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Made it to Copan!
Entry 11 of 13 | show all | print this entry |
We got up early on the morning of the 8th and headed down to the water taxi station to catch our morning ride back over to the little town where our bikes were stashed. The boat ride was much faster and less stressful than the one over the evening before, (way less people, which meant full speed!). Our bikes were still there, and didn´t seem to be missing any parts, so we loaded up and headed out. We had been warned by another BMW rider that had come down from Costa Rica the way we were heading back up that there are two bridges that we have to pass over. One on the Panama side, one on the Costa Rica side, that were both in bad shape, and not motorcycle friendly to say the least. We were a little concerned, but we were commited by this time. We found the first bridge and I thought "this doesn´t look so bad". It was an old steel truss railroad bridge, with railroad ties and tracks as the base, and 2, 10 inch wide planks on either side of the tracks for a cars tires to ride on, which wouldn´t be so bad if they hadn´t been completely warped, rotten and in some places gone altogether. Even this wasn´t so bad except the on either side of the bridge there wasn´t a railing or anything else for that matter to keep you from going over the edge into the water 60 feet below, which you could see through the open railroad ties you were driving over. Ok, so just don´t screw up and I´ll be fine. "I´ll go first!" so off I go, not so bad, but I´ll keep my feet down just in case I need to catch myself, which is exactly what happend about half way across the 300 meters of bridge. I caught my foot which started the bike wobbling a bit, and just when I thought I had it, bang! I go down. Fortunately I fell to the center and onto the railroad tracks. Holy Shit! That was close! Troy finds a place to kick stand his bike so he can help me get it back up, but the problem here is that if you´re not careful the kickstand goes through the gaps (that look down into the water below) between the railroad ties. Fortunately some guys in a truck behind us jumped up and helped me get the bike back up and onto the planks. I kept my feet up for the rest of the bridge. Once we made it across the border into Costa Rica we hit the second bridge that was a bit easier, shorter and it had 3 planks! Hot Damn! I was a bit nervous though.
Crusised on up through Puerto Limon, and then into San Jose through a beautiful cloud forrest, with great twisty roads in good shape. Made it to the bmw shop by noon and they changed both our rear tires on the spot, and then let Troy and I change our own oil and do some general working on the bike, which was very cool cause they could have just as easily said no and sent us down the road.
Spent the night in San Jose and got an early start. We were a bit anxious to get out of Costa Rica as it has turned out to be the most expensive area down here. Definitely beautiful and well cared for, but it has been hit hard by the developers. Of course we couldn´t make it out of this country without being stopped by the police, again, this time for passing in a no passing zone, which must only apply to folks from out of town like us, becuase passing in a no passing zone seems to be the norm down here. Our only problem this time was that this cop spoke english, and he wasn´t having any of the " I don´t understand why we got pulled over" bit. So we gave him our fake drivers licenses, which he didn´t like either, and then wanted our passports, which we knew would be a costly mistake so we stalled until he got really pissed and then I knew we weren´t getting out of this one without paying. So 20 bucks later we were back on the road. Damn, that was a tank of gas.
Nicaragua and Honduras have turned out to be wonderful surprises. It seems like every day we get done riding, we say, Wow! That was one of the coolest places yet, and then it gets better! Nicaragua has some areas where the landscape opened up and reminided me a little of Norhtern Arizona. Troy and I both commented on how good it felt to be in wide open spaces again. We stayed the night in this little town named Sebaco. We hoped a ride into town in the back of a pickup truck as the hotel we were staying at was out of town about a mile or so, and was having an electricity outage, so not much was happening there. Plus we could here that the town was having some sort of hoorah going on. Saturday night! It turnned out to be just the farmers market going strong, and a local bar with its music cranked up to 11. Not a whole lot going on, so we walked around, got some ice cream and headed home.
The drive through Honduras has been through these crazy pine forrests. It is obvious that the government lets the area burn as they are in fantastic shape. The smell of pine really reminds me of being home. Spent the night at a little place on a lake, and then made a short run in the morning for Copan, right on the border of Guatemala, which is where we are now. We decided to stay in the little town next to the ruins as we are pretty tired from riding, and this place is cool for sure. We toured the Ruins yesterday, and practically had the place to ourselves (slow on monday I guess).
Our plan is to cross the border into Guatemal tomorrow, check out Antigua Guatemala, then back into Mexico.
For those of you wondering why we didn´t push on to South America, by the time we made it to Panama we knew we would be able to make it down there, but no way to make it back up unless we decided to ship the bikes, so we opted to head back north and save South America for another trip!
Thanks for keeping up on our trip!
Cheers!
Doug
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