Costa Rican Roadie

I started write a post yesterday about Granada but something screwed up.  We are in Nicaragua, we got into town just after dark.  I thought getting to El Salvador was a pain in the butt, getting here was crazier.  Like all the borders we come into there are people everywhere trying to help with the whole process cutting in line for you, watching your car, going to the bank whatever. The best one being one guy in Guatemala said if you don´t let me take this up to the office and pay for it, then you will be stuck here until monday, and i think it was only friday.  Well the people at the Honduran border had to be the worst. At first we thought it was going smooth.  While we waited in one line one of there guys would wait in the next line for us.  That went over real well considering the lines were long and people had been waiing a long time.  1 lady had a bus full of people she was trying to get through but our guy moved us ahead of all of them.  The lady ended up yelling at us and then the agent helping us and then the agent asked us for a $3 bribe and ignored the lady.  Once that line was done we had to wait at another location just past the border to get the other paper work done. Then they tell us the computers were down.  Then another agent had to be bribed to just go ahead and sign our paper work so we could get the hell out of there.  come to find out later that of course we over paid but after awhile we just wanted to leave.  Then the fun really began.  After Dana paid all the ¨helpers¨ one of the guys drove with us to the first military check point, something was said and he waved us through.  Not more than 2 miles up the road we hit another checkpoint and listen closely, if you are ever driving in Honduras, you need a fire extinguisher and a reflective triangle.  The fine for not having one is around a $6 fine or whatever the hell you have. About 3/4 of the way to Nicaragua we were stopped again and we had to pay another fine for not having a fire extinguisher.  You can stick 200 peope in the back of a short bed chevy luv pickup and you are cool but god forbid you don´t have that reflective triangle in your car.  I think that was the last time we got stopped.  who the hell knows.

When we got to the Nicaraguan border, i dont think we could have had a better experience.  there was 1 kid who was trying to help us and the whole process took 1 stop at 1 building.  Total time 10min.  The best is when i am waiting with the car for dana dane and it never fails a policia comes up to me, we start to talk, i get about a 1/3 of what he is saying he gets about 1/10th of what i am saying and we have a great laugh.  He ends up walking away with machine gun in tow wondering what the heck we were just talking about.  Once in Granada it was smooth sailing.  We wanted to get to Granada ASAP because we didn´t want to drive at night.  Granada is beautiful old colonial style homes everywhere.  The place we are staying was actually 2 homes.  About 9 rooms total with a small pool in the back.  We did meet some guy who just last year had driven from Santa Fe New Mexico to Granada and is now in the process of getting his residency.  small world.Found an awesome restaraunt, again colonial style.  the people here are nice, it is a very quite place and sits at the edge of Lago de nicaragua.  Lago means lake for my nonspanish speaking friends.  This lake is huge.  It is the 10th largest lake in the world.  Just a shade bigger than Lake Murray. 

We are finally off to Costa Rica soon, we should be there sometime tonight.  We are going to do a little sight seeing here and then cut out.  It´s been a great trip so far and im sorry to see it end.  I wish everyone could have enjoyed this with us.

Now onto my second post on public transportation in Central America.  There is no such thing as an official bus stop.  A bus stop here is definied as the place on the side of the road where  you are standing.  so everyone has a bus stop in front of there house, or in some cases a chevy luv truck stop in front of there house.  These buses will pick any and everything up.  If there is a tiny space on that bus, then there is a spot for you. No joke, i saw a lady, a rather hefty one at that, hanging on to the bus door and the door was closed.  This lady was on the outside of the bus.  There was no stopping her.  I almost offered her a ride but i couldnt catch up to the bus, it was going to damn fast.  some of the buses don´t even come to a stop.  They might slow down and if you are quick enough you might be able to get on these buses.  they do open the doors though so you can get try to get on.  Enough of that.  We are going to cruise down to Lake Murray jr and then probably head out.  I am pretty sure we fly in on Thursday so i will let you know when.  we are on the Kurt Fu buddy pass so I wont know for sure until wednesday.  I will call you guys from houston and see what flight i am on if i can´t tell you sooner.  Hope everything is going well.  ¿por que mi casa esta muy lejos?  Hasta luego and no Blue we haven´t seen the rusty trombone playing anywhere.  Shout out to Tony´s bar in Puerto Escondido.  If you ever get the chance you have to visit Granada.  Rambling!  Hasta

Well we finally made it.  I don’t know how we did it but we did it.  It was a great experience and I would do it again given the chance. The last leg of the drive was pretty easy. We were able to get a later start than normal which was really nice.  Before we cut out Dana Dane gave a little tour of the centro Granada.  There is a beautiful Cathedral with a small park and shops all around.  The ciudad has so much to offer its too bad there wasn’t more time to spend there.  I think i mentioned this earlier, Granada sits on Largo de Nicaragua and it is huge.  There is an island near the southern part of the lake that has to volcanos, 1 active and the other has a lake inside of it.  So its a lake inside of a volcano inside of a lake.  They offer a tour where you can climb inside the volcano and use the lake inside of the volcano that is in a lake.  There are also 2 cities near the active lake that has about 50,000 people living there.  The drive to Costa Rica was a cool ride because it was then that we started to realise what the hell we just did and how cool it was.  I hope everyone enjoyed my jibberish and ramblings, mostly about  nothing most of the time. 

It’s really weird that this trip is over because there were one or two times when  i thought it would never end but now that its finally over I am going to miss those early morning starts where Dana is telling me to be more aggressive or Kurt’s constant grinding of the gears and stalling the car.  Driving through the borders while people are waving wads of their countrys currency at you trying to get you to exchange your money through them.  The Federales coming up to me with there machine guns hanging over there shoulders asking who knows what and me responding with who knows what.  We both have a big laugh as i constantly eye is trigger finger.  I will definitely miss the people piled in trucks and buses, Old guys with piles of wood on there backs walking up mountains.  Kids selling dead iguanas on a stick.  I can go on and on but it is our last night before we head home and I am sure I lost at least 2 of the last 3 people that are actually reading this.  I will miss this time that i got to spend with Dana and Kurt the most because those two idiots made this one of the best trips I have ever been on.  I feel a tear forming so I am out of here.  I will try to figure out how to put pictures on here so if that last person hasn’t bailed on me yet come back and see what we got.  Adios mis amigos and Hasta la pasta rastas!

What up people! We made it back to the states.  who the hell thought that after 3500 miles 11 days on the road and a short stint with Kurt Fu we would make it back.  I for one had my doubts a couple of times but we made it.  We are back home so don’t all call at once.  I think I am going to take a couple of days off and just drive around town.  Miss the road but its good to be home.  See everyone soon.  Pictures to come soon.

I don´t know how we made it, but we did. After we left Chihuahua, we started out for Aguascaliente. We almost made a wrong turn on the freeway but luckily Dana caught it and all we had to do was back up on the freeway and take a different exit. Once we got going in the right direction we thought it would be smooth sailing. Talk about a boring drive. There is nothing on that drive, not a darn thing especially a gas station. We brain farted for just a second and the next thing you know we are on E with nothing in site. We really started to get nervous because we were driving through the mountains and really had know idea how far the gas nearest gas station was. So we had to get off of the toll road and luckily we found a small town and had a federale show us where the nearest station was. We had to have been running on fumes. After that it was smooth sailing into Aquascaliente.
We found a hotel on the edge of town, a beautiful hotel and if I wasn´t so tired right now i could tell you what it was called, the grand hotel or something. It´s just to bad we couldn´t stay there longer. Had a great meal in town, walked to one of the churches where they was an event for palm sunday. It being sunday it was tough finding a place to relax after dinner but we found the ultimate dive bar where we met Pepe Luna. I need to get going, my time on here is limited but we will right more later. We are Toluca now where there is a huge thunderstorm that is soaking the city.
Shout out to the 80yo singing lady and to Pepe Luna. Kurt if you read this we will be in Puerto Escondido tomorrow sometime and should be in Acapulco in the mid afternoon. Call Dana and let him know if you can make it in. We will be in Puerto for a couple of days before heading to the border. Hasta luego amigos.