me, and i was jealous...:laughing :laughing , you know, shit like that!

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we moved on that day, and our goal was to get into Costa Rica. we generally tried to arrive to a country and make it thru in the evening, it made it much easier to get going in the morning, without having to do all the paperwork when we had good daylight to burn on the road.

we arrived at the costa rican border with nicaragua, and it was pretty painless exiting nicaragua.

a note to travelers, never trust the workers to get your paperwork right, and/or to transcribe your a.)passport numbers b.) VIN #'s properly onto the paperwork. had a problem exiting costa rica further down the road, when a fat cow of a broad, to busy talking on her cell phone wrote two of my VIN #'s wrong. bitch! but also my fault for not checking. didn't make that mistake again.......

here is us arriving at the Costa Rican border.....

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a few of these countries have a pest control policy to prevent transfer of certain agricultural bugs between countries. Costa Rica being one of them. so your vehicle gets sprayed, and when it comes to motorcycles, well, all of it can get sprayed....I prefered this method, as the guy is pretty specific where he sprays, mostly on the wheels.....toxic? I don't know. probably. what am I going to do? Ha! laugh it off, and move on. it was better than the fumigation chamber that was at one of the borders, where they forget to wait for you to get out of the way, before they start spraying, bastards, luckily I still had my helmet on.....

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we got past the border finally, after waiting for one stamp that was the final stamp, that said we had acquired all the permits and paid the appropriate fees....the guy with the little stamp, wasn't at his post.....he was in the parking lot hanging out and chatting with his girlfriend....finally some people that had a bit more influence than me, waited to long, and raised a stink bigger than mine, and the guy came back, looked at our paperwork, stamped it and we were on the move. 10 seconds to stamp papers, and made us wait for 30 min. motherfucker! i figured we were on the road, so fuck it.

costa rica is beautiful as well. this is some road hazards to watch out for. newborn donkeys...managed to see them, and pull the camera up and shoot with my left hand, a 35mm camera......

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we rode to Liberia, Costa Rica. Not to far down the road from the border. the next day, we would ride thru San jose, the capital, and move on to the Panamanian border, and make our run to the Panama Canal, and tag it..

Costa Rica turned out to be a bigger experience than anything I was expecting.

we left Liberia the next morning early, and rode the ridge of Costa Rica thru the mountains, and then into San Jose, CR. it was a fun trip, weaving our way thru traffick, trying to keep up with the countless amounts of 125 hondas and other bikes that just flew thru traffic, like flies around a meal. had one harrowing moment, when I was forced over to the shoulder, then passed a car, and moved back into the lane, just in time to see a section of the shoulder missing, in a sink hole, that was about 6 feet deep and about 5 feet long....that would have been disasterous, and i missed it by mere feet.....no time to think about it...just kept riding......I think that if we were to think of all the dangers and or close calls that we were going to encounter, our nerves would be shot. fuck it. i'm alive, still riding, move on.

oh, yeah, and nobody ties their helmets on.

we moved out of the city, and immediately climbed into the mountains once again. absolutely gorgeous. it was very hot in the valley, but the higher we got, the cooler it was, until we were in the clouds and mist.
this is me, in a huge sink hole on the side of the mountain.....sign said it was a dead volcano...who knows.

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this one is of me, on the side of the road, I had pulled over to take a piss, and put my leather jacket on, because it was getting cold. actually this photo was taken before the one above, in the sinkhole.

it would prove a good idea, not a mere 30 minutes later. and I would not take the jacket off again. :cool

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after that photo, Paco had gotten ahead of me, I continued and crested the mountains, and started to make my way down. it was a fantastic array of twisties, switch backs, and forested views....with the occasional view of an endless valley in the distance. i caught up to Paco at a roadside refreshments store, as he was sitting their laughing, saying he finally had flicked the bastard over....said he was running pretty fast on the GS, and he got to low, forgot to kick up the passenger peg and managed to break it off when he leaned on one of the turns. say's he almost shat himself, but it was the funnest thing that had happened so far. we laughed a bit, checked the map, and decided to go off the beaten track. when it was revealed to us that one of the roads marked on the map as a dirt road, was in fact paved just recently, and would take us along the coast. well, fuck it, lets do it. adventure awaits. Paco went ahead of me. this is him with the passenger peg in hand.

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heres my bike up in the mountains at the refreshment stop before we got a move on.

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Paco took off in front of me, and until know we had maintained a separation in the mountains due to different performing bikes, and an unspoken agreement to not wait to long ahead, if one of us had not arrived. we were both enjoying the roads, and I was moving at a pretty good clip. that harley can do things that most won't put it thru. and I'd been riding it for a long time. i will be the first to admit that it doesn't handle like performance bikes, but hell, I could get it around a corner by shifting my body off of it, at a comfortable and fast speed.

we were winding our way down the mountain, with ups and downs, when it finally happened. the thought of it, had been in the back of my mind. what if? what do i do? how do I get out of here?

well, time to answer it, I took a few switch backs, and then a climbing left hand turn, where I was shifted over to the left with my butt a bit off the bike, and had the bike leaned over scrapping the floor boards, nothing new...but with unfamiliar roads, it was a mistake waiting to happen. near the end of the curve, I was exiting towards the outside of the road, when I noticed out of the corner of my eyes, what appeared to be gravel. not moving my gaze from where I wanted to go, I tucked further, while removing speed, to try and cut the curve sharper. which is the point at which both tires hit the gravel (or so I thought it was just gravel) at that instant, I felt the bike go soft, and slide to my right.....then felt myself slam to the ground, face first, and felt my arm slide under me, as the bike slid right and my visor flew off the helmet, as I could see the road flying by me a mere inch or two from my face, my helmet grinding along the road, for what seemed like an eternity, the moment before the impact, I remember thinking the following: "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, not the bike, not the bike, my bike, my bike....dammit, my bike......" can't seem to recall thinking about my body and possible injuries. hummmmm..oh, well.

anyway, the bike came to rest in a culvert on the side of the mountain, and luckily it was on the mountain, and not over the ledge...it made a horrible noise, and there I was laying in the middle of the road, left leg trapped under the saddle bags, my hand hurt, dazed, and could hear cars stopping behind me. people immediately came over and lifted the bike off me...i did a quick check...to see if I could move, all was intact, got up slowly.....like an ambulance is going to come out here....and sat down for a bit. was pissed, and thoughts were racing thru my mind, a hundred miles an hour........here is what I hit.....you can see the skid mark, where the bike hit the side and moved to the right....apparently it wasn't just gravel, it was a chunk of pavement/asphalt that was missing, at the right spot......

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funny, how it seemed to slide forever. as I stood there, I thought to myself, how am I going to get out of here, am I injured, what the fuck. the peasants, and I say that, because that is how they live....day by day......came running down from the house up on the left, and had helped get the bike off of me, and told me to come up to the house. the kids ran around collecting my things that were scattered around the road. a taxi driver that had stopped behind me, said he would call ahead to have someone tell my buddy that I went down in the mtns. and would drive along looking for him. amazing people. the family took me in, let me wash up, I felt no pain. but my knee was pretty much torn up, ground beef above the patela, no pain, and I could walk, i attribute it all to adrenaline, which would go away that afternoon...dammit. they fed me, got me some coffee, as I waited for Paco to make it back.

while there, I taught one of the kids how to use my camera and told her to take a pic. of me. i tried to put on my most pathetic face, as I was laughing right before the pic. was taken, but I don't think my face was to far off from pathetic to begin with. hahahha.

by the way, I turned on the bike, it cranked up, and I actually rode it up to the house. about 100 meters.

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well, the damage included the following. broken clutch lever, as if it's not hard enough to engage an older harley clutch lever, busted front headlight, shorn left passing lamp wires (so it didn't work), dent in the left tank, my left taillight was gone, scrapes on the footboard, which survived, bent toe shifter, shredded left saddle bag.

to me, my helmet had a large abrasion to the left side face, the visor broke on one side, and the jacket had a scrape from the left wrist of the sleeve, to the left chest......glad I put it on a mere 30 minutes before this. and the jacket would not come off, ever again....to this day.

my left knee was hamburger, and the jeans were torn. my first thoughts of course, were, " i want to go home" i won't deny that. then reason took over, and I realized I was thousands of miles from home...okay, that might not work. I checked the bike, to see if it would work right. all looked like cosmetic damage........here's the kids checking out the bike.

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this is the view down from the folks who helped me outs' house. doesn't look like much, but I estimated I was moving along at a good clip. I'm sure I made several mistakes, but it was no time to dwell on that, I had to figure out what I would do. several options, transport bike back to san jose, cr. and then ship it home from there, try and ride it back to san jose, or who knows....keep riding.

Paco arrived, and we went over the bike, he was visually concerned with the events, and offered to do whatever it was that I thought I wanted to do, or felt I needed to do. He also offered, that we could get off the mtn. by going another 15 miles to the coast, as we were almost there, check to see if the bike was working properly and then decide from there. the route back would be the same distance.

after chilling with the family and macking on the daughter, I figured what the fuck. grabbed my balls, placed them on the proverbial wall (balls to the wall) and busted out the duct tape. yes, folks, it works on anything. proceeded to duct tape my knee together, and then checked the bike out, and we decided to get a move on, after a few hours of delay. fuck it. what's the worst that can happen right. hahahahaha

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