Destroyed or Lost

okay, Chris and Lori have been having this discussion for awhile now, so time to tally who has lost or destroyed more things on this trip.... here is the list

Lori

set of keys for the bike (but she thinks Chris actually lost them)

one digital camera (destroyed)

MP3 player

2 computer hard drives

Chris

camera and lens (dropped into a mangrove swamp in Honduras)

1 pair of reading glasses

1 walkie talkie

one pair of sunglasses

one digital camera

(all above destroyed when truck runs over his jacket)

one small padlock and keys

riding jacket

3 1/2 pairs of riding gloves

tripod

daypack

1 set of moto keys

to be continued.....

Costa Rica Costa Rica

A backroad to Costa Rica's Volcan Arenal provided great views and a great ride!

Lori and sunset on Playa Tamarindo, one very busy tourist beach along Costa Rica's pacific coast

One tree contains an entire ecosystem in the Monteverde cloud forest reserve!

Lori and the Hondogs on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica...great fun for sure!

Caribbean Coast...this says it all!!!

New wiring..new sprockets (for you Felix!)=New Hondog!!!

From Panama into Costa Rica...see that semi in the background (followed by about 2o more!) According to the Costa Rican officials the one way bridge blocked by Costa Rican semis is Panama's problem, which in turn was our problem when we tried to cross this border!

Blue Jean Rana (frog), one of the poisonous dart frogs in Costa Rica

I hate spiders, but don't consider tarantulas spiders! But I have to admit I picked up this 5 inch orange-kneed tarantula only after Peter (who has owned tarantulas) picked it up!

After our nice relaxing stay at Boca del Toro it time to hit the road norte to Costa Rica. Today (Oct 19th) we are crossing at the remote village of Chanquinola..but first we have to traverse a series of single lane, rotten wood bridges over several rivers that cause Lori more than a little stress (and for good reason as a slip means a 20 m plus drop into a raging river. One has to be a magician to figure out how to get to this border crossing and when we do we are in for a surprise! A single lane ramp leads to yet another ancient single lane bridge. First we need to park in the doorway of the immigration office (literally) so that the semi’s from the Costa Rica side can pass into Panama. After getting stamped out we face the challenge of crossing this bridge. A line up of Costa Rican semis stretches on forever and they will not give me even a minute to cross (only one vehicle on the bridge at a time)...finally I ask Lori to run across to the Costa Rican side to block truck traffic by standing in the middle of the bridge approach. When she tried this the semi drivers hit their horns and the Costa Rican police came out and forced Lori off the road. When she explained the situation (we only needed a couple of minutes to pass) they said “This is Panama’s problem..not Costa Rica’s”. However her blockage gave me enough time to get my bike on the bridge and by blocking pedestrian traffic and various other methods we are across and into Costa Rica in just over 2 hrs.
Our first stop is Puerto Viejo..a tranquille village on the Caribbean Coast...a nice hostal with a pool and some nice beach scenery and a very laid back lifestyle sure felt great. We spent some time exploring various beaches up and down the coast and then headed inland to Fortuna.
We had already visited Fortuna (and Volcan Arenal) in March but this time we were rewarded with some nice clear views of the Volcano (which is strange considering that we are in the middle of rainy season!) Rainy season or not we have lots of tourists and the usual high prices for food (lodging isn’t to bad). Just to clarify..when we say high prices we are comparing prices to other Central and South American countries...in terms of cost Costa Rica is still as cheap or cheaper than Canada.
Leaving Fortuna we took a series of dirt roads around the shore of Lago Arenal..some beautiful views of the volcano and we also saw our first white-lipped Peccary. It is a beautiful ride with little traffic (actually most of the roads in Costa Rica are in good shape and very nice to ride as traffic is generally light with very nice scenery) as we make our way to the mountain village of Taliran where we holed up while a rain storm raged for most of the evening.
The next day we completed the ride to the pretty mountain village of Santa Ellena (Monteverde). There is lots to do here as Monteverde is supposed to be the most popular protected are in Costa Rica. What is strange about most of these villages is that the 20 or 30 km directly before the villages are still dirt road and in the case of Santa Elena (Monteverde) the road is pretty rocky but we can run it a lot faster than the trucks and bus. In Santa Elena we spent a day hiking in the cloud forest reserve (our hi-light was finding a orange kneed tarantula) that contains some spectacular cloud forest ecosystems...a single tree contains a entire living ecosystem! We also checked out the orchid gardens, the frog (rana) pond and literally walked the entire town.

As we drop out of the mountains we kiss the nice cool air goodbye and trade it for the humidly of the Pacific Coast as we spent several days at both Playa Tamarindo and Hermosa. This area of Costa Rica has been devastated by floods and judging by the absolute torrential rains that hit us the flooding is not yet finished!
Playa Tamarindo is one of the more expensive places to live and stay in Costa Rica and the amount of construction is progress is impressive. Here you find 200 dollar per night hotels but main streets full of mud and holes, no sidewalks, polluted beaches. While we were there we had a huge rainstorm and water was over 2 feet deep on mainstreet and flooding into fancy stores! This is supposed to be a surfers paradise but its definitely “yuppie” surfers compared to the dredlocked laid back surf scene in Puerto Viejo! (Because it is rainy season there are virtually no waves!) The road into Tamarindo is a mess..all that rain and semi-trucks running over a mud road makes for a big mess!
Playa Hermosa is more our style...laid back and we stayed at the Hostal Iguana which is owned by a Canadian that bought the place when he was 20 and smoked way to much dope to ever leave! Just kidding (well actually not!)...Ken is a really nice guy with the usual wife that is at least 20 years his Junior!
Its getting to late October and time to head north! So what did we think of Costa Rica? The people are really friendly! We think that the tourist industry tends to lean to the high-end tourist..not the cheap backpacker type. One needs to pay fees (fairly steep fees) to do just about everything. Costa Ricans take good care of their country...little garbage and their parks are well run. Lots, lots lots of tourists...numbers of tourists have risen 12% in the last year alone!!!

Panama again

One of the large container ships pass through the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal. Thirty to forty ships cross the canal each day and pay 60 to 200 thousand dollars for the 40 hour passage. (About one tenth the cost of crossing around S America)

Close up of the beautiful Blue Morpho butterfly

Central American tarantula

Felix, Lori and I riding the dirt road from Carti on the Caribbean Coast to Panama City through the San Blas Cordillera mountains.

San Felipe is known as the dangerous part of Panama City but the old dilapidated buildings are gorgeous and are slowly being rebuilt in the old town which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site due to the unique architecture of this old part of Panama City.

The 25 meter tall Cathedral is one of the few remaining structures on the old original site of Panama City. In 1568 pirate Henry Morgan (the Irish devil) destroyed Panama City (as well as the port cities of Portabelo and Lorenzo) The city was then moved to the San Felipe area.

Some pretty cool trees in the Panamanian jungle...don't want to think of the critters and varmints living in this tree!

Lori in the ruins of the old city of Panama (Viejo Panama)

Sailing Colombia to Panama via San Blas

October 5th - 9th We sailed from Cartagena, Colombia to Porvenir, Panama on the Stahlratte - a 100 ft sailing ship built in the early 1900's. We spent 4 days en route in the San Blas Island paradise. The San Blas archipelago are an autonomous region of Panama owned and governed by the Kuna people of Panama. So far they have resisted commercial tourism on the 350+ islands so there is very little tourist infrastructure making this area authentic and paradisaical. It`s 11 in the morning...October 5th and we are on board the Stahlratte, captained by none other than Captain Ludwig...one jovial fellow for sure! On board with us are the Hondogs, Felix and his BMW and about 15 other passengers. Today we leave for Panama via the San Blas Islands on the historic ship, the Stahlratte. Build in 1903 in Holland as a fishing vessel this ship is now owned by an association that leases and rents the boats out to pay for it maintenance costs.
Our cast-off is delayed somewhat by a visit from the Colombian Coast Guard...first a search of the ship that takes about 2 hrs after which one search crew leaves and returns with what we assume is a `drug sniffing mutt` (black lab). Some 2 hrs later we get the OK to leave but not before we have to sign a document that says that the coast guard completed the search without hassling people, treated us well, then we need to give finger prints!
For the next 24 hrs we sailed across the Caribbean Sea..the big blue! This ship is fantastic compared to the 41 foot sailboat we came over in...private rooms...and it sails so smooth that no one is sea-sick! Late afternoon finds us cruising into the San Blas islands under a gorgeous sunset and Captain Ludwig has us anchored in a idyllic spot...within swimming distance of three gorgeous coconut tree covered islands with white sand beaches! Man...this is heaven.
The next two days are spent eating, (we had cooking and clean up duties one day so got to spend time in the kitchen...oh boy!), drinking, swimming, swinging on ropes, exploring islands, having a great barbeque, reading, snorkeling and chilling with a fantastic group of people on the ship. Lori and I only spent the first night in our room and the next three nights out on the deck under a fantastic Caribbean sky...one of the few times we have seen the milky way in the tropics. The San Blas Island area has the second most number of lightning strikes of any place on earth and I can believe it...every night was a fantastic show of lightning..but no rain! Our time in the San Blas came to an end way too quickly...but the next portion of our trip begins when we hit shore in Panama. HOWEVER..to do this we must unload the motos into Kuna canoes...a somewhat nerve-racking operation as these are carved wood canoes, long in length but narrow in width. We may be nervous but the Kuna Indians figure no big problem and along with our three bikes toss in a full load of paying Kuna Indians! Once we hit the shore we continued up a narrow river for about 2km (here even the Kuna got a little nervous as the heavily laden canoe was barely able to make progress against the current ) after which we ended up unloading the motos in the river. Here we said goodbye to the friends we made on the Stahlratte (however we have continued to see some of them up to a month after leaving them on the banks of the Rio Carti) and started on the rough dirt track through the Cordillera San Blas (mountains) to the tarmac Darien Gap road which will lead us back to Panama City!

Stahlratte in the San Blas (constructed in Holland in 1903 as a fishing boat, the "Steel Rat" is a historic sailing vessel owned by a consortium of German folks that own the boat and rent it out to pay for upkeep and maintenance costs)

the Stahlratte gang

Kuna village in the San Blas Islands

off loading Lori's bike into a canoe on the Panama end......

3 motos in a Kuna canoe

We get boarded by the coast guard and the sniff dog before we leave Colombia - with cocaine selling for less than $5.00 a gram here, I wonder why?

relaxing on the boat

Kuna woman selling her molas

maybe we should stay....

Into FARC Territory

our nice paved road deteriorates

here we are high in the mountains between Bogota and Medellin

in Florencia - some of our constant companions

some slimy roads

into the mountains - guerrilla territory...coca and FARC

Okay here goes the unexpected adventure – we are leaving Bogota, Colombia after a couple of days and are heading to Medellin. We are tired of the slow trucks and buses and see a secondary road marked on our map that goes to Medellin and travels through the mountains. Great, we think – the trucks will stay on the relatively flat main roads and we can cruise the curvy mountain roads. So we head off to El Dorado where we spend the night. A nice little town with friendly people. The only odd thing is the airport that is marked on the map does not appear to be a commercial one, but one where noisy fighter jets are taking off quite regularly. Chris has to bump start his bike, but other than that, the takeoff was uneventful. According to our map and Felix’s GPS it is only about 150kms to Medellin so we expect to get there early. On the road and start to climb into the mountains – great riding, no traffic and winding roads. The roads gradually deteriorate from pavement with some gravel to downright rough, narrow, sharp rocky dirt roads winding through the mountains and the odd house along the road. Lori makes the offhand comment that she is expecting to see the coca fields any time now. When we stop for lunch in Naconsi, we are told that it is still 5 hours to Sonson. We are sure there is a mistake and they don’t know what they are talking about. Later, we stop for a quick break and realize that at the last stop Lori has left the camera on top of the bike when she took off, and it is no longer with us. Chris hops on the 250 and cruises back 8km to find the camera in the middle of the road, squashed by the only truck we had seen on the road.(this has been a very hard trip on cameras!) At this stop, a jeep comes past and tells us we are still 8 hours to Medellin – this is at 2:30 in the afternoon and that we will soon be in Florencia where we should stay as there are no towns for 4 hours between Florencia and Sonson. We arrive in Florencia and debate whether to push on and camp along the way or stay in Florencia. After some discussion, we head to the centro where there is a decent place to stay. While we are debating what to do we notice the town is full of army and police and an army helicopter lands at the centro and more army get out. Everyone looks a little surprised to see us. We get settled into the hotel and Felix goes for a 10km training run and Chris and Lori set off to explore the town. We are approached by the military commander who speaks decent English and he wants to see our passports and know what we are doing in this town and how we got here. Turns out that we are in the middle of FARC Guerrilla territory and now that we are here, the army wants to know our every move so they can ‘coordinate security for our activities’. (they are very upset that Felix has gone off running into the hills and we have no way to contact him). We explain that we are just planning on exploring the town, spending the night and heading to Sonson the next day.
They want us to check in with them before we leave in the morning and they are going to secure the road to Sonson before we travel on it (it is still 5 hours ride to Sonson). They are surprised that we managed to get through Naconsi without being stopped by the army and even more surprised that we hadn’t yet run into any trouble. We decide to return the 2 hours to Naconsi the next day and travel to Medellin by the main Bogota-Medellin highway.
The day and night spent in that town were amazing. They had literally never had any foreign tourists there and hardly any Colombians from elsewhere there either. All the kids in town and the adults gathered around talking to us and we couldn’t go anywhere without attracting a huge crowd of people. The kids were great – they were learning English in school so it was fun to talk to them and their English teacher and her brother met us later that night for coffee. She was telling us that 3 years earlier, the FARC had terrorized this village of 1,300 people. They would come out of the hills into the town and just take whatever they needed from the people. So now that the army and police are thick in the town, it is no longer a FARC stronghold, but they are still around in the mountains and it is dangerous to travel on the roads outside the town (especially for us).
The feeling in the town is of a place divided. Obviously there are still FARC supporters in town so not everyone appreciates the heavy police presence. It is so interesting to see how the conflict in Colombia has affected people in these remote mountain villages. People are super friendly but are very careful when talking about local politics. One of the locals that looked after the Florencia jungle reserve next to the village wanted to take us exploring in the mountains, obviously feeling that it was totally safe for us, but we decided we had already pushed our luck and would leave early the next day. It felt surprisingly sad to leave this little town and we had a large part of the village population standing outside waving us goodbye as we rolled down the road.

Colombia on the flip flop

Hola Colombia...back to the land where motos rule!! As usual we were welcomed into Colombia with an easy border crossing with super friendly officials and police. The immigration stamp was easy but to clear the moto’s we had to travel through a nightmare of traffic to the airport in Cucuita (a typical border town..messy, dusty, pothole ridden streets packed with smoking trucks) to the Aduana where friendly staff worked through their lunch break to get our papers completed. As our paperwork took a little longer than usual we only made it to the mountain town of Pamplona where we pushed our motos into a restaurant full of people (much to their delight!).

The mountain roads south of this city traverse some beautiful country-side and we love the ride into San Gil..our second stop in Colombia. This is a famous old city full of old colourful buildings and a fantastic riverside park full of ancient Ceiba trees that hold massive amounts of arboreal lichen that hang like ghosts from the branches and foliage.

However we will always remember San Gil as the village in which the Hondog 650 burnt up...and on September 11th to boot!!! It seems that my “not so trusty” Acerbis headlight shorted out and burnt the entire wiring harness up (another irony is the fact that the bike coasted to a stop in a ball of smoke and open fire in the battery, fuse area...right in front of a motorcycle shop!) to which the local mechanics said “3 days minimum to install new wires (no hope of getting stock parts). After pushing the bike back to our hostel Felix and I set to work and some 10 hours, 10 feet of new wire, 2 rolls of electrical tape and mucho sore fingers we have IGNITION! (A little “hay-wire” as I have to touch 2 wires together to get the bike fired up)

BACK ON THE ROAD...and into the old colonial town of Villa de Leyva...playground of the rich and famous from Bogota and the oldest village in Colombia. This place is way too organized and clean to be in S America but its charms grew on us over the 3 nights we spent is little village.

Next stop is Zipaquira which is ``home`` to the famous Salt Cathedral...a cathedral that holds 8400 people and is built in a solid mountain of salt. (Actually was an old salt mine at one time) The cathedral was nothing like what we expected (we thought that there was a huge hole in the mountain in which a massive cathedral was constructed)...the mountain is the cathedral and all of the crosses, places to sit and worship are carved out of the mountain..so in effect you do not see an actual cathedral (or building of any sort)...just the interior of a cathedral. Pictures can never do this place justice as its main attraction is its sheer size...crosses are over 20 meters in height etc.

downtown Bogota

Onto Bogota...capital of Colombia and home to over 8 million souls and 3 very lost motorcyclists. A big thank you to Felix who literally ordered a poor motorcyclist to show us the way to our hostel (only after I got us lost and yelled at by police for breaking every traffic rule known to man) (any other place in Colombia this is not only acceptable but EXPECTED of all motorcyclists!

We hiked up the famous mountain...Monseratt (which we hiked up the famous mountain...Monseratt (which ironically is now on fire), wandered all over town and tried to find some moto parts for the Hondogs.

Cathedral Primada-Santafe de Bogota in downtown Bogota. In the 1990's M19 guerrillas assassinated 80 federal judges in this building. Needless to say security is tight around here!

Lori and I enjoyed Bogota despite the fact that I was attacked when a thief tried to steal my camera. I ended up losing some skin but got a few good kicks in (and he slugged me a few times) before Lori jumped in (you go girl!!!) and the thief finally ran off. The only piss-off to me was that at least 20 people watched us slug it out and no one made a single move to help! Good bye Bogota!

We are now crossing Colombia from east to west through a series of mountain ranges and Felix has discovered a backroad to Medellin that we want to take...he figured about a day to cover the 120 kms but after arriving in the mountain village of Florencia after a day of riding and realizing that it was another 10 hrs to Medellin via rough dirt road and the army saying that they would have to supply an escort to protect us through FARC territory, we decided enough was enough and headed back to the main road. )more about this in separate blog entry...

a beautiful old cathedral in Medellin

barrios

A beautiful young girl in the barrio area of Santo Domingo in Medellin, Colombia. We could not believe how friendly these poor people were. This gal's father invited us into his house and gave us all the ripe fruit off a small fruit tree he had growing in his yard. The people of Colombia were definitely the hi-light of our month long stay in this friendly country!

Medellin was a revelation...this is no ordinary S American city...it is full of money and I have never seen so many BMWs (some Ferraris, lots of Porsche) and fancy places to eat and party in my life! We paid a visit to one of the Barrio`s (ghetto`s) and found the people surprisingly friendly! Lori`s computer broke down (hard drive problems) and she managed to get a new hard drive installed and purchased a new camera to replace the ONE SHE DROPPED AND HAD RUN OVER! (so its not only me!!!)

even the army and police were friendly!

From Medellin we headed north to Cartagena via roads that we travelled back in April. Some gorgeous scenery, rain and a huge military build-up about 150 km south of Cartagena. I was really surprised to see a Blackhawk helicopter circle above us but have learnt that the US has supplied Colombia with 5 of these choppers for the `war on drugs``.

Lori and Felix enjoying an evening drink on the walls that surround the old city of Cartagena

old town Cartagena is a beautiful classy place

It felt like coming back home to roll into Cartagena (didn`t stop me from getting temporarily lost though!) and we spent a couple of enjoyable days relaxing and exploring with Felix.

one of the many Caribbean beaches in Colombia's Tayrona National Park

bats, bats, everywhere!!

However having seen its charms during our previous visit we abandoned the motos and jumped a bus for a ride through the bustling industrial city of Barranquilla to the remote beaches of Tayrona National Park...touted as containing the most beautiful of Colombia`s Caribbean beaches. Walking through jungle and down a series of beaches for a couple of hours is a great way to enjoy a park and best of all there are places to stay along the way. We spent three days exploring (beaches and ruins), swimming, relaxing and sleeping in hammocks (all are great except that last one...hammocks and my back just don`t get along!). We enjoyed this part of Colombia the most and some of our best memories are the huge thunder and rain storms at night laying in our hammocks under a grass hut.

laid back lifestyle in the small fishing village of Taganga

Next stop is the fishing village of Taganga...a neat run-down looking village on the Caribbean..poor for sure but the very best fruit smoothies we have ever tasted! (and about 20 different flavours..a huge glass for under a dollar)
Back in Cartagena we had a day of rest before we tackled the job of loading the motos on a rubber raft and then loading them onto the 100 foot Stahlratte (Steel Rat to us!). Felix sure breathed a sigh of relief to see his BMW on board and not at the bottom of the chuck!

small town Colombian greyhound bus

ready for the rain

better, bigger and cheaper than Canadian fruit markets

Any stop anywhere in Colombia...the people are so friendly and just want to talk and meet you!