we spent all weekend in San Jose, drinking and hanging out, running, eating, and drinking some more. While there, I ran into another guy who had ridden down to Costa Rica. Squeely Dan, from Milwaukee, he's on a BMW K75. did it alone. doesn't speak a lick of spanish, and it is apparent, by the tales he tells us of how much he spent at each border crossing to get his permits in order. fucking dishonest "tramitadores" basically for the amt. of money he spent at the borders, he could have gotten a first class ticket to San Jose from milwaukee. that's not good. so he'll ride back with us, and we'll work our way thru the borders together.
Monday, morning, we get up early, and are packed, and start the trek north, to Nicaragua. we make the border without much fanfare, but this side of the Nicaraguan border is THE SUCK! Like Paco said, he can only figure that the war left them bitter and angry. They give us the run around. Here's how it worked. two "tramitadores" (kids) are to help us out. we tell them no, we'll get the paperwork done, squeely watches the bikes while we do the footwork. on the way out, the kids rat us out, saying that we don't have a "rodaje" which is like a road tax. the guy at the gate, says we have to go back, and tells us the kids will walk us thru it....we go to the bank, where the kids ask the armed guard to fill out the papers for them, which is a deposit slip, supposedly for a government tax payment....then they go to the teller and she deposits it into an account...from the looks on the kids faces and the fact that both the guard and the teller pocketed a bill, I assume that the money went into their own little account. fuckers! we lose some money, oh, well, we're in.
the route is without much fan fare. although we make a wrong turn and end up in Managua..sucked. headed out, and got caught in a deluge, that would make Noah proud. I actually stopped to see if these guys wanted to stop and seek shelter. we passed a small town, and there was water running across the road, pretty fast, muddy and all, coming from up the street that was on an incline. we decided to outrun it, and finally did. soaked, we crashed for the night.
no pics. here, as we're making time. we crossed into Honduras, and then El Salvador, and found a notell motell for the night. here is a shot of the El Salvadoran coastline......