26-Nov-2009

Happy Thankgiving. Don't think I will get turkey today but hope you all have a great one. As we approach the Nicaraguan border, I can't help but feel a little anxious. I expect the border crossing to be bad. But the country itself has had such stife and trauma. We are swarmed by 20 or so people as we ride in to the crossing that want to 'help' us. They are jabbering away at 90 miles an hour. I finally just tell them to stop, wait, let us get our damn helmets off for crissakes. This crossing was a whirlwind, this desk, that window, this window, see that person, but it went fast. We were out of there in less than an hour and on our way. We start off in the mountains, about 6000', but the whole way is down. I was teasing Nick about being a cop magnet cause he got stopped when I just went through some of the checkpoints, but in Nicaragua we both got to pay our fees to the locals. These 2 countries have been expensive to get into and through.We get to the ocean, the Pacific this time, at a place called San Juan del Sur. We get to a little beach bar, they are playing Jimmy Buffet, the beer is cold, the sand is warm and the chica's are hot. I take my shoes off and stick my toes in the water, Ahhh, life is good. Soooooo, what do we do, we decide to leave and go a few miles down the road. WTF. 3 or 4 hours later, we are back at the same bar, soaking wet, broken motorcycles, hurting bodies, covered with mud. God we are dumb. In Mexico we learned that there are sometimes roads, new nice ones, that don't exist on a map. Today we learned that there are roads on the map, that look like they should be nice new ones, that don't exist in reality. So anyway, we went down this road that turned to dirt, no big deal, lots of dirt roads are hiways here. Well we keep going and going, then it starts raining and raining, the road gets steeper and steeper and rockier and rougher and muddier, etc. We decide that we could actually be in Costa Rica, illegally right now and decide to turn around. Well it had rained and rained behind us and parts of this road just turned to snot. The first time I hit the road, I was just fine and it was like someone had kicked the tires out from under me. I'm rolling down the road and the bike is 180 degrees from the way we were going. That happened 2 more times before we got to a rockier place in the road. The first time was the fastest but the bike still went around 180 degrees. Guess what, these tires don't work on snotty roads. Nick went down once and I was ready to trade him bikes straight across at that point. To add to the drama, it is pouring down rain, it took so long that it was black dark, and I'm remembering things like, isn't this where Oliver North was selling all those guns to the Contra rebels during the Iran-Contra scandal(I'm pretty sure they were living down this dirt road), Isn't this where Manuel Noriega was the dictator, don't they have jaguars in these woods. Any way, battered, beaten, bikes beat up, we make back to the bar where Jimmy Buffett is still playing and the beer is still cold, but too tired to care if the sand is still warm or the chica's are still hot. Costa Rica manana if we can get the bikes fixed.