Across Three Countries
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2008
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7
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Trip End
Jul 30, 2008
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Tamarindo,
Costa Rica
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Leaving Antigua the next morning with some regret, we (John, that is) managed to retrace the path we had followed the bus to get us on the new 4-lane highway, and we headed south to the border with El Salvador. We had been forewarned by our Argentine friends from Oklahoma City that the crossing procedures were chaotic and the local hustlers were persistent. Luckily, we crossed on a Sunday morning without much traffic and managed to get through in reasonable time with the help of a fellow American. Andy Turk was on a motorcycle and on his way to Ushuia, Argentina, our ultimate goal, so we fell in immediately. He was a somewhat seasoned traveler, having sold his software company and spent time already in southeast Asia, where he intends to settle down at some point. He decided to come with us to our stopping point, Ajutlan on the Pacific coast. We arrived there in motorcade to find a wide stretch of beach covered with the traditional straw-thatched palapas shading the beach, lots of Salvadoran families spending their Sunday in hammocks or at tables under the palapas. So we joined them, bought drinks from a local stand, and Carol made friends in broken Spanish with the owner, who recommended a local hotel and told her his life story, which was not an easy one. After stretching out our driving muscles in the swimming pool, we dined all three Americans at a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the Pacific that had panoramic views of the coast north and south and watched the sun set into the ocean, complete with the tiny green flash as it finally disappeared.
Color
Breakfast the next morning found us waiting for the cook to arrive at 8 am. Then we loaded our Jeep and motorcycle and took off down the coast road. We lost Andy as he turned north to drive through San Salvador, and we continued our drive down the coast. Stretches of black sand beaches interspersed with tunnels through solid rock, we traveled on a very good road to our turn-off north into the mountains of eastern El Salvador. Our goal was the mountain town of Alegria, with incredible views of the central lakes, cities and plains and much cooler climate. We had been at 94 degrees Fahrenheit and dropped a degree a minute as we headed up the twisting mountain road, Carol at the wheel. It was Monday, so the little mountain town was quasi-deserted, but we found the local tourist information office. He gave us the name of the best hotel/restaurant/floral grower/cock and turkey raiser and found two teen-age boys to lead us through the very steep streets to its location on the very edge of a mountain. The view down, some 4500 feet, to the lake almost an inland sea looked like a scene from Tolkien. As the sun set, the lights in the towns on the plain came on, and we realized how densely populated the country is. After walking the little mountain town and touring our host's flower gardens and cages of every imaginable chicken -there must have bee over two hundred species, we dined on steak and local fish as the lights in the towns of the plains came on. Then back to our log cabin and to admire the twinkling lights below, and so to bed.
The next morning, we drove north to the highway and to the border crossing into Honduras.
Typical market
Getting into Guatemala was somewhat chaotic; getting into Honduras was a nightmare of offices and warrens of copy machines and supposed information needed and entered into computers. The "helpers" were cheats who accosted the tourists and led them astray, directing them to their buddies who filled out phony forms and entered information into non-functioning computers. We figured out the scams, even made one phony official give us our money back, since we had insisted he give us a receipt with his signature. A quick discussion about calling the police ended that farce. By the time we got through the real formalities, a great deal of time had elapsed. We decided not to stay in Honduras at all, but to drive straight through and into Nicaragua. It looked doable on the map, but was somewhat different on the roads in bad repair, dodging potholes and trying to figure out unmarked roads. We made it to the other side about dusk, looked at one local hotel near the border and decided to head for the first big town we could see on the map. The map, however, didn't tell us that the condition of roads from the border was even worse, and we spent some time jolting over a dirt road, following a truck carrying what seemed to be farm workers. Thankfully, they stayed ahead of us for quite some time, and the dirt road turned into something resembling pavement and finally into a sort of a highway. We saw the local people up close as we drove through the country, and it makes you respect the amount of work they do with what they have.
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Horse or mule carts share the highways with fast cars and slow trucks. Women walk with baskets on their heads and men with loads on their backs. We have it so easy in our developed world.Finally, we arrived at Chinandego, but had a hard time in the dark figuring out where the town was in relation to the highway, which looped around it, rather than going through it. Despairing of ever finding a hotel in the dark, we pulled into a modern Boston Chicken-like restaurant on a traffic circle and asked for help from two young people getting out of a taxi. They recommended a hotel down one of the highways and suggested asking the taxi driver to lead us there. Arriving at the hotel - which looked quite nice - we found it full, but the desk clerk called a sister hotel belonging to the same company and found us a room, we whistled the taxi driver back, and off we went. We ended up in a totally modern hotel that looked like a condominium development, had wonderful beds and bathrooms and an elegant dining room, complete with English hunting prints. We could have been in any good-sized American town - Cleveland, for example - except that the development was gated, and the guard was armed. Dinner was lovely, though we were the only guests, and breakfast just as well served.
February 13 - 15
Somewhat lazily, we finally got on the road to our destination of the night before: Leon, Nicaragua, an old colonial city and a modern university town, full of churches and the best modern art gallery in Central America, according to The Lonely Planet guide.
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Here we unwound, walked the streets to see some of the churches and climbed to the top of the cathedral for panoramic views of the chain of volcanoes. We were stunned by the art museum: it had Picassos and other known painters, but the most fantastic pictures were by Central American artists. It started with the colonial period in the late 1600's and early 1700's, then moved forward in time. You could see the progression of styles and techniques, ending with a large collection of modern painters, each picture more interesting and achieved than the one before. The collection is huge, occupying two separate buildings on either side of a street, and displayed around courtyards. We also visited a museum maintained by the mothers of the young men and women who died trying to end the rule of the dictator Somoza and found another gallery with a painting of Ronald Reagan. According to the guidebook, "you will want to take a photo." It was right, and we did. He is the guy with shotgun.The next day, having made our reservations in the tourist office, we went on a volcano tour. This is harder than it sounds. It involved: 1) climbing up one side of a very large volcano covered with large and medium-sized lava stones, all this in a gale force winds - up to 35 or 40 knots 2) visiting the top in the same wind to see the smoke and steam coming out and the cone itself - our guide wanted us to continue up an around the rim in an ever increasing gale and we mutinied - he got even an took us into the volcano crater and up and out the other side - see the pictures 3) sliding - walking - leaping back down, up to our mid-calves, in finer lava "sand", though not as small as real sand, at about a thirty five degree angle.
little people
One of our party brought a sandboard and did a magnificent job of surfing down the "sand" on the first try. John and I walked down - we did a kind of loping stride that sank our feet into the sand, but got us down. We were covered in the black sand and had it on the inside of all our shoes and clothes. The clothes went immediately into the hotel laundry washing machine, and we emptied sand out of shoes for half an hour. It was definitely worth it, but we'll see how our legs feel in the morning. On the way back out of the volcano park, we had a chance to see how poor the people are who live in the countryside in shacks without amenities. Now I understand why there are so many missions from US churches who come down to this part of the world to build houses. February 16 - 18
From Leon, we drove around the edge of Managua on the way to the border, without going to the central area. Its reputation for safety isn't great, nor for beauty. The downtown area has been affected by quakes and is apparently lots of open space with the occasional tall building. Turning south towards Granada, we found an ATM on the highway that felt positively suburban and some friendly local Managuans who liked the Jeep and our story about going to Argentina. Granada is the oldest town in Central American, possibily the oldest in the New World, and a traditional conservative rival to liberal Leon. They even fought wars with each other, some involving an American mercenary named Williamson (?), which made us think of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
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Arriving in Granada's lovely colonial town square, we found ourselves in the middle of an international poetry festival and with scarcely a chance to find a hotel room. Luckily, we stumbled on one off the beat track that had one room reserved at twice the normal price, due to the festival, but the potential guest couldn't make up his mind whether to come or not. So we talked the hotel clerk into giving us his room. It was worth it that evening when we went to the town square to hear the poetry readings. They were already an hour or so late to start, but the crowd had gathered in the chairs set up in the square in front of an open-air stage. There were speeches first, of course, including the Vice President of Nicaragua and several proclamations. The readings started with a black American from New York, in white long shirt and trousers, beads and corn-rowed hair down to his elbows, reading a poem "My words have holes in them...," in English translated into Spanish for the audience. There were several in Spanish by Central American poets, many of them women, and a wonderful poem in German by an Austrian "What happens to colors when there is no light," also translated into Spanish. Bedazzled by verse and international poetic harmony, we went in search of dinner, found our destination restaurant full to the brim with Germans and settled for dinner in the courtyard of one of the local hotels, named for Ruben Dario, the national poet who was born and lived in Leon.The next morning, when we checked out, the morning hotel clerk didn't know that the price had been raised for the festival, so she charged us the ordinary room rate.
bigger then Buckingham
It didn't dawn on us until we were nearly at the border. We had a bad border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica - too many "dispachantes" trying to get our attention to help us through the maze of offices and stamps needed and fees paid for this and that. We used the one who spoke the best English and gave him a dollar or two for his help. He gave us a very young helper to take us to the other side to his partner in petty crime. When we stopped at the official bank, instead of using his chosen money changer, he just disappeared, so we finished our crossing in relative peace in the company of a very savvy Central American on a motorcycle. He was as appalled at the chaos as we were, and our crossing was uneventful from there, except for passing the many semis parked on the side of the road waiting to get across. There has to be a better system.We went to Liberia, the first town of any size in Costa Rica, found a hotel at the highway intersection that once wanted to be a Best Western, with a pool and an okay restaurant. We swam laps, cooled off, ate undistinguished food and slept in air conditioning. The next morning, we headed for the coast, the peninsula that juts down into the Pacific from Costa Rica's northern border, to a town called Tamarindo, once renowned for its surfing culture and now known for its expensive American colony. There actually was a Best Western on the way into town and every rental car company ever heard of. John had found a private room rental on the internet, so we were looking for a way to find the owners, who also worked in a local real estate office. We pulled into a parking lot, and a man came out and said "John?" We had emailed him yesterday that we were coming by Jeep, our Jeep is noticeable, and we had landed in front of his real estate office. We took the room, they invited us to a roast turkey dinner at their house, to which our little mini-suite with kitchen is attached. We traded stories about driving to Costa Rice from the US. They are Americans who have lived here for many years, raised their children here and love it. They've seen the incredible development of this coast and are part of the local coalition to keep the high-rise hotels and condos away. Having read its history and seen its present state of transition, we wish them the best of luck.
Comments
Rememberig the Oklahoman at Border.....
Hola, amigos, look like you are having a real gooddd time so far. By now you are cured at border crosing , yahh!!!at Panama is easier than Costa Rica, but get ready for shiping your jeep to Colombia (to Cartagena) you should contact Evelin Batista at Barwil Agencies at (507 country code)507-263-7755 she is very profecional and speak some ingles. Also, you could see the chance to fly the jeep to Colombia, call o mail airline COPA-BASA at one of this number 236-0001, 238-4286, 6671-0712 always 507 area code. it may be lost easier and not that much more (arount 2000 to 2500 total and fly from Panama city, next to the Panama international aeropuerto where you have to fly to Colombia.
let me now if need any more help, it dosent botter me to call.
If so far you dont have any 'kind' of trouble, you are doing fine and Panama and Colombia should be the same, but take extra care in Ecuador and Peru, especially if anybody get next to your window and try to tell you anybody hit you on the rear, just dont get off the jeep, move foward.
good luck and alway folllowing your post
Claudio