Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Choluteca is a city in Honduras.  Now you know at least one city in Honduras.  How many of you know what the capitol of Honduras is?  I’ll give you even more points if you know how to pronounce it correctly, because it is a mouthful.  Tegucigalpa.  We never made it to the capitol, but the two days we have spent here in Choluteca just leave me wanting more of Honduras. 

When we crossed into Honduras we were really expecting the worse, but we have only been pleasantly surprised since we’ve been here.  Choluteca has such a lively center.  And the church and old town are beautiful and honestly charming.  Once the sun sets I’d advise staying close to your hotel room, but that is the case in a lot of Central American cities.  With little kids we don’t venture far from “home” at night anyway, so it isn’t any sort of imposition at all for us. 

We’ve turned heads like never before here.  Women of all ages have been real suckers for our two blue-eyed boys in all of Latin America, but we’re drawing attention to even the men.  Yesterday when we were walking through town I remember we passed a billiard hall where about 10 men were sitting on a window ledge.  As we walked by at least 8 of them turned around to stare at us.  But it doesn’t stop there.  William and Julian showed interest in a woman selling sweet tamales on the street.  We were planning on eating dinner later so we told them we wouldn’t buy any right then.  But the woman insisted on giving them each a tamale.  Matthias asked how much we should pay, but they refused.  They were gifts for our beautiful boys. 

Choluteca is also very hot.  During the hottest part of the day the temperature was around 103º F (40º C).  This kind of heat sends Seattleites into a frenzied tailspin.  But here, life seems to have the requisite pace to deal with that kind of heat on a regular basis.  Everything moves slowly, and even the street vendors don’t bother you with aggressive sales techniques.  It is just too dang hot to exert that much energy.

We also found a nice Comedor (eatery) where we had most of our meals.  The menu isn’t complicated – there is only one thing on it each day.  They only thing you specify is how many plates you want.  Most of the meals were traditional for this area: beans, eggs, tortillas, meat for dinner and fried plantains for breakfast.  They were substantial, filling, tasty meals, and each plate only cost around 2 dollars.   

We didn’t do much other than eat, sleep, check out the city and spend time at the playground.  But the slow-placed, friendly atmosphere pleased us so well we spent an extra night there.  Choluteca doesn’t have any “sights.”  Other than the surrounding beautiful countryside there wasn’t much of interests to tourists, other than regular Honduran life.  We most likely won’t be traveling back to Honduras on the rest of our trip, and we think that is kind of unfortunate.  If this is just a sampling of what a lot of Honduras is like, I think this country is worth visiting and I’m sorry we won’t get to see more of it.

After leaving Alajuela we spent two more nights at Playa Hermosa, where we had already been 3 other times.  This has been one of our favorite spots on our entire trip and it seemed like a nice way to end our time in Costa Rica. 

The next day we headed for Nicaragua. 

We had planned on having a relatively stressful couple of days ahead of us: 3 border crossings in 4 days.  We arrived at the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border and found an unbelievably long line.  People were estimating that it would take 3 hours just to get your passport stamped.  Since we are traveling with our car we have a bunch of other paperwork and steps to go through, so we were a little worried.  I decided to just get in line and start waiting.  Matthias was close to the front office with William and Julian.  He inevitably started talking to people there (since they don’t leave you alone) and a guy said that if we were to give him $20 he would get us through the line in 10 minutes.  There are all sorts of people at this border telling you they can get you through faster.  They were there the last time when we crossed into Costa Rica.  Eventually we found out that if you are traveling with kids all you have to do is go to the front of the line and they’ll let you right in.  We tried it and it worked.  We saved ourselves about 3 hours and 20 dollars!  I had always wondered if those guys were for real.  While I was waiting in line I started talking to a guy from Nicaragua and he eventually paid 3000 colones (about 6 dollars) to get a guy to get him through faster.  As I was walking out of the office with our stamped passports he was at the front of the line.  So it actually does work.  I imagine these guys have a deal with the guards and they get of cut of what people pay to get through faster. 

We eventually made it through the border and headed into Nicaragua.  We were nervous about driving in Nicaragua again since we had such a rough time on our way through the last time.  We ran into lots of police controls, corrupt cops and just plain unfriendly people.  This time things couldn’t have been more different.  It took us over an hour to run into our first police control.  We’ve heard from a bunch of people that the police in Nicaragua always ask for your emergency triangles.  Most people don’t have them and this is how they get bribes out of a lot of drivers.  We actually picked some up in Leon on our way through Nicaragua and they sure came in handy.  Of course they were buried under the seat with the kid’s car seats, and the policeman made us wake both William and Julian to get them out.  He was chuckling and looking around our car when on the other side of the road 2 more people they had pulled over were giving the police a hard time.  I mean a really hard time, and they were getting loud and started pushing the police, and the policeman slammed his clipboard on they guys head.  I saw what was going on and started to become alarmed.  Our policeman saw too and raced over to help his fellow officers.  At that point we put everything back in our car as fast as possible and just drove away, unscathed.  The next police control went totally fine also and he let us go without even giving us a hard time.  We spent one night in Masaya, which turned out to be a great city.  And then we spent 2 nights in Esteli, which was also great. 

We were also worried about the Honduras border.  The border crossing the last time we went through Honduras was by far the worst (and was what prompted Matthias to write his own blog entry “The other side of the border”).  But we chose to cross in a different city this time and all we encountered were nice helpful people, and we were through in 45 minutes.  The last time in Honduras we also had our first encounter with corruption within about 5 minutes – a guy wanting 20 dollars for nothing.  He didn’t even pretend we did anything wrong.  He just said “viente dolares”.  But this border went so smooth and the drive afterwards was spectacular.  It is a contender for one of our top 5 most beautiful drives on this trip.  And since we’ve been in Honduras we’ve just been so pleasantly surprised.  Nice people, smooth border crossings, beautiful landscape. 

After the border crossing we saw a car wash on the side of the road (2 guys with a pressure washer, soap and a big bucket of water) and decided to get the car washed.  We had parked the Yoda Van under a tree in Alajuela, and if you’ve done any reading on Costa Rica you know how many species of birds there are there.  Needless to say, our car was desperately in need of a good cleaning.  But it was so pleasant standing there in the sun for 45 minutes while these men washed our car, and talking with a few people who walked by.  It is strange how your impressions of a country can change so fast.  Neither Matthias nor I were looking forward to driving through Nicaragua or Honduras.  We had such rough experiences on our first way through that we decided to go through as fast as we can, straight to El Salvador.  Now we are both wishing we had more time in both of those countries. 

On February 12th around 3:00 in the afternoon Big Bird left our family abruptly when he was thrown out of a Costa Rican express bus traveling from the Costa Rica-Panama border towards the capitol San Jose.  Big Bird is survived by his lifelong partner Julian Bay.  What makes this event even more tragic is that Big Bird was thrown out of the window by Julian himself.  Julian had spent nearly half his life with Julian when he launched Big Bird into a roadside ditch near the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.

No one knows exactly where Big Bird came from, but he was most likely born in China and from there shipped to the United States where he was purchased for $14.99 on EBay by Julian’s mother, Allison Bay.  Since Big Bird joined the Bay family he had traveled extensively with them: Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, England, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.  During their relationship Julian and Big Bird were nearly unseparable.

Julian’s mother appeared to be more upset about the loss than Julian, who promptly took up with a small red rooster.  Rest In Peace, dear Big Bird.

The 3 days we spent on San Blas were interesting for a few reasons. One is that it really was one of the highlights of our trip. It must be one of the most beautiful places in the world, and definitely one of the most beautiful we’ve all seen in our lives. It was also extremely interesting culturally. Another reason it was momentous was that it was also the farthest point we will travel from home on our entire trip. With our flight back to Panama City we began the long road home.

Don’t think that means we’ll be home anytime soon, though. We still have a very long road to travel and expect to be on the road for another 4 or 5 months.

Some stats on our travels:
• We traveled in 8 countries on this trip so far (US, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama). We expect to add one more country to this list on our way home: Belize.
• We’ve driven almost exactly 10,000 miles in the Yoda Van.
• We’ve traveled about another 1000 miles by bus in Panama and Costa Rica.
• 3 trips to the repair shop: CV Joint, Speedometer and Leaky Gas Tank
• We haven’t paid a cent in bribes so far which is unheard of in Central America.
• 4 trips to the hospital, 9 stitches, 1 broken bone
• We’ve been invited to stay at 5 friends’ house on our way to Panama. On our route home we have another 6 people willing to put us up for a few days on our way home.
• We’ve had more than 40,000 hits on our blog since we started, have posted 72 entries and received only 35 comments.
• We’ve taken 4500 pictures, deleted 2000 of them and have 2500 keepers.
• No serious sunburns.
• 1 family blowout
• 3 visitors
• Spent the night in 70 different cities
• 1 turn at karaoke
• Cheapest beer was 40 cents (in Panama).
• Most expensive beer was 3.00 (in Antigua, Guatemala).
• We came within 500 miles of the equator.

And most importantly we’ve had zero regrets and would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Our final trip in Panama was to the San Blas islands, which is home to the Kuna Indians.  The Kuna are the only inhabitants on the San Blas islands, which comprises somewhere around 365 islands.  This area is similar to Indian reservations in the US in that they have they own set of laws and are not governed by the Panamanian government.  They highly restrict what visitors are allowed to do and where they are allowed to go when they come to their islands (many of the islands are uninhabited).  Each picture you take of a Kuna woman in traditional dress costs $1.00.  The Kuna women are the makers of Molas, traditional weavings sold all over Panama.  They also still wear their traditional clothing: a red and yellow scarf on their head, a blouse made out of one of their molas, a skirt, a gold ring in their septum and their legs are wrapped in beads.  See some pictures here: http://thorup.com/cuna.html

Molas for sell on Isla Pelicano, San Blas

Normally when people go to San Blas you pay one price per day which includes a hotel room, 3 meals per day and transportation to other islands for swimming and snorkeling.  We flew out to El Porvenir for 3 nights and took trips to 2 other islands – Dog Island and Pelicano.  The planes leave Panama City at 6:00 AM and it is just a short 30-minute flight in a tiny 25 passenger plane to the islands. 

The islands we visited were postcard perfect islands covered in palm trees and surrounded by white sand and crystal clear water.  These islands are the quintessential paradise island.  We spent 2 days on Dog Island, which has a ship wreck and great snorkeling just off shore.  The other day we spent on Pelicano which was roughly the size of half of a football field.  We slung our hammock between two palm trees, swam and snorkeled all day long. 

One evening we took a boat over to a Kuna community.  The entire island is covered in bamboo huts with roofs thatched with palm fronds.  It was interesting to walk through their community and see a bit of daily life.  The Kuna believe strongly in respecting nature and to use it only to survive.  They own a portion of land on the Panamanian mainland and leave it as untouched jungle.  They venture out there to hunt when they need to.  Most of their diet consists of food from the ocean and coconuts.  They barter with these commodities to acquire other goods.  One of the nicest things about this area is that there are no mega-resorts and extremely few tourists.  The Kuna are able to subsist on these islands without selling out their land for tourism.  As such it remains amazingly untouched, clean and preserved.

One other unusual thing about the Kuna is that they have the highest rate of albinism of any community in the world.  Roughly 1 out of every 200 births is an albino child.  We saw 3 albinos in the 3 days we spent here.  Albinos are treasured in this society.  Unusual since they look so out of place with their yellow hair, mangled mouths and pinkish skin. 

I’m sorry if this hasn’t made the most interesting blog entry.  It is hard to write about this experience.  A lot of what makes this place so special is learning about their Kuna society and then actually visiting the islands and spending some time there.  They inhabit one of the most beautiful places in the world and have been able to resist the change and development that so often occurs in spots like this (Acapulco, Cancun, etc.)  It’s probably best that you read a little about the Kuna.  The website I mentioned earlier gives a nice short summary.  After that take a look at some more pictures we put up on our flickr site.  Really, the pictures speak for themselves.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebays/ 

You really won’t believe what you see.  I look at them myself and I can’t believe we were actually in a place so spectacular. 

We’ve put more pictures up on our flickr site.  These are pictures that we’ve taken since we left Alajuela and include Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica and Bocas, Boquete, El Valle and Las Lajas, Panama.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebays/

On Sunday evening we made it to Panama City and arrived at our friend’s house whom we met at the El Salvador border.  You might remember an earlier post of ours about a family of Hummer drivers that were required to pay many hundreds of dollars in bribes in order to get into Guatemala.  We’ve been in contact with them over e-mail and they offered us a free place to stay and we couldn’t pass them up.

The skyline of Panama City is very different from all the other Central American capitols – it is full of skyscrapers.  Most people advise to just pass through the capitols in Central America, but Panama City actually has some interesting sights to see.  One is the Panama Canal.  Our friends Fernando and Alegria live about 5 blocks from the Canal and we can here ships passing through the locks when they blow their horn.  We went up to the locks and watched a few container ships pass through one of the locks.  It’s kind of neat to think of all the goods that go through this canal and where they end up – probably quite a few of them end up in my living room.

Fernando and Alegria also have 3 boys ages 3, 5 and 6.  The first night we were here there was another family over for Sunday dinner with their son (age 31/2) so there were 6 boys all between the ages of 2 and 6.  6 little boys sure is a trip, but they all had so much fun playing together.  Sunday dinner was spectacular – typical homemade Latin food, rice, beans, ground beef with raisins and a soup made of some vegetable I’d never even seen.

We also took a bus ride around the city.  We were tying to get to a travel agency to book our flight to San Blas, but we got on the wrong bus and had a nice hour long tour through the city (including the old town) in one of the Red Devils (old American school buses painted in bright colors).  Last night we attended a free concert in one of the parks on traditional Panamanian folk music and dancing.  Alegria is really knowledgeable about the city and Panama and it was interested to hear her explain about the dancing and costumes of the dancers.  Plus the weather in the evenings is so pleasant it was just nice to be outside in the evening.

What has also been cool is taking rides in their 2 Hummers around the city.  One of their Hummers has a total of 4 TV screens.  At one point one of Alegria’s sons was upset because he couldn’t see the movie playing.  She said to him “There are 4 TV screens in this car and if you can’t see it I just don’t know what to tell you.”  I’ve never had the opportunity to ride in a Hummer, but I’ve had more rides in the last few days than most people will have in their lifetime.  It’s funny that we had to travel to the 3rd world to have that experience.

One of the most amusing things for me is that Fernando bears an uncanny resemblance to John Turturro – think of Jesus in the Big Lebowski.  Today when we went to the hardware store we saw Fernando’s Hummer parked outside, but he was no where to be found.  All of the sudden he appeared and was standing right next to us.  Two seconds later he was gone and his Hummer too.  Did you ever see that movie Mr. Deeds where John Turturro plays the sneaky butler that comes and goes without a sound?  The parallels between Fernando and this actor are crazy!

Our next stop is Isla Pelicano in the San Blas islands.  Today we picked up some rope and yesterday we bought a hammock to sling between palm trees on our island.  We fly out tomorrow morning bright and early at 6 AM and are staying for 3 nights.  From what I’ve heard about these islands I expect this might be one of the highlights of our trip.

We have been traveling for a little more than 6 months and a strange thing started to happen. It took me a while to figure out what it was. Routine has set in. Traveling becomes your new life. When we first started everything was new and everything was a challenge: living in the Yoda Van, the border crossings, being pulled over by corrupt policemen, not understanding the language, etc. All of this we have learned to deal with. We are able to communicate (sort of at least), border crossings don’t scare us anymore, we know how to deal with corrupt cops, and in other words we really know what we are doing now. Not too many new and surprising things are happening anymore.
We have talked to other travelers who have been on the road for a long time and many of them said the same thing. After about 7 or 8 months they are ready to settle somewhere and I think I can understand why.

After traveling for so long everything just becomes another routine. Another beautiful beach, another sunset, another waterfall, rainforest, national park, parrot, crocodile etc. To see all of this, you need to pack all of your stuff, drive to next place, find a place to stay, unpack your stuff and think about where you want to go to next and then the same thing all over again. And to me this is getting old and repetitive. I am really looking forward to fly to the San Blas Islands on Thursday (click here to see a picture of the island we will be staying on) and start the trip back. That doesn’t mean that I am ready in any way to be back in Seattle (definitely not with all cold weather they have there right now). On the contrary. I am looking forward for to what’s ahead. We will not hit very much unknown territory anymore. From now on we know exactly what we want to do, what we want to see, who we want to meet again and take advantage of all we have learned on the road so far to.  We’ll go back to Costa Rica, spend one or two days at playa Hermosa (our favorite place in C R). We won’t spent much more time in Nicaragua and Honduras, but spend more time in El Salvador, my favorite country (Allison’s favorite so far is a toss up between Mexico and Guatemala). In El Salvador everything will be all about great food and meeting William’s friends again. There are a few places left to see in Guatemala and then we will try to rent an apartment on Yucatan for a couple of weeks, where my nephew from Germany will come to visit us. It will also be fun to camp in the Yodavan again. 

And even if some things are getting old and repetitive about being on the road for so long. One thing never does. Being with the kids 24 hours a day! Ok, there are moments where a break would be nice (anyone interested in babysitting when we come back?)

Today we have been on the road for 6 months. We can hardly believe that we have been traveling for so long. Tomorrow we will probably make it to the Panama Canal. After that we will have one short trip a little farther south to the San Blas islands which are on northeast coast of Panama, close to Columbia. After that we will start the long journey home.

Yesterday we had our 4th trip to the Emergency room on this trip.  We had just found a hotel room here in El Valle, dropped our stuff off in our room and were about to check out the town.  We walked by a bird cage that had a parrot inside.  William wanted to get a bit closer to talk to the parrot, tripped on a little ledge, fell and smacked his brow bone on a stone wall.  It was bleeding heavily and it appeared that it was a pretty bad cut.  A woman sitting there offered to drive us to the hospital right away.  When we got there they took him right away and he now has 5 stitches over his eyebrow.

William is doing really well though.  We got some pain medication and he hasn´t taken any of it.  He was back jumping around and playing not 30 minutes after leaving the hospital.  In Panama City we´ll have to find a doctor to remove the stitches, but our friends in Panama City should be able to help us with that.

While William was being treated Matthias stayed with him and I took Julian out into the waiting room.  There was a bulletin board with some public-health pamphlets on various pertinant topics for people in the community.  It was really interesting to read.  One was on nutrition and basically contained the same information we hear in the states: eat balanced meals, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, minimize grease and fried foods, don´t drink or smoke, etc.  There was an interesting pamphlet on sexual relations and they stressed the importance that both men and women wash their hands and genitals thoroughly after engaging in sexual intercourse.  I guess no one ever taught me that, so I´m glad I read that.  But the most interesting one was how to prevent body odor.  The tips were straight forward: bathe regularly, change your clothes often, etc.  I just thought it was interesting that they would even need a pamphlet on this.  This level of hygiene is so commonplace in the United States.  Really most people in Panama don´t need this advice – they know what to do to stay clean and odor-free.  But there still are groups of people here that are quite poor and maybe do need this kind of information.  It is hard to imagine, but definitely interesting and eye-opening.

The last entry I wrote was from Boquete.  The morning we were leaving we were planning on going to the coast to Las Lajas with Berni and Trixi.  We were staying at different hotels and didn´t run into them in town.  We were dissapointed that we might not see them again and didn´t get to say goodbye, but the bus was leaving and we were ready to go.

Guess who gets on the bus about 4 stops later?  Berni and Trixi.  We were so happy to see them and all went on to the coast together.  Actually on the travellers circuit it is pretty common to run into people you´ve met along the way.  On the bus to Panama we were sitting in front of a nice couple from Seattle.  We ran into them twice in Boquete and at the David bus stop.  We were waiting for bus on Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua when we ran into a girl we met in Antigua, Guatemala.  When Matthias and Cy were decending the volcano on Isla de Ometepe they ran into a guy we met in Xela.  It´s crazy how often that happens and it´s nice to see familiar faces when you are so far away from home.

We all got a bus to Las Lajas.  The beach is a ways from town, but the bus driver had called ahead and there was a taxi waiting for us when we got off the bus.  He drove us down to a bunch of cabins right on the beach with the Pacific at our doorstep.  They were extremely rustic, but extremely cool, too.  They were bamboo huts and all it contained was a wooden bed made out of bamboo and a thin plastic matress.  No sheets, no pillows, no blankets, no real windows and the door that didn´t really shut also didn´t have a lock.  The best part about it was that we were the only ones on the beach.  And at night you could see only 2 lights way down the beach.  We went swimming, played in the sand and drank lots of Panamanian beers.

The only complaint I have about the beers is that the bottles are so small.  Each bottle only has 285 ml.  On one hand that is good because if they were bigger they would get warm before you can finish the bottle.  On the other hand though, you end up drinking a lot more bottles of beer than you would if they are bigger.  In the end I know it all amounts to the same, but it is just a psychological problem I have that I´ll have to work through.  I think another week of sitting on the beach swimming and relaxing might help me get over it.

After two nights we left for another mountain town called El Valle, where we are now.  It is absolutely beautiful and has a real small town feel.  The weather is better than it was in Boquete and our hotel has 2 hammocks.  This morning we went to hot springs with William and Julian.  They have some sort of special mud that you smear all over your body, let dry and then jump into the pools.  I hope when we get to Panama City I can upload some pictures so you see what we look like covered in mud.