Tag Archives: road-trip

Peru, Chile, Argentina – An Unexpected Ending

We left Arequipa in Peru heading for the coast. The mechanic at the Royal Enfield dealership suggested that was the way to go. The stark Atacama Desert views were beautiful and the roads winding. But once we descended towards sea level we spotted a flaw in the plan – it became cold and misty, due to the Pacific Ocean’s Humboldt Current. By sea level it had cleared. The ride along the coast was dramatic and beautiful with plenty of space to stop for photos.

The route to the border near Tacna was an easy ride with paved roads but we were somewhat confused at the crossing as we had got used to the concept of one, or several buildings, at the leaving end before proceeding a kilometre or two to the entry set of buildings. Here, we ended up visiting three windows in one building and all was done. Gid was concerned that all stages weren’t completed but I pointed out the centre window stamped us into Chile and the bikes out of Peru. It seemed to work.

We only had a short distance to go to reach Arica on the Chilean coast where we intended to stop. As it was still very early, or so we thought, we decided to visit the mummies just up the road from the town stopping for lunch on the way. Out came the phones as always but it took us quite a while to notice we had lost two hours. Rather than three o’clock it was five o’clock and our destination shut at six. Tomorrow then.

Undeterred by our one day delay we set off towards the mummies taking a more direct route out of town. Spotting some disruption up ahead we proceeded with caution, right up to the tape across the road which blocked the way just before a major bridge rebuild. A truck had just turned off to the right – obviously there was a route through. Having lost sight of the truck we explored the various options on dusty tracks around the old farm buildings before we gave up and headed back. It was twenty minutes or so retracing our steps to the junction that would take us to the mummies museum with no signage indicating the road block anywhere.

It clearly wasn’t going to be our day as arriving at the museum the gates were shut. We hadn’t checked and it didn’t open on Mondays.

Enough was enough. Riding back bypassing Arica we headed south out into the Atacama Desert. We were so pissed off that we hadn’t consider the distance we would be travelling and the implications on fuel. We must have passed several fuel stations but were in no mood for further delays. It wasn’t until we passed a sign that said no fuel for 250 km that alarm bells began to ring. ‘How much fuel have you got?’ I asked Gid. He always runs low first. ‘Providing we take it easy we will probably be ok.’ Probably. Neither of us wanted to turn back and I did have three litres in my jerrycan. Gid had chastised me back in Colombia when at the first fuel stop after our flight, I’d insisted on filling one of my emergency fuel tanks.

We cruised along tucking in under fifty mph through mile upon mile of barren mountains and valleys. We’d been in the Atacama desert since south Peru first really noticing it around Arequipa and then when we’d been approaching the coast through the mountains. But now in Chile we spent the whole day riding through emptiness with nothing breaking the vast expanse.

We stopped at Huara, the first town since Arica. It offered some accommodation and we hoped fuel. Accommodation yes, fuel no. Given that the hostal owner suggested the content of the available cans could be somewhat questionable we passed on that. The nearest fuel station was still 20-30 km away we were told. Do people in this small town seriously travel 20-30 km to fill the tank. So it would appear!!

The first of our tourist attractions was ten kilometres adjacent to the town. I was keen to see the ancient Gigante de Tarapacá geoglyphs. The largest in the world it was claimed. Gid was reluctant to go on a detour. We crept out to the site stunned at how close 10km looked glancing back with nothing between us and the town.

We made it to Pozo Almonte, creeping all the way but with very little traffic it didn’t matter. With tanks and jerry cans full we sighed with relief as we set off again just over the road to the deserted mining town of Humberstone but fuel had to come first.

Humberstone was fascinating. We whiled away two to three hours peering in the deserted buildings, school house and power station.

It was another day crossing desert before we reached San Pedro de Atacama but here the views took on another dimension. Now the vast emptiness had a backdrop of snow covered mountains. The guanaco (wild llama) the only living thing we saw.

San Pedro de Atacama was a delightful if massively touristy little town surrounded by tourist attractions. We picked the dawn trip to the geysers ‘setting off soon after five and back by eleven’. Sunrise at the geysers was to be the highlight. Our driver, Sergio, had other ideas and did a full tourist trail on our return trip – vicuñas, wild fowl, rhea (Exactly one: “That one’s always there, don’t tell the other guides“, |Sergio said.), flamingos and beautiful views.

  • Spot the Rhea!

Our own trip to see the flamingos at Parque Los Flamencos was also delightful.

There are two mountain passes into Argentina from San Pedro but one we were told was shut with ice on the road. We’d picked an early northern crossing into Argentina in preference to spending the next several days riding down Highway 5 through the Atacama desert, or Highway 1 along the coast. Argentina had a wealth of things to see up in the north and we’d already maxed out on desert. We’d return to Chile later, planning to explore the Carretera Austral before a final push to Ushuaia.

The Paso de Jama was beautiful with snow lining the grassland, vicuñas grazing and the odd goose wading. Up here we were nearer to the snow topped mountains just off the border with Bolivia – another country we’ve seen from afar but not entered.

Losing height we dropped down through the mountains into lower land in Argentina. The first town was Susques, a small, dusty place where several river valleys met. From a vantage point up at a shrine behind the town we were amused to see four full sized, if dusty, football pitches in a town barely big enough for one – thus reflecting Argentina’s national commitment to the game. These contrasted with one petrol and one diesel pump in the town. Oh, and one ATM – charging a huge amount of fees for a very small maximum payout.

  • Perfectly Legal in these Parts (leaf, not refined)

Ruta 40, a notable adventure riding route in Argentina, peeled away south from the northern end of the town. We had expected some sections to be dirt road but had thought that it would be a high quality – wrong! After two hours having covered 16 miles along washboard, powdery sand sections and loose gravel, with 80 odd miles to go to reach the next junction, we turned back.

On Ruta 52 then 9, heading south we saw mobs of bikers going the other way – all it seemed were Brazilians out for a multi week cruise around. Still losing height we stopped to admire the views little knowing this would be the last time we would be at a scenic viewing spot.

The following day we left San Salvador de Jujuy, heading towards the rural weaving villages. One hour down the road we hit the frequent road works. A contraflow in place with bollards down the middle – a steady progression of traffic. Over the dirt section Gid whinged he was slithering a bit. I hadn’t and I didn’t internalise his warning that it had been sprayed to reduce the rising dust but making it slippery. Leaving the dirt section back onto the surfaced highway wet dust was distributed by the cars into positions two and four as their tyres dropped the mud. We were staggered in positions two and four. I was slightly ahead in four and on reflection, didn’t have enough space to clearly see the road ahead. I had a short lived violent fishtail losing control of the rear wheel and down I went.

After all the back-of-beyond places, dirt roads, severe poverty and lacking facilities, it had to happen here. On a main road near cities, in one of the most developed countries we’ve been in. Roadworks management were there in a flash. Traffic didn’t try and drive over us. Someone called an ambulance and the police. Gid, who’d deliberately dropped his bike on the opposite verge, was confused by a lady who knelt to help, and took Clare’s hand. Was she a nurse? No, she was praying – hard.

A bruised knee, chipped rib and broken collarbone. It could have been a lot worse but that is the end of our trip.

We gallantly considered our options for making it down to Ushuaia, our target destination. We’re in the correct – the ultimate – country just at the wrong end. My moments of positive thinking weren’t in touch with reality. Our trip had to end in late November so time was running out, we had to dispose of our bikes in a country where it’s illegal for us to sell them, no mean feat. On top of that it soon became quite clear that I needed recovery time. I wasn’t going to manage being stuffed into a car and joggled for hour upon hour along over endless speed bumps, potholes, road works and metal studs.

We stopped for the best part of two weeks in the perfectly comfortable little hotel Gid had found a block from the hospital in Perico. I was groaning with frustration at staying still and at my general feebleness. Gid was desperately trying to find a safe, bearable for Clare, and not insanely expensive, way of moving the bikes and digging us out. Short of time, he only managed to advertise them for a week or so before concluding that the only reliable option was the fabulously expensive, wasteful, and CO2-emitting route of trucking them to Buenos Aires and shipping them home, while we flew to BA, stopped a week, and then followed. A sad end to our fabulous adventure. Be nice to see the grandchildren again. Will we come back?

Bad News – Choices

This is a quick update post by Gideon, with unfortunate news.

From Peru, we made a quick transition across – not down – Chile, to Argentina. We expected to return to Chile at some point south.

But, after only a few days in Argentina, Clare had an accident. She’s not badly hurt (thanks for asking!), but has a broken collarbone and cracked rib. At the very least, she can’t ride for many weeks.

The Argentine emergency and medical services have been effective and helpful. No other vehicle involved, so no complications with las policias. Who very helpfully recovered her bike to the station, for retrieval later. No charge for this excellent service. The ambulance and hospital also very easy to deal with, even with my limited Spanish. some fees, but very modest. After a few hours with the medics, Clare was discharged into my care at a convenient hotel. Travel insurance engaged quickly, but it doesn’t look like it’s any sort of claim scenario, as the costs have been negligible.

The accident was rather hard to explain. We had just come out of some roadworks onto tarmac, in a sparse queue of traffic, which was slowly gaining speed, but still at maybe 25-35kph. I was behind, Clare’s bike suddenly started to fishtail and swerve, before falling on its right side and sliding across the road to the verge. Luckily no traffic coming the other way. There was a strip of thin, slimey, mud from the water-sprayed roadworks, and I guess there was virtually zero grip for a little bit. Neither of us spotted it coming, although I wasn’t directly behind and didn’t see or traverse that muddy bit. Neither bike nor Clare hit much solid. So really quite a minor tumble, she’s quite unlucky to break stuff. Maybe the Helite saved some injury, maybe not as she might have hit the ground still seated. A lot of bikers do apparently repeatedly break collarbones. I dropped my bike on the verge and ran over. Someone stopped. One guy called the emergencies, I cared, a lady prayed. Bike is ok, BTW, a few scuffs.

Clare can’t ride in the time left available to us. And maybe won’t want to afterwards. Or maybe it’s just not wise, after this warning, to continue into the known difficult riding conditions in Patagonia – we are quite old, and not expert riders on loose surfaces, after all. We have some awkward choices to make.

  • Stash the bikes, fly home, and return in either 3 or 7 months. If riding more seems ok.
  • Send the bikes home, then continue in a hire car. Shipping is very expensive though.
  • “Sell” the bikes, then continue in a hire car. We can’t actually sell them in Argentina, but we can lend them to another foreigner on a poder (like an English Power of Attorney). The poder is needed to take out insurance and cross borders. Once they exit Argentina we can sort out the Alaskan title and registration.
  • The dominating factor is, bizarrely to UK eyes, the Argentine (all of SA, actually) regulations appertaining to foreign vehicles brought in by non-residents. Still, we’ll find a (legal) way through.

Decisions – But these are still first world problems. We’ll sort it out.

Colombia – Un Nuevo Continente

Bogotá was heaving! The capital Bogotá itself has a population equal to the whole of Panama.  Step outside our AirBnB and it felt like it!  Latin American cities always feel hectic. Streets swarm with vehicles, often motos. Pavements are busy, more so than in much of Europe, and shed loads more than we’d seen in the USA where the sidewalks are really just vacant spacers between the traffic and the buildings, populated by a few weirdos like us.

  • Bogota – View from the gym

We spent nearly three weeks in Bogotá as I hurt my back slumping around the transit terminals waiting for motorbike paperwork and our flights. Maybe we should have used sea freight after all?  A physio finally fixed me but the whole event did mar our start in South America.  Thankfully our lodgings were near the city centre which had a pedestrian precinct for quite a stretch leading into the city centre creating lots of space to walk albeit weaving between the street vendors.

Colombia map from FCDO website advice on Colombia, late July 2025.

Gid seemed to think we should restart our trip south from the Caribbean coast.  It wasn’t the Darien region (advised against by UK government, as is the whole Pacific coast) and I couldn’t see the connection but I was perfectly happy to take a trip to the flamingo lagoon.  Ciudad Perdida, The Lost City, my original northern mission, was out of the question with my dodgy back.  There was no way I would manage a four day trek in sweltering heat, sleeping in hammocks overnight.  The flamingos as our most north-eastern point would be fine. 

We’d got so used to, in Central America, the relatively small amount of traffic and short distances between places. We’d been pottering about going from one place to another in a day or so that it was a bit of a shock to find it would take several days to reach our next destination.  In fact, to start with we didn’t comprehend that at all. Colombia is about twice the size of all of Central America excluding Mexico and has taken some readjustment. Equally, after 4-wheeled Costa Rica and Panama, in Colombia motos are back with a vengeance.  In some villages the swarming motos have equalled the numbers at Sturgis on a full-on day at the rally.  The roads are generally ok but there some very holey patches with the locals doing leg pointers as they progress – leg/hole to the left, leg/hole to the right.  The double legs out was a new one on us which clearly means – speed bump across the road.

After crossing the isthmus of Panama we were now crossing dried out oceans in Colombia as we headed north – possibly a part of the same tectonic movements in the region which took place millions of years ago.  At Villa de Leyva there are an extraordinary number of fossils dating back to when the region was a part of the sea. Amongst many other fossils, three different sorts of ammonites at the lower end of the food chain and a giant Kronosaurus as an apex predator were all found in the area.  The Kronosaurus lies, uncovered but still embedded, exactly where it was found and it is one of very few exhibits in the world where a museum has been built in situ.

Gid claimed, as we rode north, that with towns on the road signage being over 300km away the area we were riding through was sparsely populated but when we arrived on the outskirts of Cartagena that all changed.  We still had 12km to reach our accommodation on the city beach.  12km of rush hour traffic frantically dashing about to cut ahead of the car, bus, truck etc in front.  Shoulder checks are essential – a life saver – advanced rider trainers will tell you but I wouldn’t risk doing one.  In the moment it takes to glance back checking for a clear space and look forwards again half a dozen bikes will have flooded in.  Equally, it was totally counter productive to slow down to gain some space between you and the vehicle ahead as this just provided space for streams of 150cc bikes to swarm in.  It was a very dangerous manoeuvre to change course to miss a hole in the road as that would place you immediately into the path of the next stream of 150s cramming by.  That’s not counting the occasional obvious kid (boys only), riding like an absolute maniac. We were stunned that we only saw one biker on the ground; he looked a bit stunned, too.

The 12km of nerve racking stuff ended in further dismay.  Our accommodation had been booked but not paid for in advance. There’s no reception to pay at, only a key box and an ominous email. That’ll be no entry then.  The email gave a number of ways to pay that I’m sure would all be great if you’re Colombian but none of our PayPal payment, credit cards etc. were acceptable.  After a period of dismay it all worked out – most things do.  The cleaning lady and local ‘landlord’ arrived.  After some mis-communication we scraped together enough cash.  Worryingly she kept saying ‘cancellado’ – we presumed she was about to cancel our booking – but it means “paid” in Spanish.  All was sorted.  Note to the admin dept (Gid): Don’t use Booking.com to book apartments one hour before arrival.

On reaching the Carribbean we realised how comfortable Bogota had been.  Cartagena and Santa Marta are on the coast where the heat and humidity was oppressive.  The former was a major tourist spot, reminding Gid of St Malo in Brittany, with it’s UNESCO listed city wall, while Santa Marta was more relaxed and the base of our bird watching tour in the nearby Sierra Nevada National Park (nice and cool, over 1500m high). Finally, we got some photos of hummingbirds, albeit at a feeder.

Further east along the Caribbean coast the flamingos live in a saline lagoon near the village of Camarones. We passed through the main village, heading for the end of the peninsula where there was a sort of sub village with a few buildings, boats dragged up on the beach.  The paved road petered out deteriorating into sand.  Hard packed thankfully.  We had arrived at lunch time and were pounced upon by two ‘likely-lads’. One sold us a highly over priced meal while the other was a boatman/guide who seemed far more genuine.  Lonely Planet states the best time of year to see flamingos and of course we’d missed that.  I asked the young boatman if the birds were still here or had they, per LP, flown away.  He replied that they were still around, at least a couple of thousand of them were.

Having eaten, neither of us felt keen to extend our stay beyond one night as the village seemed fairly run down and we stood out as tourists, so we arrange our flamingo trip for that afternoon, with little break after our hot ride and lunch.  It was fabulous.  Well worth venturing out to see them.  Them and a couple of scarlet ibis amongst many egrets, herons, white ibis, vultures, frigate birds, terns, pelicans and cormorants. The sailing canoe was impressive, too, we recalled our own attempts to sail canoes back home. It probably does help if it weighs… more than a Himalayan, instead of 25Kg like the typical Royalex lightweight canoes we used to use.

Having ticked the box of the Caribbean we headed back south. 

Medellin was our next destination where the bikes could be serviced and checked over by a Royal Enfield main dealer.  We hadn’t got any problems but it seemed foolish to miss the opportunity and an oil change was due.  Rather than our previous experiences of arriving in cities late in the day and mixing it with the locals during rush hour we decided to stop in a small town – Yasumal, a little way short of Medellin.  The theory was great.  It was going to be less stressful.  Yasumal wasn’t big, and the mapping just showed the usual LatAm grid of streets.  There’s a few hotels from which we needed to find one with decent parking getting the bikes off the road and into safety.  A good plan.

The navigation’s first ‘left here’ had us both saying, ‘You’ve got to be joking’.  We craned our heads up and saw the narrow road disappear skywards.  Up the next road you could see a flatten out a bit at the top but we were too late to take it.  We had to take one of them! The next one it was then.  I was leading and up I went very focused on not stalling as I steadily ground my way up the narrow lumpy road in the rain.  I was going the wrong way!  The arrows and the on-coming traffic gave it away.   Gid had stopped at the first crossroads but I wasn’t stopping on an incline like this.  At the second crossroads it flattened out a bit and as I stopped a couple of people came to help.  Hand waving wasn’t working too well but Gid finally arrived at my crossroads taking over the conversation with the locals, but with no more success.  We weren’t lost.  We knew exactly where we were and where the hotel was. The one-way system and road blocks were the problem.  Nothing corresponded to our mapping.  One of the men decided to lead us there by foot.  Gid wasn’t happy.  ‘Clutch’ll burn out, can’t go this slow, let’s just get out of here!’ was streaming down the intercom.  I put my faith in the man and followed him up the next road with Gid shrieking that he’d done this route before.  ‘It only leads to where you were, the road is blocked!’.  Still I followed the man.  At the road block our man spoke to the policia who agreed we could go the wrong way up the next bit.  Our man led on.  He was soon beckoning us down a dark, steep entrance way under a building.  Down I went.  Gid still wasn’t happy.  It turned out to be an underground motorcycle parking lot manned by an attendant.  Once that was established things brightened up.  Our man, once the bikes were parked out of the way in a corner thanks to the attendant, took us on to the hotel we had mentioned, which, it turned out, was only accessible on foot.  Later, Gid, his good humour returning, pointed out that the church in the pretty, tiered, busy central plaza was the largest flat area we’d seen in the whole town! A coffee on a balcony helped too!

Gid adds: Although some elements of that hotel hunt were awful, one thing that wasn’t was the weather. With the rain it was lovely and cool. Normally, the worst thing about in-town hotel searches is the combination of baking heat and moto gear. Often, when we’re just travelling rather than aiming for a specific stop for that night, we don’t do more than eyeball Google in the morning or at lunch, to spot an area with some places to stay. Online rarely clearly states that a place has secure parking – our difficult criteria – so it’s simplest to go there and trawl the streets. This usually works ok except for:

  • The heat. We’re usually looking for a hostal or hotel by 3:30pm. About peak heat time. So we’re crawling along the baking streets, in full motorcycling kit (ATGATT), or stopped staring at navigators or asking locals. Then Gid (why me?) has to dismount and wander the streets (still ATGATT). We’re both liquid, usually, by the time we find somewhere.  Only a few recepcionistas let us into the parking to undress before doing all their documents and paying. Ugh!
  • Helpful locals. It’s churlish to say it, but usually it ends up taking longer, and finding a worse hotel, than we would have on our own. Do I know a suitable hotel in my home town (Worthing) for someone with X special requirement, and not expensive?  No, haven’t a clue. Maybe it worked out in Yasumal, as the guy took us to secure parking first.
  • The two occasions on this trip where a town was totally booked out because of some event. Move on. Except once, decades ago, I arrived in Yellowknife, by airline, no tent. Wedding. Full. Nowhere to move on to. Pre-Internet. Oh sht. The mozzies feasted that night.*

With our hotel hunting we are learning another new skill.  That of riding the bikes up steps into the hotel lobby.  I’d seen this in central Asia on our bicycle trip.  It was easy enough to lift our 2016-18 pedal bikes into the lobby but in the morning the only way those motos alongside our bicycles got there was up the steps.  Now it was our turn, well Gid’s.  So far I’ve wimped out.  Our second attempt was crowded with on-lookers just to add to the drama, and glass doors on either side. Gid: The actual manoeuvre isn’t too difficult, the problem is that if the bike was to stop on the way up the plank, the rider’s feet are in mid-air, so a topple is inevitable. In the video, that’s why the helper is there. The other problem is a slippy tiled floor inside, and possibly needing to stop dead abruptly, one could easily climb the plank then fall over a locked front wheel. It’s much easier on my own bike, as I’m dialled into it. On Clare’s, as I’m unused to it, the 2022 is much more prone to stalling or cutting out.

Medellin itself seemed pretty ordinary until you looked beneath the surface at it’s history.  Wow, what a history!  Firstly we wandered over to the city museum and its music exhibition.  It displayed a few record covers and details of a few musicians but a common theme quickly emerged.  That of the part that music and art played in transforming the city in the early 2000s from its hard core criminality into the thriving and prosperous place that it is today.  With our interest aroused we went on to the Pablo Escobar museum.  He was a Colombian drug lord who started his life of crime at the tender age of 12.  He flourished in his chosen career progressing from selling stolen tomb stones, that he recycled, through a number of other more minor forms of criminality until he become the leader of the Medellin drugs cartel in his early twenties.  He opened up and then monopolised the route for sales of cocaine into the US market and was arguably one of the richest drug lords ever.  Having served a short term in prison for drugs possession and escaped numerous attempts at capture he was shot dead in the late nineties during a police raid by a bullet through his head.  Some say it was suicide claiming he said, ‘It’s better to be buried on Colombian soil than live in a cell in the US.’

The third part of this story was in Comuna 13.  This is the area of Medellin where fighting factions were rife at the end of the last century and the beginning of this which played out with fierce battles on the streets.  The problems were all around the local residents who hid in their homes to avoid the gun fire.  The military, police and local residents were all involved in what was all but a war zone for many years.  In the early noughties this was turned around in part by engaging the teens, the next gun fodder, in what became a new future through art and music – as well as the application of overwhelming force by the military.  Today the residents, many of whom would now be dead should the problems have continued, make a living showing tourists around.  Marta, our guide, grew up in the region and vividly remembers the troubles that drove her mother away.  She still lives high up in the community together with her father and the rest of her family.

The other notable presence in Medellin for us are the sculptures of Botero the renowned local Colombian artist and sculptor.  To get there we trapsed through the streets with evidence of a number of locals indulging in Escobar’s legacy.  They were either preparing a fix sprinkling white powder from their mini packet of local produce or crashed out on the street. Almost without exception male, not old, and thin. These fellows really did look rough.  Unlike Bogata where the streets near the centre of the capital were lined with stalls of anything portable that could be reused neatly laid out before running into a long line of tourist stalls, here it was one step up from squalor.  There were local stalls – socks, phone cases, t-shirts etc and a local band but the biggest impact on us was the feeling of poverty.  Piles of ‘junk’, piles of refuse, piles of debris lined the street, and a persistent whiff of various body products.  Metres away from clean, tiled, modern eateries were street dwellers rummaging through piles of rubbish grabbing discarded wrappings in a hope of finding something to eat.  

Botero’s sculptures were a short distance away set around a pristine square in front of a museum where tourists pose for pictures.  The famous original ‘The Bird’ sculpture bombed in 1995 during a fair killing 27 people and injuring many others is a short distance away set in a another spacious square.  It’s replacement The Bird sculpture set along side as another reminder of recent troubles.

This blog only describes our first two thirds of Colombia. Stay tuned for the last bit.

Panama – Misconceptions and Milestones

Panama was to be a means to an end.  We had to enter it because that is where we will fly or sail past the stretch of land known as the Darien Gap.  It has been crossed with motorbike – not by motorbike.  At an Overland event back in 2018 we attended a talk by a chap who had taken his bike across the Darien Gap.  He had had his bike strapped to a float/pontoon and a number of ‘gerkers’ to assist with getting the bike through the jungle, across the swamps and passed the bandits.  Not for us!

Neither is the more attractive route taken by Itchy Boots, an infamous motorbike blogger, when her bike was lashed onto a small fishing boat as the family sailed her across in what she has described as a ‘nerve wracking trip’.  These sort of crossings that visited the islands on the way are increasingly clamped down on by the authorities. A ferry frequently referred to is alas only found nowadays in the ether. Our choice is air freight or container ship.  Three days, or three weeks.  Expensive, or cheap – well that’s before you add the cost of the storage before and after the actual shipping at extortionate prices per day.  Then there’s the need to meet at a time that’s convenient to all the people with something in your container as it won’t be opened until all are present.  The actual cost is also dependent on what else it is possible to get in the crate after our two bikes.  We’ll fly them across!  As far as we can tell, it isn’t even significantly worse for emissions, although clear info on that is hard to come by.

So, is Panama merely a route to the airport? Heck no, there’s loads to see here and it’s pretty accessible – except for the canal zone which is very extensive, definitely private property and well, if politely, guarded.

The Rio Sereno border crossing is well named. A laid back sleepyville, with a helpful biking janitor, a slow process, but low hassle for a border. Thirty minutes into Panama we were in the comfort of Helen and Scoop’s home.  Helen, an ADVRider ‘Tent Space’ member, was kind enough to put us up for a couple of days while we found our feet and got to see some of the local attractions.  This is the second time on our trip that we have been taken on a bike outing by our hosts and it evokes feelings of camaraderie and biker unity.

Somewhere in the west of Panama…

We spoke of our general direction of travel and desire to see some of Panama before we rushed to the airport.  Helen and Scoop recommended the Caribbean north coast stating that the route across the mountains was beautiful – that’s number one then.  Indeed the views of cloud cloaking the mountain tops was spectacular. ‘Presumably you’ll be heading down to the southernmost point on the PanAm in the Darian region before coming back up to Panama City to catch your flight?’  That had never crossed my mind but now seems just as important to us as heading up to Prudhoe Bay to start our trip.  Prudhoe Bay is after all, where the Pan American Highway starts so there was never any doubt that we would go there.  We’d better see the end of this northern “half” then!

Our highest point on Panama’s northern coast was Almirante.  It’s the port where tourists catch the ferry across to the Bocas del Toro archipelago for another dose of tourism laced with the attraction of turtle nesting beaches. The latter was very tempting but we were very happy to avoid more tourism having maxed out in Costa Rica.   Sadly, it’s the wrong time of year for the turtles which also influenced our decision.  Finding accommodation was our first problem as there wasn’t much online and even less when we tried to check it out down mud lanes barely one car wide.  Thankfully a local on a pedal bike led us down one such lane and round the back to find Edgar’s BnB.  Edgar spoke very good English and was delightful, encouraging us to go walk-about.  It was on our morning ramblings that we came across the dwellings on stilts down by the waters edge.  We’d seen houses on stilts, the traditional indigenous dwellings, earlier on our route through the mountains but here they were right up close.  Amongst the houses there were modern dug out canoes with flat sterns for the outboard motor.  We were fascinated by the area and I tried beating the local kids at skipping – guess what?

  • Still building – the style works for the location

Later, down at Calovebora, we saw more of the indigenous life away from the tourist trail.  Again, on the Caribbean shore where we saw many traditional dugout canoes of varying sizes and states of repair.  The locals were very friendly and mutually intrigued.  We ate their pesca y papas fritas (fish & chips), they offered to take us on a motorboat ride.  Sadly we declined.  I’d have jumped at the chance to have a go in one of their dugouts but that was never on offer and I wasn’t bolshy enough to ask just in case I fell in – amongst the cocodrillos???

  • Somebody didn’t appreciate the climb up the Cerro above Santa Fe
  • Worth it?
  • Clare was trying to operate her GoPro while riding on deep gravel – guess what happened next? Here comes the rescue.
  • Arrival at Calovebora

Just by chance we were in the right area to visit to La Ville de Los Santos on the Azuero peninsula at the time of their traditional fair.  We had no idea what to expect but soon realised it was a Latin version of our Ardingly South of England Show in the UK.   A mix of stalls, souvenirs, eateries, agricultural machinery and livestock but with the added attraction of cowboys.  We’d been told on the Thursday that said vaqueros do a tour of the town and indeed we’d seen them off or so we thought.  There were maybe 150-200 of them.  On our way ‘home’ somewhat later we realised the real scale of the event.  It took us two hours to cover the 1.5 kilometres as we sat and watched the hundreds of horses pass by interspersed with beer trucks and free rum top-ups to keep things lubricated.  No wonder that there weren’t that many caballeros in the cowboy horse trials the following day.

The Carretera Pan Americana, Highway 1, is the backbone of Panama.  We had to use it to reach just about any destination whether it was skipping along the Caribbean coast or the Pacific.  There are virtually no parallel minor roads joining the towns, all the roads radiate off the Pan-American.  This seems to be the norm along much of Central America’s Caribbean coast where boats are the method of transportation – or gringoes can fly in.   But here in Panama it seems almost as difficult to traverse the Pacific coast.  On one route Gid was keen to make it across without flogging along the dual carriageway again and came up with some restricted access routes.  We’d laughed when the Garmin had stated ‘take the road on the right’ and it was gated farmland.  But here he was planning something similar. I vetoed, and he didn’t demur.

It was at about this time that I realised the Garmin seemed to be regularly failing to use excellent roads on obvious routes. It was clear that Panama is actively extending its road network.  In the UK I get reminders every so often to update the Garmin maps. I just needed to get round to doing an update and all would be ok.  Local guy Darby, who you’ll meet later, had commented that the Garmin navigation is compromised by out of date mapping.  I still didn’t think it was a big deal.  Then our Open Street Map route into Panama City took us around the Cinta Costera 111 highway – a six laner, plus cycleway, arcing 2km out to sea to bypass the old town and fishing harbour.  Garmin’s biker icon was in the water!  Highway 111 didn’t look so new.  Research showed it opened in 2014.  That’s how out of date the 2025 Garmin mapping is!  Unfortunately, Panamanian highway engineers are expert at cramming multiple divided highways, with multiple simultaneous slip roads on either or both sides, of the main carriageway, into tight spaces. Garmin was usually oblivious, but Gid’s OSMAnd knew them all but didn’t let on which one we needed. We’d be frantically guessing in a stream of traffic, or stopping on a tiny shoulder so Gid could try to zoom in enough to see the slip-roads and work out what “turn slightly right” actually meant. Very stressful, and a lot of profanity-strewn misroutes.

By luck all our planning, on a bigger scale, had fitted together seamlessly which gave us an extra couple of free days.  We took off back down to the Azuero peninsula where we’d seen the fair, but this time aiming for the Pacific coast at the tip. On our return route we more or less by chance ended up at Punta Chame, a sort of peninsula on a peninsula.  The road out there was somewhat lumpy and breaking up in places and there weren’t many buildings as we made our way out to the point.  It seemed deserted.  We found a Swiss cordon bleu chef and ordered the cheapest things on the menu.  He explained that it is a kite surfing destination but at this time of year there is no reliable wind.  No.  Plenty of rain though!  He suggested accommodation just up the road but Gid nearly fainted at the price.  We were going to give up but decided to take a look at the shipping containers place.  We’d stayed in one before and it was alright.  This was too with a beautiful view.  Beach access, mini swimming pool, what more could we want? We walked out to the tip of the peninsula the following morning when the tide was out.  Barely a soul to be seen but the plastic strandline told of the human occupation. 

  • Beach 1
  • Beach 1
  • Beach 2
  • Beach 2
  • Beach 3
  • Beach 3
  • Punta Chame
  • Punta Chame

Birds abounded.  One, a juvenile yellow headed Caracara, seemed rather needy.  Not only did it fail to fly away when I cautiously crept up to take a photo it actually came down to join me.  It made some heart wrenching mewing sounds and kept creeping up to peck my toes with its serious looking beak.  Sadly we didn’t have any food we could give it.  It was gone on our way back so hopefully off to find a tasty lizard or crab.

We packed up the bikes ready for the half-day ride to Panama City – then it started to rain. Rain?  No, it utterly pissed down, with thunder and lightning. We hunkered down in our luxury container and waited for the storm to pass. Everything disappeared in a grey mist. Gid went for a trunks-and-barefoot run on the beach once the lightening stopped. It was about this time that Clare’s intercom and Gid’s to-hand bicycle light both stopped working. Clearly a nominal IP67 isn’t equal to Panamanian rain.

Like pieces of a jigsaw coming together I was getting a better idea of Panama and how it ‘works’.  Each new piece of information filled a gap in my understanding of a previous experience.  There are six or seven main indigenous peoples in Panama who still practise many of their skills and traditions, protecting their language and way of life.  Just outside Panama City we’d visited an Embera village where the tribe is descended from the Embera-Wounaan community down in the Darien area.  They are hunter-gatherers who have been allowed to continue living in the rainforest near the capital city.  But as it is now a National Park they’re not allowed to hunt.  The nations tribespeople are some of the custodians of the rain forests that feed water to the Panama Canal.  Outsiders can not readily develop Indian owned land.  But they can. During our time in Panama we had had minor but enjoyable interactions with the three groups of indigenous people.

In our first ride into Panama City we’d attempted to get freebie views of the canal. Unlike canals in the UK with towpaths it’s almost all fenced off, along with its roads and services, which are set a good way back. One access was a success but the other attempts ended up down dead-ends, fenced off as part of the “Canal Zone”.  One such effort seemed to lead through – private entrances to the sides with an open section and view point at the end.  Merrily we arrived just past the parked up coach near the signs stating that crocodiles inhabited the area.  No worries, I thought, there’s a long three foot tall barrier right along in front of us.  I wasn’t even off my bike before an official arrived in a car.  “Trespassing” I thought but no.  Crocodiles was the problem.  I queried whether they would get over the barrier.  The uniformed guy repeated my gesture nodding that, ‘yes, crocodiles come over the barrier.’

Still keen to investigate the canal we visited the official Canal Museum in the city.  It was within walking distance from our lodgings but massively biased towards the political story.  Three floors of it for the more robust inquisitor.  We finally made a trip to the more expensive Mira Flores, the canal side viewing platforms and information centre. Still a bit frustrating for engineer Gid – there’s very little real “how it works” information.

Getting a ship through all the locks takes eight hours but cuts out a three week trip around Cape Horn. It consumes a huge amount of water – viable because of the huge amount of rain the region receives and caches in the rainforest and lakes. In 2016 at Mira Flores, Panama opened larger, modern locks to enable bigger ships to navigate the canal. This latest design conserves 60% of the water making them more water efficient than the old locks which are now over 110 years old.  At the visitor centre, a film transposed sepia images of the original steam machinery digging holes, rubble all around, with modern cranes dredging larger loads from a water filled cut.  All of our progress is causing its own problems as global climate change is impacting on the region, reducing the rain fall on which the Panama canal is dependent. What does the future hold?  Even with the canal Panama is one of the few carbon negative countries in the world, as the 4m population is powered by hydroelectricity, and the rainforest, though depleted, soaks up more CO2 than the humans emit.  Most countries have less renewable energy supplies, and nothing like the CO2 sucking rainforest (trees gain bulk maybe 10 times faster than in, say, the UK).

Panana City is like many other cities in Central America and beyond.  A complex mix of sky scraper apartment blocks, improvised housing – plastic strips, corrugated iron, cardboard; street sleepers, bare feet, designer trainers, the near naked, beggars, private gyms, plush plazas, derelict sites, shipping container market stores, supermarkets, street vendors, blocked drains, localised floods, three lane highways round the bay.  All juxtaposed impacting on each other.

Interestingly, it has relatively few motorcycles – most un-Central-American.

  • View from our AirBnb. 20m pool – win!
  • Old Town 1
  • Old Town 2
  • Old Town 3
  • Old Town Museo de Mola
  • Old Town seen from AirBnb
  • More locals

As Clare wrote at the top, Panama City is the conventional place where most PanAm travellers have to surrender their wheels to boat or plane. The PanAm loudly claims to be the world’s longest road, but it mumbles and blushes when anyone mentions “Darien”. For 90km across the Panama/Columbia border, there is no road. Not even an official track. The swampy jungle can be penetrated on foot, ask the smugglers, but even military teams struggle with any kind of vehicle.  It’s supposed to be snake and bandit infested too. So like most “travellers”, we will use freight services to skip it.

But to the extent allowed by governments here, and our government’s advice limiting our insurance cover, we tried to get to the end of the road.  We had to join, indeed create, an “organized tour”, to visit Panama’s Darien region.  We had a jolly two days led by Darby, proprietor of Moto Tour Panama, who would normally prefer to hire you a speedy BMW. I have to say, we envied the F800GS’s headlamp, it seemed to show the road after dark, not a feature of the Himalayan lamps.

10th May was a big day. We rode into Yaviza, the last town on the PanAm’s northern half. This footbridge is the end. Most of the transport between villages here is by boat, as in the picture. However, in the background you can see a new bridge being built. Maybe soon, you can go a little further.

A Short Tour of Yaviza
Somebody said there’s a birdwatching event down here…

After this little adventure, we backtracked to Panama City, for a little more tourism and logistics, before freighting the bikes to Colombia… Officially, we’re either halfway, or two thirds, through the trip, depending on if you count in continents or miles or months.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica was near the top of my keen to visit countries.  Sadly, it’s obviously high up on a lot of other peoples’ lists too as many areas are full of tourist shops and attractions which are teeming with foreigners.  Everything was top dollar – the costs had rocketed!  Gid hasn’t stopped whinging.

We picked a fair sized town, Liberia, for ease of finding our first accommodation in Costa Rica but found that full.  A motel along the highway just beyond it did the job although the roar of traffic through the night barely stopped.  The dipping pool was one very pleasing bonus after what felt like a long hot day – Central American border crossing days always feel like that, although pouring rain might be even worse.

Our second night’s stop was in a much more rural area, right on the edge of Rincon de Vieja National park, where we were told that we could stay for only one night because they had a coach load coming tomorrow – although a campsite was available.  This kind of booking was verified as common by a very nice English couple, who had joined us at the previous night’s motel, having just flown in from the UK and like us found the town up the road full.  They told us their itinerary and explained that when Booking.com says it’s full just phone the place and they’ve probably got space.  ‘The tour companies make block bookings and then can’t fill all the spaces so they’ll have rooms spare’ we were told.  Our hearts sank.  This was supposed to be one of my prized countries to explore and here we were on a roller coaster tourist track.

At Rincon de Vieja we did at least get away from the tourist trail approaching via it’s ‘back door’ along dirt roads to a shut gate.  Thankfully a man came out from the bushes, charging us a National Park entry fee he gave us access to the park.   Once settled in our accommodation we took a local walk through the woods to a cataract but got more than we bargained for.  The morning after I woke up at 4:15am in a panic because I had ‘things stuck to my legs’. Bed bugs?  No internet to check!  Ticks we discovered, once our online research told us to count their legs (8). Gid delved into the First Aid kit for the tick remover tool, and we spent a tedious hour clearing each other’s wrinkly bits. Sadly, we found a few more over the next 24 hours. I thought I’d probably picked them up weeing in the woods on our walk but we were both covered in them.  15 – 20 each!  We were still in a state of hysteria when, a few hours later, we piled into a car with two other people to go on a sloth seeking tour near La Fortuna.  With a sigh of relief we settled once the guide told us that there are no deer here so no Lymes Disease but a wash down with alcohol would be a good idea.

Reaching speeds of 70km per hour is quite exhilarating at first but by La Fortuna’s fifth zipline wire I was a bit ‘Done That’.  Thankfully there was a Tarzan swing line to try out too.  We both enjoyed the ride but wouldn’t seek it out again unlike our fellow zipliner who said she seeks them out and has done many. 

Our sloth tour and bird watching trip, both with guide Jose, had more lasting impact.  Seven sloths with one slightly moving was awesome as were the two different sorts of toucans on our bird watching tour. The local frogs were pretty cool too. Costa Rica is famously good for wildlife spotting, which is much easier with local guides who communally know where the beasties lurk. However, a rather sad observation has been made that the wildlife spotting is easy partly because so much forest has been cleared that the wildlife is now crammed into relatively small areas, separated from each other by grazing and farming clearances. The country clearly manifests a conservation ethic, but like the UK’s, a lot of primary forest is gone. With the realisation of what it’s lost Costa Rica is now trying to regenerate areas of forest.

(Photos taken through a spotting scope were taken by the guides, using our phones).

  • At Rincon
  • Typical Sloth Sighting – Furball
  • Jose’s bird table!
  • Poisonous!
  • This motmot was on our last day in CR

San Jose

Having indulged in total tourism for a couple of days it was back to more serious stuff.  Our bikes were booked in to be serviced at a main dealer in San Jose and we had two parcels to collect.  One was from the UK.  A collection of lost, broken or never realised it would be so useful items collected by Jo, Gid’s sister, and sent to a DHL collection point.   A second parcel collected by Jared, a Bunk-a-Biker host, who had been kind enough to receive several Amazon orders.  Well, one order came twice and the third not at all.  Such was Amazon and the US postal system.  All gratefully received.  Christmas had come!

Gid: Although I had done the last few services, I decided to get the bikes professionally listened to at 24,000 miles, and certainly a quality wheel repair was beyond my abilities. My deteriorating front wheel was more thoroughly repaired than it had been in Mexico – the workshop replaced the steering head bearings too, presumably this was a consequence of the last few weeks wobbly front end.  We got new chains, although the current ones were not yet a problem, they had done 12,000 miles or so. We left the tyres, although they give us a dilemma – there’s plenty of tread left by road standards, but at what point will they become a liability on dirt and mud?

In San Jose, like in Mexico City and Guatemala City, our choice for a place to stay was a yuppie flat complex. This time we were on the 29th floor, in a studio flat, with spectacular views – including views into the next door flats – privacy was a little lacking. The building’s décor was a so-Hispanic mix of really fancy, surrealist stuff, and unfinished blank concrete. But, it had good parking, and a really rather good gym. Legs didn’t really need a gym, with 29 flights of stairs available. There were a few interesting places to visit in San Jose, although, definitely, too many pots in the museum.

The Pacific beach at Uvita was a spectacular beauty, a cliched arc of pale sand with coconut palms on one side and blue waves on the other – waves and howler monkeys competing.  The serious boardies stay a little to the north, where Dominical has expert grade waves. Uvita has gentler stuff and was sparsely dotted with beachgoers and a few boardies at the small breaks. The sea water was cool bath temperature, barely cooling at all.  Although it was overcast, I was dripping sweat after 1 and a half laps of the beach, while Clare collected sand dollars and admired the agile crabs running over her foot.

The only outstanding bike job was to fix my rear pannier.  I’d got too close to a truck when lane splitting in Guatemala City, and the truck’s extended wheel nuts took off my rear pannier corner protection.  A lucky escape!  I should never have been that close.  I could have gone flying.  There’s no spare part, so it has to be bodged:  At the coast a local surf board shaper had no interest in slapping some glass fibre on the corner but the metal worker down the road was happy to cannibalise the pannier’s rear inner corner protection to move it the the front outside corner where the pannier is far more likely to need protection even without me trying to vie for space with a trucker.

At this point, riding in drizzle and mist, we realised that our rear lights basically didn’t work, nor did our brake lights. I had fitted “upgrade” LED bulbs from the UK, in Mexico City (USA bikes are sold with ordinary bulb lamps, unlike everywhere else in the world who get LEDs from the get go. I think it’s called a “non-tariff barrier”). Anyway, obviously crap LEDs, as they’d deteriorated to near invisibility in 6,000 miles. Hazards on then, team! Fortunately the replacement spares (also LEDs) that I’d bought in Mexico City, proved nice and bright.

The Caribbean beach at Cahuita isn’t a patch on the Pacific beaches, but that wasn’t why we’d come. Lonely Planet states that despite some development in recent years it has kept its Caribbean vibe.  True enough, Bob Marley’s One Love amongst many other hits were blasting out of several brightly painted eateries along the coastal road.  Alas, whatever we planned here has to factor in the unseasonal cloud and rain that’s visiting us now.  Locals are appalled – it doesn’t do this. ‘Rain at this time of year will ruin the fruit crop.  The fruits will swell and burst!’  But yes, it’s overcast with some torrential showers. It’s one month short of the rainy season so whether we like it or not we need to get our act together to deal with this wet both on and off the bikes.  Two out of three of our recent dawn choruses had been thunder, the third howler monkeys.

As the “unseasonal” rain continues day after day, gradually confirming that it’s just an early start to the rainy season, we should admit that although unhelpful, it ain’t that bad. Very often, the mornings are fine, with the humidity rising until rain breaks out in the afternoon. A lot of the rain falls overnight – thank goodness for Clare’s brilliant bike covers. We can mitigate it a lot by getting up, and getting going, early. It doesn’t rain every day, either. We do still get caught out occasionally though. And of course, it’s warm rain, being wet is just, well, wet. Not welcome-to-Scotland-in-August-dangerously-hypothermic-wet. Equally, I’ve worked it out now, that if I want to go for a run (which I fail to do weekly), we either have to be at a height of over 1500m, or it has to be raining, otherwise it’s too hot. Which leads to the odd, flapping, flatfooted experience of running in my basic Teva sandals, rather than trainers. Or just occasionally, the treat of running barefoot on a sandy beach.

On the Caribbean we visited the Park National Cahuita but on this occasion we went for the option of a guide.  It’s about 50 – 50 whether or not we get a guide but with a guide we are guaranteed to see some prized wildlife in the area – they know where the beasties are, and the guides in an area share sightings.  This was again the case at the Quetzal National Park (actually just outside at San Gerado de Dota).  In the quetzal park we left at 05:30 with our guide Inaki to stand for the nearly an hour with just a few common birds in our view.  Inaki showed his prized pictures of quetzals, the National bird of Guatemala, in this tree to our left and that one behind us justifying why we were standing here.  Then a whirlwind hit.  The walkie-talkie squawked.  Cars were dashing past, we were legging it to the buggy.  There was a mass exodus down the road where every group found a spot to park, jumped out and joined the throng.  Scopes pitched, necks craned told us where the quetzal was. Three quetzals, in fact.

The dual carriageway, CR32, down towards Limon was our first experience of Costa Rican contraflow traffic.  Cars approaching us at speed was somewhat alarming.  ‘What the heck is this?’  A few more expletives passed between us as the odd car, truck or lorry came hurtling along from the other direction right towards us separated by a thin white line.  Initially, some obstacle was placed in the fast lane to force the traffic to merge into one.  Nothing unusual there.  There is often an obstacle in the road.  From there we were separated by the occasional plastic pole set into a small concrete disc.  So infrequent where they that occasionally a car would cross to overtake before weaving back into our lane.  We got kind of used to that but it went a step further on our return.  Out of the blue there were three arrows on obstacles semi blocking our road pointing leftwards across the central barrier.  Gingerly we went across with no further indication that this was correct.  ‘Local traffic,’ Gid said explaining some cars still on the other carriageway.  ‘It’ll soon cut across and join us.’  To be fair on coming traffic did seem to be using one lane but that was of little comfort when we were on our own.  Gradually we caught the traffic ahead but reversing lights were on.  It seemed to be stopped and even backing.   Just before them was a gap in the central reservation.  I was through it closely followed by Gid.  We’d no idea what was going on but had had enough of where we were when the road looked perfectly good to our right.  A few seconds later we could see that the contraflow lane that we had left was blocked.  That’s why the cars were backing up the dual carriageway.  They had to reverse back to the gap.

But moaning about the dual carriageway is rather missing the point about Costa Rican roads. It’s not a large country, so with two indented coasts and four mountain ranges up to 3,800m (https://lacgeo.com/mountain-ranges-costa-rica) many of the roads are twisty and steep. I don’t suppose Costa Rican bikers suffer much from “squared off” tyres. The ride from San Gerado de Dota to Puerto Jiminez was pretty much 170 miles of convolutions. Of course, a faster bike than the Him would have livened it up, but with such short sightlines at the incessant bends, going much faster might prove fatal. Often 30-40mph was ample. One thing we are seeing in CR though, first time since the USA or maybe Mexico, is locally registered “big” bikes. Whizzing past us, sometimes, but that’s fine by us, we don’t know the roads at all. Another aspect is that, curiously, as we sweat along in 35°C temperatures, some of the countryside looks like, well, Devon. Rolling hills, green grass, rickety fences, processions of cows heading for the milking shed. Curious indeed.

Guayab, our stopping point when returning along this road, is the site of the National Monument.  Pre-Colombian is the most specific information about the people who built this city.  The site is quite small compared to the Mayan ruins we’ve seen as the foundations of the buildings is all that is left together with two water cisterns and a section of road way.

Later we were going to pass the turning to Sierpe which leads to the Finca 6 site – UNESCO listed since 2014 because it is of world significance and interest.  It is again the site of Pre-Colombian civilisations dating from 200BC to 800AD and had many strong similarities to the National Monument at Guayab.  They both had raised circular mounds bordered with large stones where it’s believed a large conical wooden hut was built, with a thatched roof.  The significance of Finca 6 and its surrounding area of lowland was the large stone balls varying from small to 2.6m wide.  The stone balls are, it is thought, a mark of prestige, power and honour when placed outside a house.  Others of the balls were placed to line up with the sun or moon in a similar way to stone henges extensively found in north western Europe which also align with the summer and winter solstices.  Although, similar to the henges, there is much debate as to the precise placing and use of these stone balls.  Only a few are thought to be in their original positions.  Certainly it must be quite an effort to reduce a large boulder to a near perfect sphere using only stone and bone tools, so they were obviously important.

Our last port of call was to the tip of the Oso peninsula, billed as the largest expanse of untouched wilderness in Costa Rica where from Puerto Jimeniz there is a unique opportunity to explore an area of ‘untouched’ wilderness.  At Surco, one tour operator, Sean the young salesman was busy selling us the benefits of a two day, over night trip to explore ‘untouched’ wilderness in the Corcovado National Park.  Despite my saying that I get quite sea sick he didn’t seem to think it was pertinent to tell us that the seas are quite rough at the moment which resulted in one boat flipping a couple of days ago.  He didn’t mention that either!  We settled for the one day more local trip. Oh yes, and it’s Easter: Everyone is on holiday and half of the businesses are shut. But there was quite a lot of wildlife going on at the wonderfully jungly Chosa Manglar hostel we stayed at.

  • Can’t remember where we saw this.
  • Typical Puerto Jiminez Old House

To compliment the untouched wilderness tour we took a local ‘night tour’ with the same Sean.  This was a tremendous success with us seeing numerous frogs, spiders and small things, three or four mammals and a couple of birds but the piece de resistance was a fer de lance snake.  One of the most deadly in Central America.  Gid’s cayman is also pretty cool. And I started getting to grips with the new 60mm macro lens that was the main thing we’d collected from Jared.

Four percent of the worlds biodiversity is in this small area of Costa Rica, the Corcovado National Park.  The day of our tour we set off full of expectation.  The ‘How to deal with a big cat interaction’ noticeboard raised the stakes.   But let’s get real here.  There were twenty or more of us split into different groups all with tour guides trying to justify their near extortionate charges.  Our guide Esteban, seemed to know the area well.  He was searching one spot saying that the green and black frogs are often here.  Right on cue – here are two.  The local animals must be very familiar with the whole routine and stay a discrete distance away unless they are quite relaxed about the whole performance. We saw families of coatis on our way out and finding them again on our return trip where I was no more than six metres away from the female and her kits.  Overall it was a fun experience with the crocodile and anteater at the top of our best sightings list. The scarlet macaws and squirrel, spider and capuchin monkeys were almost omnipresent and provide excellent entertainment value as did the coatis.

Nicaragua – Land of Shadows

I was a little anxious about entering Nicaragua.  In my mind, fed by various perhaps out of date articles, Nicaragua was going to be more lawless and therefore more dangerous to be in.  There are tales that the police are even more corrupt than usual. Both threats have been with us since entering Mexico. So far, either the reports are wrong, or we’ve been lucky.  But, we have seen more road accidents in Central America than we have ever before.

The Honduras-Nicaragua border crossing was particularly tedious and rather exasperating as we had to stop here then there and no one told us about the over there.  Having had our documents checked at one oficina and told now you can go that should have been  ‘now you can go over there to the next stage’.  Gid is very thorough at researching the requirements for each border crossing and not to be fobbed off, but even he didn’t foresee the number of times Nicaragua would check each document.  There were about 7 stages!  Regis, a fellow traveller we met in Leon told of how he was fined while exiting Honduras when imigracion saw that his entry documentation wasn’t properly stamped.  He had been illegal and had to pay the fine of $250 but only had $230.  He had to wait until a fellow French traveller baled him out!  Although we’ve done plenty of borders before, these are remarkably long winded, and it’s our first trip combining tedious borders with motorcycle import permits, really hot weather – and motorcycle clothing. We melt.

From a border we usually plan to stop pretty soon after, but the pueblo of Condega was out of rooms – “Convencion” – so we rode on along the main NIC1 highway to Esteli, to kip in a windowless concrete box with free condoms.  Our actual destination was San Juan de Limay, the nearest town to petroglyphs marked on the map but it was getting a bit late for that rather uncertain route.  We wanted to settle into the country before setting off on potentially rough tracks and start earlier in the day. 

From Esteli there appeared to be a route cross-country but the advice was not to take this ‘short cut’ because of the potential for problems crossing the multiple rivers! We looped back north and round. The paper map showed the NIC38 as mostly dirt road, but OpenStreetMap said it was fairly major.  We turned onto a laid block surface which I had expected to revert back to dirt once out of the town but that wasn’t the case.  In the main it was a beautiful rural road all the way with fab views where we could actually stop and take a few photos, if we lifted our eyes above the endless twists and turns through the hills.

Our arrival at San Juan de Limay was quite amusing. It’s a small rural town, no tourist hotspot.  Gid had found three guest houses online but when we arrived the first didn’t seem to exist. We headed for the Parque Central to get our bearings in the town.  Pausing outside the Museo de la Revolution, to Gid’s annoyance I went in.  What were they going to tell me in there he was saying.  The very helpful young lady understood enough of what I was trying to explain.  She shut up shop and led us around the town on her trailie. The first two accommodations fell flat as they were full.  The third place we visited was still running and had space.  We’d never have found it – hospedage – lodging house – was badly spray painted on the gatepost .  This was it then.  I went to look at the room in a block that could have been the old stables out the back of the family house.  I came out in fits of laughter.  Gid was appalled at how rude that was but it bought new meaning to en-suite.  The room was small.  No problem there but it consisted of a bed and folding chair, a fan and a shower/toilet trough.  No towel, no sheet, no soap, NO TOILET PAPER, no door lock.  The sink was communal with a wash board and trough in front of the rooms.  They all caused us some amusement.  The shower head was at the top of a pipe as you’d expect but the slightest turn of the faucet and the head catapulted forwards spraying a gush of water over the gutter right onto Gid’s kit.  More hilarity but the cacophony that started at 4:15 was definitely a groan.  Our two cockerels were trying to wake the neighbour.   Any disturbance in the brood resulted in an almighty thud on the corrugated tin roof that was suspended above our walls.  To use the one socket in the room was a balancing act but it did the trick – we had a cup of tea in the morning.

Having settled in we set off in sloppy sandals to see what we could find out about trips to the petroglyphs.  The town hall seemed a suitable place to start our enquires.  A rather grand name for an old single story building with a few offices.  The guard patrolling outside suggested the end door was the way to go.  He took us down there and spoke to the staff.  One very kind lady came out to check what it was we wanted and asked us to wait in the main entrance.  Thirty minutes later we were off!  They didn’t check whether it was possible but had arranged it there and then.  Five of us – three staff and the two of us, piled into the 4WD Toyota Hilux.  The lady passed us a leaflet of gordas – stone fat lady carvings that can be found around the town and local area.  I thought we were off to see some of these but no.  We took a back road out of the town and bounced along a dirt track, forded a small river and finally stopped at a pool.  The driver stayed put but the rest of us piled out and set off on foot clambering over rocks to cross the water flow.  What were we doing in flimsy footwear with not a camera between us?  Benito, the main guide, led the way and swept the debris off the few petroglyphs.  The young lady was new to the carvings too but was at least wearing trainers. Our return route was adorned with stops at a couple of local craft places – what a lovely day!

I had expected to move quickly through Nicaragua but in fact it has been the opposite.  Spurred on by near perfect road surfaces (everything is relative) and the relaxed nature of the people it’s been a pleasure to be here.  As always the people we meet and their recommendations of must see this or that has helped to forge our plans.

At Leon, our first stop after the petroglyphs, we stayed at Casa Lula hostel and bonded well with a lovely group of experienced travellers.  No one was in a rush, tales were exchanged, must visits suggested. The luxury hostel was a comfortable contrast to the Esteli condom box and Limay hospedage. A guided tour of the town very much focused on the revolution despite there being some lovely architecture too.  That isn’t so surprising as all the murals were of scenes from the revolution.  It may have been forty years ago but some murals were reworked as recently as six months ago to keep their political message fresh. Our guide, Antonio, explained the events portrayed and also some of the symbology.  Many of the characters (the deceased ones?) were painted with prominent shadows, and these represented their effects on Nicaraguan society and politics after their – mostly premature – deaths. Leon is Nicaragua’s intellectual – and revolutionary – hub, and while there were a fair few tourists, they didn’t swamp the place as they had in, say, Antigua, Guatemala.

  • Christian,Aude,Roger,Regis, in Leon

One’s never far from politics anywhere in Nicaragua – red and black FSLN banners are everywhere, and on some roads I noted all the electricity poles were painted in the colours, too. It feels a bit one party state, although formally, it isn’t.

Thankfully our hostel host was interested in our petroglyphs excursion and pleased that we’d gone off the beaten track.  He lamented that most tourists hit the west coast going straight down the main road and out the other end.  ‘It’s such a pity,’ he said, ‘as Nicaragua has so much to offer and is a very safe place.’  Our horizons were expanding!  Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Central America, but also unusually – kind of – socialist. It’s also, currently, not terribly democratic. Some effects of this might be the lower murder rate, far fewer visible guns, the better highways, the better driving, the much greater use of beasts of burden, and the worst housing we’ve seen on this trip. Plus the curious phenomena of being begged by a chap who was fitted with a pacemaker – But then, since Belize, the Caribbean coast has offered a uniquely stylish form of begging.

No matter where our new routing may take us Granada, just down from Leon, was next.  It’s the oldest city in Central America, with elegant buildings and lots of history. So it’s a must see destination and indeed is a very touristy town. It has a lovely promenade to edge Lake Nicaragua, and a small pier.  We stayed near the lake but were warned to go further along the shore away from the town centre to find more pleasant places to swim.  As I’ve said, everything is relative.  We did venture thus to risk a dip only to find that our swimming strokes stirred up one bit of rubbish or another.  One dip was plenty!  Shady trees and a strong morning “sea” breeze made it bearable in the 7am heat offering Gid a venue for a rare jog.

The town was lovely with a vibrant central square.  Despite the churches being flagged up as having splendid architecture and historical relevance they were in the main shut.  There were three on our bucket list to see: one we did see inside, a second we were able to peer into a rather dull side chapel when a service was taking place but the most ancient cathedral in Central America, the piece de resistance, was hidden behind its firmly shut doors with nothing to suggest opening times.  Circling it we found a very shabby rear door that advertised language lessons, but nothing about the cathedral itself.

A large part of northern Nicaragua is inaccessible jungle while the southern half has the 160km long Lago Nicaragua in the middle creating a this side of the lake or that side of the lake dichotomy.  Surprisingly there is a border post at the end of the east or west route down past the lake but no joining road at the bottom.  It’s an odd looking border, really, why doesn’t Costa Rica extend up to the shore of the lake? Presumably the Spanish Empire had a reason, when it demarcated the administrative boundaries this way.

From Granada we took off slightly northwards curving back to reach the ‘that side of the lake’ more petroglyphs being a strong attraction.  Ok we’d seen some in very enjoyable and amusing circumstances but our National Geographic map has many references to them and surely some were going to be more impressive than the six carvings we’d seen.  They were!  Over 2000 we were told.  Many of them were highly graphic and in remarkably good condition for their 2000 years of existence.  We’d followed a sign from the highway 8 miles up a dirt road to reach the ranch style site.  A young guide took us around a trail explaining the meaning of the petroglyphs.  Many were to do with fertility and childbirth.  Some carved on standing stones showed the chief.  While another showed the dog he would eat.  We were now, after months, out of the Mayan area – these carvings were by the Chontales, but there were still some similarities of style.

At the end of the NIC71 highway – mercifully now all paved, and really rather a lovely ride –  was Bluefields.  ‘We don’t see tourists down here.  They don’t come this far’, was one greeting we had.  It was a bustling town with a multitude of taxis.  Tichy cars that four people would pile into and off they crept, or lunged, forcing into a gap.  At least three taxis would fit across the narrow, bumpy streets, and frequently did. 

This eastern coast on the Caribbean is called the Moskito Coast after its original human, not insect, inhabitants. The Moskito Coast of Nicaragua (and coastal Honduras & what’s now Belize) was isolated from the Spanish Pacific coast, with only one through connection – via Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. Consequently it was associated mostly with the British-dominated Caribbean islands, and was part of the British Empire until around 1860. To this day, English is spoken in Bluefields. 

A museum told the tale of the slave trade dating back to the 15th century.  Two hundred years later it came to an end in British territories when the British Government offered to pay the slave owners £25 per slave.  They were never paid but the people were freed.  Quite a few freed slaves from the Caribbean islands came here at that time. That was the British/American slave trade of transatlantic journeys: The Spanish Empire’s slavery was quite different – the Spaniards enslaved the indigenous population of the Americas where they found them. That form of slavery was formally ended a little earlier, shortly after “New Spain” declared itself independent of “old” Spain in 1821, although “old” Spain waited another 20 years.

To this day most of the regional transport is by boat.  Bluefields’ connection to the capital Managua was by dirt road and riverboat until the new road was completed in the last five years.  Bluefields is Nicaragua’s Caribbean port, and the boat hub for the rest of the coast.

For me the market by the waters edge was the highlight of the town.  A small school hall sized market where people sat with their wares peering out of the gloom backlit by the opening at the far end where it reached a harbour arm.  Out on the harbour arm a few boats were secured, produce still piled high.  Gid was keen to try some of the novel fruits.  One lovely Nico hombre split his fruit open for Gid to try it.  One came my way too. Gid slurped through his and agreed to buy a few.  A bag was a problem but voila!  I had one.  The chap enthusiastically put a good dozen or so in and said “30 Cordobas” (about 70p).  Gid pulled out a 50 note which caused some concern as there was no change.  After a moments hesitation the man put another half dozen fruits into the bag despite our protestations and was then happy to keep the money.  I was highly amused as I’d given Gid my fruit too.  Thankfully, back in town a barrow man pulling his cart full of fruit passed me as I waited for Gid to buy groceries.  I carefully stopped the man whose tummy enabled him to support the bar no-handed.  There was a space on his cart so I quickly put most of the fruit on it smiling at him as I did so.   He soon realised what I was up to and didn’t seem to mind.

Our route through Nicaragua continued as we backtracked hunting for sloths and quetzals.  Having been fairly unsuccessful at finding much wildlife on our own we opted for guided tours.  One such tour overlooking Matagalpa resulted in guide David claiming for us a female quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala [Alas, when, later we looked at the photo with Nubie, a keen birdwatcher, it looked a lot more like an elegant trogon].  At the same location we had a sloth in a tree and a toad in our handbasin.  We were told, ‘Yes, there is a toad in the basin.  That’s where it lives.’. And did we mention the butterflies?

Lake Apoya was our best location.  The warm volcanic crater lake was clean enough to swim in. The hotel pontoon tantalisingly floating twenty metres away.  Our steep jungly trek up to the village at the craters rim, to the soundscape of howler monkeys, passed another load of stunning petroglyphs – completely unsigned and unexpected.  The lack of exposure to the elements may be why they are still so pronounced.

Ometepe island was another attempt to see sloths.  An online search suggested that they were around on Volcan Maderas.  Wrong!   Not here we were reliably told by locals.  The scenic ride around the eastern end of the island compensated for our lack of sloths.  Amusingly, when we passed a sign for petroglyphs we didn’t even stop. Mombacho on the mainland came up trumps though. We found our own sloth – distantly – curled up in a tree, then a guided night walk found one actually doing the sloth upside-down tree locomotion – hurrah!

Now by this point in the posting, our biking friends are chafing – what about the riding, how are the bikes? The roads are in pretty good nick, and more are surfaced than to the north. At least two long rides (38 and 71) were really nice, light traffic, good surface, entertaining and scenic roads. There’s a much more restrained feel to the driving and riding. That’s possibly because we saw a lot of police actually taking an interest in driving standards, which may be why foreign riders complain of “corruption” – the speed limit is maximum 80kph and even those roads have many short sections of much less.  A KTM Super Adventure might be hard to restrain: The Himis kept us out of trouble, but still blast past the lorries. Someone says it’s more fun to ride a slow bike fast, than a fast bike slow. The SUVs and new pickups still flew past, occasionally. 

But some of the accommodation – even posh places – have been up bloody awful tracks that we would have not voluntarily have tackled. The Himis seem to take it in their stride – first gear seems to chug up anything that can claim to be a route – but our skills and strength are strained and we arrive in a frazzled state of mind and a muck sweat.

  • DCIM100GOPROGOPR2720.JPG

There was a scary moment leaving our hostel in Matagalpa, coming down the very steep, loose, dirt track (can’t call it a road), Clare couldn’t hold the bike on the rear brake, pressing with all her strength. The 300 kilo combo of Clare, baggage, Indian steel and souvenirs was gaining speed! Fortunately it all stayed rubber down until the slope eased.

Photo – Peter Damsgaard

That’s when we spotted Clare had unexpectedly worn down her rear brake pads (not the fronts, of course there’s a set of those under her seat). Unfortunately, Royal Enfield have no presence in Nicaragua. The pads might have lasted until we got to San Jose, capital of Costa Rica, but Gid’s online researches revealed that possibly a very few local bikes shared the pad pattern, and after about half a dozen dealers and parts places (repuestos), somebody found a badly packaged set from Bajaj in the shop’s box of oddities. Alarmingly, they cost only $3. But they dropped in fine and do seem to work.  Adjusting Clare’s pedal higher has made it easier to apply more pressure, even seated, which seems to have been the actual problem.

I-Spy on the highway: The 1979 revolution didn’t enamour Nicaragua to the United States (remember the “Contra” affair?), so of course the USSR pitched in with support. Thus giving Gid a little entertainment spotting the USSR’s automotive antiques among the Toyotas and Chevrolets.

So, as we go on to Costa Rica, crossing a border from one on Central America’s poorest countries, to one of the richest – how was Nicaragua?  Just great.  It actually did feel safer than its northern neighbours, for example, police and security guards are still common, but less often armed.  It’s often quite underdeveloped, with an eye closed we can mistake poverty and improvisation for bucolic bliss, and tourists are rare enough to be welcomed.  The underdevelopment, and perhaps a degree of isolation after the revolution, mean that much more old growth forest remains than in some neighbours. The only regret, really, is that so many times, we stayed in accommodations run by foreigners, as we ofttimes didn’t find local places where we were headed.

Finally, a few scenes from Nicaragua that don’t fit into the narrative above, but are just nice to see.

Honduras

After extending our beach stop in El Salvador to allow Gid to rise from his sickbed, it felt good to be back on our bikes and focused on covering distance. Well, some distance – our stops aren’t far apart in Central America, as there’s plenty to see. Most of these countries have nominally a middling population density, but in practice crowded urban areas, and middle density farming on the coastal plain and valley bottoms, leaving very few folks left to populate large areas in the hills or the north, toward the Caribbean coast. Much of which is still roadless jungle. Many of the small communities there are not connected by road to their countrymen. Being roadless, these large areas are not connected to us, either, we’re only in the more populous areas.

Copan Ruinas, our first Honduran destination, was slightly NW from our border crossing. After 2 hours in the border, Aduana, we were fairly focused on making some progress but then reality hit.  The road was still under construction.  Sections of it were near perfect but for some reason it had 2m bands of gravel every 150m or so.  No need for speed bumps here.  The views were beautiful but viewing spots are a luxury seldom found. Other parts of the road were very much still under construction but we soon learnt to go ‘native’.  Honduras is back to swarms of bikes.  At road works they weave their way to the front and beyond given half a chance.  On one such occasion we followed the bikers and a family of cyclists through on to the coned-off raised new road. Ten metres or so before the end of this section the lead bikes peeled off to the left, across the approaching traffic, along a dirt track bordering the road, through the petrol station and down a narrow lumpy path and back onto the road.  I stopped at the start of the footpath.  I wasn’t alone.  A man on his bike loaded with wood stopped too.  We dubiously looked at each other and the kangaroo jumps the bikers ahead were doing along the footpath.  Gid squeezed through.  He got 2/3 of the way along with his bike bucking all over the place and stopped on what seemed like a position stranded half over the next lump. After that moment of route planning, so Gid says, (or buttock clenching), the Him bounced through ok.  With a subtle shake of our heads the guy and I turned back.  We had to wait a short while before we could squeeze out alongside the approaching traffic.  Safe and sound off we went.

A little further along the road we took a turning.  Dirt road the navigation informed us but – wrong,  It was a newly laid 8km stretch of beautiful surfaced road with some wonderful views thrown in as we wound our way up and down mountain sides.  Encouraged by this we took the next dirt road too.  This 30km short cut bypassed a whole big loop around the top Gid informed me.  But no such luck this time. Although a definite road it was dust, gravel, ruts, gulleys, hills, descents and a ford , along which, in the main, a steady dribble of motos overtook us.  That was encouraging as it felt as if it was in constant use servicing the villages and other tracks along the way.  Nearing the end however, three men overtook us but then stayed just in front.  That was unnerving as they should have disappeared into the dust.  Why were they hanging back with us?  Thankfully it wasn’t too far until we were back on the main road.  Our escort went in the other direction.

Copan Ruinas was delightful.  Although another cobbled ancient town it had retained some of its charm because it wasn’t so full of tourist shops or heaving with tourists.  When walking round the ruins themselves we were two out of four people in the place although a couple of groups were arriving as we left.  The main attraction of Copan ruins, another Unesco site, was the option to go down into two tunnels and look at the previous temples.  Because the temples were enlarged by successive kings who wanted their temple to be bigger and better, the carvings on the former temples had been covered and were still in very good condition.  Somehow it felt magical to glimpse at what had been hidden away.

 Archaeological work was very much still in action both on the surface and inside the tunnels which felt as though we were experiencing history as it was being uncovered.  The displays in its mini museum linked the Copan ruins to several of the temple sites that we have already visited. Copan is the last major and most southerly Maya site in Central America.

We decided to traverse Honduras along the northern, Caribbean coast. This has a wealth of cultures with eight different languages being spoken.  One of which is Garifuni – the Caribbean freed slave culture & its partly creole language scattered all along the Caribbean coast from Belize south.   Asking for milk at the local store in Tornabe proved interesting.   It wasn’t Spanish or English is all I can say. The place felt a bit like Hopkins in Belize, except zero tourists, as the locals were of African heritage and mooching around on foot. The only hotel, like most of the other buildings, was right on the beach, with our bikes parked on the sand between us and the sea. Locals wandering past. We had a comfy night, although it bucketed down at some point.

To get there, we’d swing by the famously beautiful Lago Yojoa.   Appealingly, we could stay in a micro-brewery.  When at Lago Yojoa we took another archaeological walk around Los Naranjos.  We were warned that the original temple was made of clay so had been left covered but that hadn’t sunk in until we arrived at the temple to see a relatively small grass mound and nothing more.  Thankfully a small museum at the site’s second entrance had a display informing us about the ruins and its place in history, being very old in Central American ruin terms.

Both of us enjoy birdwatching and one of our best experiences was on Lake Yojoa.  We’d booked onto an early morning bird watching boat trip.  Honduras does boast a wonderful number of resident birds but our own efforts to see them have been fairly pitiful.  Our guide, Mattias, took us off to the canal armed with binoculars.  We hadn’t even reached the water before we were looking this way and that.  Two to three hours passed in perfect bliss as we were paddled along spotting various birds.  The highlight of the trip for me was the osprey.  Sitting high in a tree but clearly visible with binoculars it wasn’t far from a white chested hawk.  The pair were magnificent.  The osprey flew over which Gid spotted first.  Sadly I barely saw it. As we so quickly forget, Gid made notes of the different birds that were pointed out to us, many of them brightly coloured, and announced we’d seen over thirty species.   A few of them like the herons and fly catchers were almost omnipresent.

The botanical gardens at Tela was another attempt to see more wild life.  It was more of an arboretum but occupied a spacious area with signage informing us about some of the species.  We had hoped to see some birds here but in the heat of the afternoon nothing much was evident. We stayed onsite, in a splendid wooden cabin left over from the fruit company days, so the following morning took an amble in the softer light which was much more pleasant but still lacked wildlife.  When preparing to leave our host came to tell us that they was some issue up the track.  ‘Motos would get through,’ she said,  ‘pero no carros!’  True enough!  There had been rain overnight and a land slide. Part of the road was missing.  Cautiously we went through aware that a lot of the area looked sodden.

Gid hasn’t been interested in waterfalls.  To be fair in 2023 we toured Norway where in places there’s a stunning waterfall every 100 metres.  But link a waterfall walk with bird watching and we were off.  Three toucans almost make up for our cumulative zero quetzals. Our stop here was a guest house focussed on the local rafting tourism on the Rio Cangrejal. Right on the rocks by the white water river, it brought back a lot of memories of our paddling days.

Biking back along the muddy & potholed dirt road from the rafter’s guest house towards La Ceiba I had hoped that some of the slimy mud down the lane might have dried out a bit.  No such luck.  The drizzle started as we finished packing our bikes.  That together with last night’s rain ensured that it had remained a slushy, muddy, dirt and gravel road with numerous pot holes and oversized puddles.  Faced with a large muddy puddle and an on coming moto that was going to take the rim around the left hand edge I went for it straight through my side.  My bike squirmed a couple of times, some water splashed over into my boots but a bit of adrenaline kept me going and I didn’t slow down.  ‘ A twist of the wrist’ so the name sake book says will nine times out of ten get you through a problem.  It worked.  I was chuckling, the approaching biker, who had slowed to watch the drama, had a broad smile and gave a thumbs up.  Who else was on the road? – oh yes – an inexplicably abandoned porker.

Sodden was here to stay – we had a lot of heavy showers in Honduras.  We had set off at 9:30 with a 100mi to cover so expected to be there by lunch time.  With just a short lunch break we arrived sometime after three.  The potholes along the way had disintegrated into large areas of mud and broken road.  The traffic ahead of us on both sides was weaving across the road and slowly negotiation the holes.  We picked our way along the main road at times behind tired buses, trucks and tuk-tuks.  Consumed in clouds of exhaust as yet another overloaded knackered out X tried to pull away from the speed bumps or pot holes.  Frequently, at the speed bumps, we sped past.  Once we were officially on a dirt road the surface was in a much better condition.  Thankfully a lot of the traffic had also turned off by then so we were able to make better progress.

Here’s an assortment of Honduran road photos. We take more photos on dirt roads ‘cos there’s usually more to see, and time to look.

And here’s a few photos of what we could see from the road.

As far north-east as we could reasonably go, a couple of days at the beach at Trujillo was to round off our trip to Honduras.  Gid had highlighted the fort and a couple of historic points of interest in the small town. Yes, um, it was indeed small, but attractive enough, once it had stopped pouring with rain.

Leaving Trujillo we soon turned south and headed down a lovely road enroute for the capital city, Tegucigalpa.  It was the best road we’d been on for a while so we were merrily cruising along.   We soon realised that we had a third rider also on a touring bike tailing us.  After a brief roadside stop we agreed to a coffee somewhere ahead.  Steve, a Canadian rider, was on a tour to Panama – his version of the Snow Goose descent south for the winter.  We stopped together for the night and shared food, beer, and stories.  Steve’s BMW RS boxer was five times as powerful as our Himis, but the sporty suspension & position wasn’t so accommodating over speed bumps and potholes. He might have said it wasn’t entirely happy on the low octane gasoline, either.  But we’re all doing it, that’s the main thing.  Forums are full of “what bike for …” discussions, and journalists pontificate endlessly (with a nod to their advertisers!), but the best answer seems to be “the one you have”.  We do seem to be a bit off the moto tourist trail now, we no longer see occasional groups of looming, be-panniered, be-foglamped adventure bikes going the other way, or whizzing past us. Of course, just by time and distance, we’re getting beyond the range of a ride-from-home tour for North Americans with jobs and families needing them back soon.

Honduras’s capital Tegucigalpa was busy but pleasant enough.  After all the usual online warnings about crime, the biggest threat was clearly as a pedestrian trying to cross the roads.  Maybe it was our location, but the traffic seemed more cramped and more urgent than either Mexico or Guatemala Cities.  Tegucigalpa is not reckoned to be much of a tourist destination, although we did visit a few places.  We were in the city because it had a Royal Enfield dealer, one of only 2 in Honduras, and I had discovered some loose spokes in my front wheel. I wanted to be nearby when I had my first ever go at a motorcycle spoked wheel tweak.  In the event, the adjustment seemed to go smoothly, and no parts or help were called upon.

Although our Honduran visas were for 60 days, we were aware that the CA4 group of countries only gave us 90 days from entering Guatemala, so we had to exit both Honduras and Nicaragua, by 29th March. East of Tegucigalpa the Honduras/Nicaragua border hove into sight all to soon, after around 3 weeks in Honduras. Another border to cross, another country to plan. But just before that, Gid misunderstood what he was told about the nightly rate, and our last night in Honduras was rather a splendid indulgence, and a bit of a moto museum, too.

Browned Off? El Salvador

As we entered El Salvador, about the most crowded of the Central American states, and quite prosperous, we were immediately hit by the greater concentration of traffic.  Gone were the nippy little 150s, replaced by bumper to bumper SUVs.  Gone were the traditional Mayan costumes.  Gone were the streams of ladies carrying stacked up wares on their heads.  This could have been any town in England. We’ve been on the road now 8 1/2 months, the last 4 in Central America. We noticed that we were getting a bit browned off with our tourism options too.  “Shall we go and see X?”   Well, maybe not; it’s going to be very similar to the last three Xs we’ve recently seen:

  • Historic, charming, cobbled, cities of the Spanish Empire – check.
  • Elegant or elaborated catholic church – check.
  • Colourful local market – check.
  • Mayan ruin – check and check again.
  • Pre-Columbian anthropological museum – check.
  • National museum of country since independence – even these are getting a bit samey.
  • Beach with warm blue sea – check, although it never truly palls.
  • Volcano hike – Clare sez never again!
  • Souvenir shops – Gid has seen enough and more.
  • Weaving School – Still some potential
  • Spanish School – Not yet ready for more, are we?

Which was one reason we sort of dipped out of El Salvador. Our fault, not its. We made the mistake of crossing into El Salvador without a plan, other than noting that the obvious way south was initially the much promoted “Ruta de Flores”.  We did follow said ruta, but without the intended excursions into charming side-towns it was a pretty unspecial kind of ruta.  Reasonably smooth, vaguely bendy, sort of nice countryside, though not many flores to be seen. 

And briefly – after it, i.e. at lunchtime, we decided to bomb across this small country to the southeast, and try for a birdwatching boat tour near Jiquilisco in El Salvador’s largest estuary, an Unesco Biosphere reserve.  The boats went, apparently, from Puerto de Triunfo.  Google showed one hotel, which usually means there’s three or more local joints that would give us a convenience walking distance to the ferry. We ignored Lonely Planet’s 2018 advice to skip the town.

When we arrived in the afternoon, the dockside had proved hard to negotiate on the bikes.  The queue of traffic behind us was impatient as were the traffic controllers.  They only wanted to grab the parking fee, but we didn’t want to park. We were looking for an hotel and no-one had time to listen to us.   There was a cacophony of people wanting something, be it official or commercial but mainly – get out of the way!  Both Google and LP were right, there was only one hotel.  We eventually we found it in the gathering darkness tucked behind a bingo hall. It was physically good enough.  The owner seemed fine until we said one night, maybe two – her face fell.  The following morning she rather gruffly announced that we had to be out by 8am or pay a day fee, lousing up our plan of researching the boat trip early by foot and possibly staying another night.

We groused, cleared out quickly, and made a new plan certain now that we would also advise people to miss this place.  Back to the west! That sounds crazy, but we had always planned to enter and exit El Salvador in the west.  With a direct route from Guatemala into El Salvador there was little choice and Copan, possibly the best ruin site in Central America, in western Honduras wasn’t to be missed, requiring a return to the west (few travellers would voluntarily go through the border paperwork again to save a few miles). We’d visit El Salvador’s seaside instead.

Fortunately, both LP and our hostel host in Antigua had agreed that El Tunco was a nice beach village, with a strong surfing flavour.  So we set a GPS pin for there and off we went. An easy ride on a good road, until they decided to dig it all up in La Libertad. That was a very sweaty last 20 miles. But reaching El Tunco, in need of a bed, we lucked right out. Pulling over when we saw three different hotel signs on one bend, Gid disappeared on foot. Two were pricey, shiny concrete boxes for prosperous tourists. Number three was great, locally owned, been there years, day access for locals and kids, big pool, basic restaurant, chickens, dogs, cats and children running loose. A palm shaded aircon room less than half the price of the previous two.

The beach only metres away was great – firm sand, nice little warm waves, free loan of bodyboard.  Local fishing boats launched off the beach in the late afternoon returning in time for breakfast.  The night’s catch was loaded onto trucks in cool boxes.  Our hotel was the first stop.  A carefully selected basket full of fish hanging under the scales couldn’t have been fresher.

And did we say it was a beautiful beach?

I managed a 5K run by doing five laps of the beach, then succumbed to a cold – in this heat!   Thereafter a daily stroll into the surf-dude nearby village for basic groceries was all I could manage. We stopped four nights. One evening was enlivened by a helicopter and lots of soldiers, as El President used a spare field next to our hotel for a visit to – something or someone. El Salvador was redeemed.

But we still legged it to the Honduras border, even though these borders are always horribly tedious, completing the paperwork for the bikes. Hmmm – we could have gone straight from Guatemala to Honduras, saving one border – but El Tunco was nice, even with a cold. We barely scratched the surface of El Salvador’s beauty and interest.

So, what are we left to do in Central America, the countries of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama? We have to recapture our mojo. Maybe some more nature hikes, because we really are in the jungle a lot of the time.  We’ve not been very successful at beastie spotting so far but what are we scared of?

  • Bandits?
  • Armed guards?
  • Getting lost?
  • Volcanos – definitely.
  • Jaguars – grrrr – be serious!

On the Road in Guatemala

After Mexico, we were lulled into a false sense of security by the smoothish roads in Belize.  Except for the road approaching the Guatemalan border.  That was full of pot holes, dirt, gravel and was generally broken up in places.  At the border the bikes, as usual, demanded more time than we did – numbers had to be checked against documentation- registration and vehicle title,  photocopies of driving licences provided, wheels and underneath framework sprayed.  The whole process took 2 1/2 hours with the guidance of a local helper, who magically appeared at our sides. Strictly speaking, his services were unnecessary, but he knew where everything was, and probably saved us 30 minutes. No specific fee was solicited, I think we tipped him 50 Quetzals – about £5 – probably too much.

Then – we were back into the bumpy ole Mexican style roads.

Initially we stayed on the main road into Guatemala.  The decision was easy as it is the direct route to one of Guatemala’s key tourist attractions – Tikal, which we were keen to visit.  After that we went a bit more freestyle.

Until we left Mexico, we had had quite good navigation. My Garmin Zumo XT was the mainstay, and Gid’s cradled and powered Android phone with OSMAnd was backup and a second voice.  Both systems often came up with different routes and both maps had a different interpretation of ‘no dirt roads’/’no 4×4 roads’ and other criteria.  The Garmin also scores in crowded areas because it verbalises the instructions.  ‘Turn right at the traffic lights’ is useful in crowded unfamiliar areas.  Although maddeningly, it cuts off the intercom not only while it does so, but for many seconds before and after just at the point when we are trying to discuss the intricacies of our route.  OSMAnd verbalises too, but it’s instructions (or mapping) are poor, and utterly useless around slip roads, which it can only display in very limited circumstances.

As a back-up and for planning we always have a paper map, old farts that we are.

But as soon as we left Mexico, Garmin’s North America mapping finished, leaving a blank screen. Occasionally it did show a road but we wouldn’t be on it.   It wasn’t a big problem in Belize because it is a small country with relatively few roads.  The small scale free tourist map did just fine, although absent from it were the new bypasses of some of the larger towns such as Orange Walk.

Gideon: In Belize we hit quite a bit of rain, so the cradled Android phone was pretty useless. The charging arrangements are not waterproof, and it can’t run all day without power. The Samsung A series phone is nominally waterproof, but water got into the camera, and it now often won’t focus properly.  It’s not just waterproofing as such – a phone touchscreen can’t reliably distinguish raindrops from fingerprints.  Clare’s Garmin is a totally waterproof device wired into the bike’s main battery and has an outdoors touchscreen (and big buttons), so it isn’t fazed by riding in wet.  Thankfully, we’ve just discovered, I can at least download the free Open Street Maps onto the Garmin so we have reliable navigation in rain but now it’s the same data as Gid’s phone, so we lose the useful combination of different mapping systems.

Why not use Google Maps? Well, the basic reason is that one pretty much needs to be online, and in the trickier or remoter areas there’s frequently no signal.  Also our IT incompetence and my strange priorities and meanness means that we don’t have a good, mountable, phone which will work on American cellular frequencies. The upside of this is that if some hood does nick one of our phones, we can giggle about their experiences when they try to sell or use it. Clare’s is over a decade old, and its “new” battery holds charge for, well, several hours – if it’s turned off.  Mine doesn’t work on American networks, and the camera focus is broken, and has either an expired Latvian SIM, or an expired USA SIM – ideal to leave on the bike.

Speaking of navigation, for those family members unfamiliar with Guatemala (Map here), we entered the country in the little inhabited, jungly, north.  Flores is a scenic village on an island, in a lake, in the middle, and Quetzaltenango, Lago Antitlan, Antigua and Cuidad de Guatemala run from west to east along the spine of volcanoes that run about 75km north of the Pacific coast.  For the first time on our trip, we actually rode on “the” Pan American.  The carreterre was named on signs.  It runs along the north slope of the volcanoes, from Mexico in the NW, out to El Salvador/Honduras in the SE.  Most of Guatemala’s 18m population is in this southern part of the country.  In retrospect, it’s no surprise that the roads in the north are, err, quite adventurous.

Clare: Heading from Flores down to Xela (Quetzaltenango) was quite eventful.  Gid had programmed in the destination and was informed that the 90 odd miles would take seven hours.  Cursing the lack of information on the map of Guatemala he assumed that the time required for the trip reflected the mountainous area we were coming into and was quite relieved when he realised he’d set the transport option to ‘boat’.  Boat wasn’t so far out.  We did wind our way up and down the mountains, the roads were quite little. It was at the bottom of one of them that our road ended at the river.  Approaching the tail end of the queue of cars Gid was on my left.  I could see the small wooden boat almost full of motorcycles starting to pull away from the shore whilst Gid was looking at the large nearly fully loaded car ferry.  ‘We can make it!’ he was saying, urging me forwards.  Noticing that the little wooden boat was indeed returning for us I gingerly progressed down the muddy sloping bank none too sure about the prospect of boarding it.  Gid, still focused on the car ferry, hadn’t a clue where I was going.   ‘The ferry,’ he was saying ,’the ferry!’.  Well if that’s what you call it I’m on my way I thought.  I stopped 2/3 of the way down none too sure about what I was committing to.  Gid by now could see the little wooden boat and was horrified with where I was heading.  ‘The Car Ferry!’ he shouted.  Too late, half way down a wet muddy bank I couldn’t turn round now.  I decided I was going for it, took a deep breath and was internalising  ‘Give it some throttle over the metal grid, over the lip at the edge of the boat, then brake hard before I hit everyone else.’  The theory was great.  I managed it.  I shuffled forward to make room for Gid knowing he would follow.   Bless him, he did. The crossing was brief, but about halfway across one of us realised that the boat – floored with loose, gappy, planks – only had a ramp at one end. Sure enough, the local riders, clad in jeans and tees, had all swivelled their 100Kg motos around on the side stand. Oh shit! A loaded Him weighs about 250Kg. Everyone was delayed while we sweated our steeds through 25-point turns wearing All-The-Gear-All-The-Time.

Later that day we still had to reach a sensible place to stop as our actual destination was several hours away.  We made the decision to find somewhere to stop at about 3 pm.  Plenty of time.  The first town we entered didn’t have accommodation with off road parking and it was still early so on we went.  By 5:30, and aware that it would be getting dark soon, we were still looking.  Just a bit further up the road towards the next town Gid was saying.  It sounded promising but an unexpected diversion we were meant to take was blocked off.  In amongst a deluge of swearing Gid shouted “next left”.

‘Have you seen it!  You are kidding!’ I replied.

‘Well, it’s got to be one of these, it’s a short cut back to the main road,’ he said, urging me on.

We took next left.  From the start it was a pretty rough narrow lane.  ‘It’s no worse than Mill Lane,’ he assured me, the rough track to our home in the UK.  After 10 mins of up and down past houses and homesteads we were about to reach the main road Gid declared.  Fast acceleration got us up the next sharp incline but no-one in their wildest dreams could call it a main road.  We had an ariel view over the valley of widely spread dirt lanes interspersed with houses and smallholdings.  The stone strewn, rutted dirt track under our wheels continued who knew where.  We turned back.

Thankfully, approaching the nearest town from the other direction enabled us to see a hotel sign.  It had a gated entrance, always a requirement.  In we went.

The following morning we had another look at the map and navigation.  There didn’t seem to be any reason why OSMAnd had directed us off the main road.  The “shortcut” looked ludicrous when we could sit and study it.  Gid figured that perhaps the OSM data for the main road had a tiny break in it, or 5 metres of dirt road, so OSMAnd would not route it unless it was allowed to use all the dirt roads (we’ve seen this before, but then the Garmin was working and happy to make sensible compromises). Determined to stay on the main road we set off.  It wasn’t long before the surface deteriorated.  We had patches of broken road, stretches of gravel and the odd bit of sand.  So much so that when we came to a dirt road that was a legitimate short cut we decided to take it.  It started off fine and generally was but had some interesting sections of hairpins, gravel, rivulets and ruts.  We made our way down the mountain side across the bridge and up the other side.  Nearing the top we thought we had made it and were quite surprised to see the road ahead blocked.  A policeman directed us to his left waving his arm in a snake like fashion to show the direction of the road.  A dust trail to his left confirmed the direction of the road and that other road users were on it.  It was clearly a single track lane with very poor visibility because of the dust flying up.  We set off not knowing how long this diversion was or what traffic we might meet.

We reached a steep hill and approached it behind a 125 that had come careering past.  It whizzed up.  Dust flying.  Gid was right behind it.  ‘1st gear, 1st gear, ‘ he was calling back to me. ‘And plenty of throttle.’   No one was getting up that hill without plenty of throttle but what was about to come down?  Thankfully, shortly afterwards we reached to end of the diversion.  The poorly surfaced concrete road seemed awesome. 

  • Glamour never rests

Heading further south in Guatemala we were back on surfaced roads.  Belize had offered a respite from Mexico’s endless tupes/speed bumps, but in Guatemala they were back with vengeance.  Some are quite brutal – Gid has scraped his bash guard on a number of occasions, and now takes most of them standing.

On the other hand, bikes are a lot quicker across them than anything with three wheels or more.  Both us and the local riders get a lot of (slow) overtakes in at the speed bumps especially when they’re one of the few places the chicken buses slow down. Oddly enough, later, in Cuidad de Guatemala where there aren’t speed bumps, we’ve seen quite a few Porsches (I mean real ones, not repackaged Touaregs) – they and similar low vehicles must be pretty much confined in city limits – odd.

Reaching our destination, Xela, was also interesting riding as in the old town where we were staying it has a great grid of calles and avenidas cobbled with pretty much random rocks.  They’re ok at speed, but stuck behind crawling traffic, the bike’s front wheel swerves all over the place. As the streets are so narrow, it’s an irregular grid of one ways, making navigation tricky, and distances much longer than the map suggests.

It must have been around this time that we started seeing tuktuks. I don’t think there’s a factory nearby, I think they’re all imported from India. For some reason, they’re almost all red. They seem to thrive in mountain villages, or pueblos & cuidades with tiny streets. They’re geared to labour up any mountainside, but with only half the Himalayan’s engine, and six people aboard, boy, they can be slow.  They must be alarming to drive around downhill hairpins, too.

To reach San Pedro on Lago Aititlan from Xela, we turned south-east, aligning us with Guatemala’s volcanic spine. So we encountered the actual Pan American Carretera. Woohooohoo! Here, it’s a mostly well-surfaced dual carriageway. Not, normally, the Himalayan’s favourite domain. But this road corkscrews its way up, down and around the volcanic slopes, and almost all the wiggles are blind, so few folk dare exceed 50mph/80kph even if their vehicle can do so (and many here can’t). The Himis were fine, although a little more overtaking ooomph, or even a lot more, would be appreciated. Still, we tried to exercise restraint: Altogether now: “Drive at a speed that will allow you to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear” (UK HC Rule 126).

Occasionally we’d be passed, sometimes by a chicken bus – these often belching clouds of black muck from a primitive, or maladjusted (depending on age) diesel engine. USA school buses are tightly regulated, and it seems have to be retired at quite modest mileages and ages. So, like a fair few human retirees, they head south in fleets, and live to a great old age as chicken buses. Often these are brightly decorated, usually they have powerful horns, to blast traffic and alert potential customers. The drivers are not necessarily the most cautious and safety aware of señores, although not remotely in the homicidally obnoxious league of their Indian and Indonesian colleagues (or Aussie truck drivers). So they do tend to hurtle around the bends – after all, the driver saw no obstacle there 2 hours ago, so there can’t be one now, can there? We saw the aftermath of one apparent head-on between a bus and something smaller… the bus seemed to be facing the wrong way at that point. Looked like it’d need a new cab.

Finally, a few snaps of curios encountered on the roads. If you’re into 70s/80s car and truck nostalgia, or radically optimised loading, there’s plenty to entertain on Guatemala’s roads.

Postscript: Sadly, a week after posting this, 55 people were killed in Guatemala when a chicken bus crashed, and a few days before that, nearly as many died in a bus accident in Mexico. On our way back from our volcano hike at Antigua, our shuttle passed a fatal motorcycle accident, the poor fellow still lying in the middle of the road.

Belize

Belize, our route map shows, has been another case of zigging and zagging about. We didn’t need to come here at all, as it doesn’t span Central America’s skinny land mass. One can pass from Mexico directly into Guatemala. But it’s an interesting place, so of course, we were curious. We dropped in from Mexico, right at the top of the country.

It’s a small country, so it’s possible to go from North to South Belize in a (long) day.  We’d rushed past the fishing village just across the border on the east coast and before we knew it we were a third of the way down the country at the baboon sanctuary.  The baboons – actually yucatan black howler monkeys – were fabulous.  We were barely in the forest before we heard and saw them. Our guide was our first Garifuna encounter, all laid back and charm, in r e a l l y s l o w English, and creole with his mates. For indeed, Belize used to be British Honduras, and the official language is English.

From there we were at the north-west regional hub of San Ignacio – and the “ATM”. ATM is at the top on all of the must see lists.  It’s not the Automatic Teller Machine or Another Tourist Missing but the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave.  Having been there I can see why it’s number one.  It’s stunning!  Our tour guide was ex-military but once we’d got over the ‘I’m here to look after you.  If I give you an instruction please will you follow it’ – shouted to the petit oriental young lady at the front of our group.  On the first of our river crossings to get to the cave she had failed to release the safety rope and float away down the river to a different landing site when Patrick had shouted the command.  The water was chest high on us and had a fair flow so she was probably rather insecure with the idea of letting go of the safety line prematurely.  We soon learnt when Patrick shouted ‘jump’ we echoed ‘how high’.

After the initial blip Patrick proved to be a very nice guy.  He was very knowledgeable about the jungle happily answering some tricky questions from our young undergraduate enthusiast.  Equally, we were soon to find out, he was very knowledgeable about the cave itself.  We crossed the river three times to reach the cave where I have to say, I was pleased to be wearing a buoyancy aid.  I’d quickly given up any hope of keeping my t-shirt dry to try to keep warm.  Once in the cave, having scaled the rocks and dropped down into deep water, we started our one hour wade, swim, clamber; at times making a human chain to get round a deep corner or to cross a deep section as the water gushed past.   We stopped a number of times to admire and investigate the rock formations created over centuries of water cascading down with layer upon layer of calcium carbonate leaving its track.  We finally reached the main attraction.  10 feet above our heads was the start of the massive cavern that had been used as a sacrificial site up until about 900AD.  We clambered up a very convenient rock with a supporting rope attached to it.  At this point we had to take off our shoes to try to minimise the damage made by aggressive footwear. 

We were in the ‘living’ museum.  This was not some mock up but the real thing.  Every thing we saw was as it had been used / left by the Mayans, the Belizeans having made a conscious decision not to excavate it.  Many areas were calcified showing that the water had coursed through this way leaving calcium deposits in its wake. In the 900 and more years since the Mayans were in here, some deposits had built up to a few inches thick, blurring and obscuring the thousands of broken sacrificial pots. The thickness of the deposits helps with dating the offerings, which generally, went deeper and deeper into the cave as time went on.  In a sub equatorial rain forest with 82 inches of rainfall a year there is never any shortage of rain water.  Well, except in about 900AD – climate change and drought are the leading theory for the demise of the southern Maya cities.

Seven skeletons were present, deep in the cave system. Some of the remains were in a heap where it is supposed that they had been washed down in the flow of water before being glued in place by calcification.  Each had been sacrificed.  Archaeologists tell us that towards the end of the greater Mayan society the rain fall was less reliable and there was a change in the sacrificial offerings, brought on, perhaps, by desperation.  Initially the skeletons were of older people but what is believed to be the last two are young males. This greater sacrifice was of young males was thought to be in an effort to please their gods who would they hoped provide more rain.  One boy, believed to be twelve is considered to have been bound up and left to die whilst not far away was the skeleton of a seventeen year old boy although he was laid out flat.

Unfortunately for us, cameras, phones and other lumps are forbidden following an accident where a camera was dropped on the 12 year old’s skeleton’s skull.  It now has a letterbox shape hole in it where the camera landed. Therefore we took no photos, except of Patrick selling Clare his patented old tyre sandals.

A brief diversion from the same base of San Ignacio, was the local Green Iguana Sanctuary. These have some endangerment so they’re captive bred there, then released. The Black Iguana, in contrast, is very common, and we saw them all over the place: The two on the log, actually in Belize Zoo, are sneaky visitors, not captives.

The Belizian roads are in a better condition than the Mexican roads.  Their speed bumps are better labelled and they seem to have three sorts.  One sort – a set of three narrow rumble strips you barely have to slow for and another a well marked smooth mound, then there’s single or double rows of metal domes that usually make the bike wriggle alarmingly.  They do have some potholes but nothing like the near total disintegration of the road that we frequently experienced in Mexico.  There are probably less roads as well as the population of Belize is quite small so perhaps less traffic.  Decent main roads and short distances made Belize pretty uneventful on the motorcycling front. Off the main routes it’s back to dirt roads but because of the recent flood in Mexico and the current heavy rainfall we’ve stayed off those.  The combination of rain and soft sandy mud, or slimy mud will make them pretty dodgy places to be on two wheels.

We’re back to the Caribbean coast for Christmas. We broke the journey to the beaches at Maya Centre where we took one guided night stroll and another guided day stroll in the Cockscomb jungle – nope, no jaguars. One frog, one turtle and two catfish is hardly an exciting haul but the red brocket deer in daylight was a pleasant surprise. Belize has made a point of having a lot of nature reserves, although they do mostly seem to be on land unsuitable for agribusiness type farming. But – revelation – here’s a chocolate making tour. Guess who dived straight in? We’re taken off to Narciso’s chocolate farm, where we learn about the fruit, and the beans, and the 6 day fermentation and 7 day drying. Then to the factory where they’ve been roasted. Robert directed the procedure: taste “nibs”, grind them, mix in the cane sugar (grows everywhere in Belize), and extra cocoa butter. Scraped into the mould, place in fridge for 5 mins. Eat. Very yummy! The chocolate drinks here are something else, too.

Beach village Hopkins, recommended by a number of people, is a vibrant colourful small town full of very friendly Caribbeans and wooden shacks.  People were happy to stop and chat, many with a cause or two that we should contribute towards.  One chap offering us magic mushrooms and a number of cannabis bars along the street might explain the very relaxed vibe to the place. Hopkins is presumably run by the ladies as the chaps all seem to be relaxing around their omnipresent beer bottles. 30 miles south on the coast is Placencia.  Wow is it different!  The road in is lined with concrete barricaded mansions interleaved with “plots” – prominent Private Keep Out warnings with For Sale banners and ‘gated’ developments available.  It’s a bit of paranoid “me-me-me” Florida dropped into the “hey man” Caribbean coast.  At the end of the peninsula is the main village of Placencia.  The village itself is back to colourful Caribbean settings but millionaire’s row has left its mark, it feels a bit phoney and fleecing compared to Hopkins, albeit in much better repair.  Our main beggar in Placencia wanted money for an eye operation, whereas his colleague in Hopkins claimed to be a shaman…

Belize is about the size of Wales, but only ~400,000 citizens inhabit it. Having been part, not of the Spanish Empire, but the British (a legitimisation of piracy and unrestrained logging), it speaks English, has yards, and miles. Interestingly, the Belizeans couldn’t say if the petrol was sold in US gallons, or Imperial, although Gregorio from Maya Centre reckoned the measures were short!  I went into a hardware/motor parts store to buy an M8 bolt for my pannier rack, but almost everything was in inches (I know not if Imperial or American SAE): Bizarre, indeed as they do have quite a few pre-90s American pickups and lorries which will be SAE, but 90% of their vehicles will be metric. They have Charles III as monarch, which led to some very odd conversations, so I’m not sure what they’re told about his role. Elizabeth II, pictured at around 1965 I think, still graces the banknotes and still seemed close to their hearts. And Philip, we were proudly told, visited them in 1985 and planted that tree.

The country is an ethnic melting pot. Whereas Mexico seemed mostly like a creamy soup of well, Mexicans, Belize is sort of ethnically lumpy stew, different peoples in different places or roles. Is this a result of Mexico being freed of external rule in 1821, but Belize’s being in the British Empire well into my lifetime? It seems the Mayans dominate the southern countryside, putting them in charge of the jungle and the important chocolate supply. The (germanic, white) Menonites often stay quietly on their large farms, and do most of the food and deforestation. The garifuna dominate the coast, catching fish, tourists, and the odd beer or splif. The numerous north American expats like secure gates, big houses, “private” signs, and, naturally, F150 pickups; they run a lot of the tourism businesses, stating their prices in US dollars, not always clearly so, and much the same prices as US prices too (perhaps to pay for their USA medical insurance?). Whereas greengrocers and restaurants are often Spanish, every large village has are two or three medium-sized supermarkets, selling the same broad selection of goods, and always, it seems, run by merchants of Cantonese descent. I’ve probably missed someone out – Wikipedia has more detail and yet more. They all seem to get along just fine. Belize is officially English speaking, but as a tourist, it would be helpful to know the Spanish, Creole and Cantonese for “shall I charge the tourist double?”, although the north Americans charge most of all, and then you realise it’s in US not Belizean dollars, a fixed 1:2 rate doubling it again.

Southern seaside village Placencia was our Christmas break choice.  Snorkelling was on the plan but we didn’t know much more about it.  We planned a four night stop in the backpackers hostel, hoping it would be a lively community over the Christmas break.  When we arrived it was only us; a few more travellers did turn up, but it stayed pretty quiet.  Mark and Sheila, the owners, were very helpful and pleasant but we couldn’t help notice the For Sale sign as we came in.  The nearly new hostel is three miles out of town so we’re wondering if it’s too far out for backpackers who frequently occupy hostels but have no transport (although the hostel has bikes and the buses are cheap).  The village itself seemed to have plenty of tourists on Christmas breaks. The dive centre had space tomorrow, 24th Dec., but that’s it until 2nd Jan.  We booked up for tomorrow.

Kitted out we set off and were told it would take an hour to reach the coral destination.  The sea was flat so we zoomed along with little discomfort.  Our snorkel guide explained the ropes.  We were going to circumnavigate the little island.  He would narrate and had a pointy stick to draw our attention to certain features.  Once in the water I was off keen to make the most of our forty minutes.  The kit worked well and I could dive down to take photos although a lot of the corral was barely three feet beneath us.  On a couple of occasions I got left behind and was redirected back to my group.  It was fabulous.  The seaweeds were moving with the flow.  Fish darted to and fro or just nonchalantly drifted past. The coral and fish were colourful and gorgeous.

Once lunched on the island we were off to the second site.  Here we were told we would see turtles, nurse sharks and sting rays.  Yep, they were right.  It was stunning.  Barely in the water I watched a white spotted eagle ray swim past.  It seemed huge!  The graceful flapping of its ‘wings’ seemed poetic.  So slow was the motion as the ray glided along.  Mindful of its tail that must have been at least six feet long I didn’t get too close.   Minutes later I’d seen a few other smaller rays but was anxious that turtles and nurse sharks were also on the list.  I heard an ‘over there’ call directing me past one of the other boats.  As I approached it the sea bed was disturbed.  Cursing inept snorkellers who must be putting their fins down I circled round the outside of the sand storm.  Wrong!  It was nothing to do with snorkellers.  I watched a nurse shark wiggle down on the ocean floor and with a thrust spurt up leaving a sand cloud behind it.  It was in this area that I also found the turtle with cleaner fish nibbling under its tummy.  Wow, how beautiful!

Nurse Shark

To cap it all on our way back we happened upon – or our captain found – a school of dolphins.  Eight fins were visible at one point. Some came very near to our boat swimming alongside occasionally jumping. One even did a completely airborne breach.

Christmas day away is weird when you are used to spending it with family.  What were we going to do?  Family phone calls made we were at a loose end.  Supper would be late so we could use the day light but we still didn’t have a plan.  There was another village, Sein Bight, to the north, much closer than Placencia, but devoid of tourism. We wandered off to it having been warned that a number of places would be shut.  Having topped up our supplies in the only open supermarket we reached the other end of town before cutting through to the beach for the walk home.  In this local’s village it’s no problem reaching the beach but back nearer to our accommodation it was ‘Private’ access again.  We weren’t sure where we would cut back to the road.  We stopped at a bar on the beach.  A rickety Caribbean owned place to sup and admire the palm tree framed view of the sea.  The owner chatted to us asking if we were going to come back later in the afternoon to see the Christmas Day tradition.  He told us people dress up and go around the houses.  We’d be able to take photos, video, whatever. We ambled back along the beach, and cut back to the road through a smart resort, wondering if we only got away with that because we’re white like most of the guests and none of the staff.

At two o’clock it was pissing down.  Three o’clock it had cleared up. Off we went back to the beach shack to find out more.  We found the procession.  It was awesome.  Drummers thumped out a rhythm while youngsters performed a traditional dance, shells on their knees to add to the beat.  Wanaragua (mask) is a dance performed in pink mesh masks and white shirts creating a satirical representation of the white slave masters.  The dance is a part of the South Belize heritage which is passed down the generations and we were lucky enough to experience this tradition.

We’d come into Belize a bit haphazardly, and now decided to retrace our steps northwards, to the second city of Orange Walk, to see the Mayan ruins at Lamanai. We wimped out of the 30km wet dirt road access, and took the tourist launch which meant we had, unusually, a tourist guide, Amit, with his no 1 badge. He was genuinely informative, more so than what we usually gleaned from signage. Old friends might be intrigued to know that Holpitan, the name of the people who built Lamanai, means canoe people, but they were called Yucatec by the Spanish.

Our brief interlude of English over, we next head to Guatemala, and it’s Spanish* all the way to Ushaia…

*Ok, Brazil is Portuguese, if we divert west.