South America 2008

Man, I got lucky today. (I was lucky last night, too. I won $85 at the poker table, not from the Chinese dudes but from rich people who flashed hundreds and had stacks of up to a thousand bucks on the table; kind of a fun playground for these people but I felt like I didn’t belong. although it was clear that the money didn’t mean that much to them their play in general was smart and good.) The mechanic here was able to get an electric motor from a refrigerator and air conditioning shop that was almost identical to the one on my bike. he drilled a couple of holes in the assembly frame, changed up the wiring, and I was back in business. The motor cost $95 and the labor was $30 and the bike is fixed right now. The other option would have been at least $350 for a new assembly plus shipping from the states. I would have had to wait at least a week and have to ride around worrying about the engine overheating. What great luck…

We are headed to Portobelo, Panama to catch a ship that will sail to the san blas islands and then on to Cartagena. sailing time will be about four to five days and we will probably be completely off the grid for most of that time so we might not be able to update the blog for a while….

Friday evening, I took my bike apart in front of the hotel and removed the fan motor. I tested it and only black smoke fizzled from it. Ok, now I knew for sure that the motor was shot.

On Saturday morning, I went to the Kawasaki dealership and they told me that the $500 assembly would take a month to get there. Way too long. I’d rather have a friend ship the part from the States to somewhere in Colombia so that we wouldn’t lose too much time. A bit dejected I went to a motorcycle shop that was recommended on the Adventure Rider website. I located it by GPS which was a fun way to navigate. I had no idea about what roads to take or where exactly I would end up but I always knew distance and direction. It was a fun game.

The mechanic there was very helpful and we took the assembly to a refrigerator shop. Unfortunately, it was closing but outside he talked to a guy who worked there and he said that they had a refrigerator motor that would fit and that it would cost $90. The shop would reopen on Monday so I will head to the shop tomorrow and (fingers crossed) hopefully we can replace just the motor and fix the problem.

We also located an American captain of a 63 foot sailboat (with motor) that could take us and our bikes to Cartagena. The plan is to meet up with him Monday or Tuesday in Portobello, load the bikes and ourselves onto the boat with about 10 other travellers, and sail off into the Caribbean. We will stop at the San Blas islands in Panama, which are supposed to be incredible, before heading off to Cartagena where we will arrive in four to five days.

Hopefully, all will go as planned and we will be in Colombia by the end of the week with two healthy bikes. South America, woohoo!!!

Panama City has been a lot of fun. A lot of fun, active nightlife. It’s a very cosmopolitan city and if you stick to the good areas you should have no problems. Unfortunately, there are some sketchy areas but we’ve avoided those by asking people before we head off somewhere.

Last night, I lost $200 at the casino playing no limit Texas Hold ’Em. I was card dead and missed just about every flop. The table was interesting, though, I heard guys speaking french and chinese guys speaking Spanish. I was the only American on the table but poker has its own formalities that are universal and it was easy to jump into the game. I had great luck at blackjack and ended up plus twenty bucks for the whole night. I’m gonna try and get my money back from those Chinese dudes tonight.

During the day we rode out to the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal. We watched some ships pass through the locks and I was just amazed at how incredible the whole process was. And the Canal was built a hundred years ago. Simply amazing what mankind is capable of doing.

In the parking lot of the visitor’s center we met a Canadian couple from Montreal that are riding a BMW 1100 (or 1150) GS around the world over the next two years. It seems that there must be hundreds of us doing this same “unique” adventure since we keep running into foreigners on bikes everywhere. They were interested in the boat trip so we might see them in the next couple of days.

We finally made it to Panama City, the end of the road of sorts because from here we either get on a plane or a boat to Colombia. Central America has been great and I’m a bit sad to leave but South America awaits!

Wandering the streets of Panama City we ran into this motorcycle which apparently has been going around the world for 10 years

The smallest internet cafe we could find

Dirty boots in Guatemala… so I had some kids clean them… they were trying to hustle me for every penny I had

On our way out of Guatemala we made a bunch of wrong turns and found some cool landscapes and we had to do a puddle-crossing or two but it was nothing like the river crossings we later had to do in Nicaragua

We spent three days in David, Panama. Our goal was to find a motorcycle shop to fix the steering head problems with Roar’s bike. Also, my bike was starting to get hot and was making rattling noises. We lucked out and ran into an American expat who helped us out tremendously.

Paul lived about twenty five minutes outside of David and we took our bikes to his garage. On Roar´s bike they changed the Doohickey (a small engine counterbalancer part that is notorious for breaking and ruining motors), tightened up the steering head, and changed the oil and filter.

We diagnosed my problem as a broken radiator fan. I had ordered a bunch of aftermarket parts online and I got a free aluminum fan blade. I thought, well, it must be better than stock so I had the guys at Champion Motorcycles in Newport Beach (or Costa Mesa), California put it on. Big mistake. We’ve had many, many issues with missing screws, parts put on wrong,  and shoddy workmanship from their mechanics. I will never go there again. I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that this fan blade was put in wrong. Paul let me have a fan blade from one of his bikes and I had my friend, Steve, send my original fan blade to Paul’s shipper.

I also changed my oil and filter, topped off my coolant, and Paul brushed clean my spark plug.

We were planning to make a trip down into the wild, Darien province and take the Pan Am highway to its end in Central America. We thought it would be fun just to say that we did it since Lonely Planet calls it the wildest place left in the Western Hemisphere.

Paul told about a hostel that has information about ships that will take you and your bike from Panama City to the San Blas Islands for some diving or snorkeling and then on to Cartagena in a couple of days. That sounded unique and like it would be a lot of fun so we decided to change our plans. Darien would have to wait for another time.

Yesterday (March 13th), it took us about 5 hours to make it to Panama City. We got to cross this long, tall bridge over the bay that led to the Canal. It was one of those great moments where you think about what a great experience it is. I’m crossing over the Panama Canal!

Once we entered the city center we hit a lot of traffic. I noticed that my bike was getting hotter and hotter and finally I pulled it out of traffic to the side near a bunch of buses to let it cool down. The fan wasn’t working. What the hell is wrong now? The last time I noticed it working was that morning in Paul’s garage. Here, now that it was dark and the street was packed full of traffic I didn’t want to take the bike apart. We let it cool for 20 minutes and watched the packed rush hour traffic go by.

We started up again and lane split through half a mile of packed traffic before I had to stop again. I talked to a passer by and found out that we had passed by the street we wanted to turn at. Twenty minutes later we started off again, this time in the right direction and we went to the area where this hostel was supposed to be. Some locals told us it had closed so off we went to find another place.

By luck, we found the Costa Azul hotel which I found out later is a popular place to stay with motorcyclists.

This morning I tried to diagnose the problem (without taking the tank off) but I haven’t figured it out yet. The motor might be shot but the fan moves freely so I know it hasn’t seized up.

Roar tried to get a SIM card for his phone at a Movistar store so that I could call Paul for advice. After a frustrating hour he left with a SIM card but was not able to use it with his phone. So much for tri band.  We grabbed a quick lunch at a packed, bustling fast food joint and then found another hostel hoping to get information on boats heading to Cartagena. It was locked and nobody was at home.

So, we’re kinda stuck and a little bit frustrated. I’ve got a bike that I don’t know how and where to take to get fixed. If the fan motor is shot I don’t know if I can find a replacement here. I might have to have a friend buy it in the States and send it down to Cartagena. The only way I can do extended city driving is to take lots of breaks to let the engine cool. And, we don’t know how we’re getting to Colombia. It’s funny to think of this as the end of the road for us in Central America.

As annoying as it is, and really, it’s not that annoying, everything has always worked out in the end, and usually for the better, so patience and a little Taoist thought will go a long way. Besides, Panama City (the nice part) is a neat, large, cosmopolitan city. I’ve got to check more of it out, but I think the city might be worth it’s own four or five day trip with your buddies. I might even hit a casino and raise some money for the trip. (If they’ve got No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, I’m serious)

Now, I’m gonna try to call Paul…please be there, buddy!

Where are we now?

We could totally outrun this cop… but we didn’t have to because he was busy on the phone

We found a totally empty beach on our way to Puerto Viejo… we rode our bikes right down to it… Andy had to ride on it and was rewarded with some good exercise trying to get his bike out of the sand

My bike on a completely empty beach in Costa Rica

My feet in the Caribbean Ocean for the first time… it felt really good

A crab trying to pinch a hole in my tires in Costa Rica, Andy caught the little bastard but let go when his hand was pinched

Nightlife in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica…

Andy making his way across the border from Costa Rica to Panama. This shot was taken right after he got unstuck

After taking a wrong turn somewhere we ended up in Los Silencio where the road promptly ended in a river and the locals were giving us the “you are really lost, aren’t you” looks

After parking our bikes and a short boat ride we ended up in Bocas del Toro wandering the streets looking for a place to stay… life sucks without a motorcycle

Bocas del Toro the tropical island paradise… with lots of people partying like mad…

Bats! Creepy Crawlers! And the end of the tunnel…

We found some really nice roads on our way to David

Crossing these mountains we got rained on a bit

In David, Panama, we rolled up by a hotel to get a room for the night, knowing that our next step would be to find a mechanic. My stearing head was loose and Andy’s fan had quit on us. Outside the hotel a taxi driver comes running up to us, excited because he has a KLR as well and after explaining that we need a mechanic he calls an American expat, Paul, that can help. The next couple of days Paul helps us sort out our problems and soon we’ll be on our way

Andy’s bike all stripped down to get to the broken fan

The broken fan… not much left…

We spent three days at Bocas, a bunch of tropical jungle covered islands off the northeastern coast of Panama. There is a large expat presence on the main island (El Colon) and a large number of backpackers congregate here. There is a party somewhere every night and the people remind me of the type of partyiers that hit Main St in Huntington Beach. Wild, crazy, obnoxious, drunk Americans. If you are into this scene then Bocas would be a fun place for you and you wouldn’t have to speak a lick of Spanish. There’s supposed to be some good surf but I never saw for myself.

We met a local Panamian girl who was very friendly and a lot of fun. We rented scooters (we just can’t seem to stay off of two wheels) and Marlen showed us a pretty, typical Caribbean beach on the far side of the island called Boca de Dragos. On the way back I stopped in the road (again no shoulders, just thick encroaching jungle) and turned off the motor so I could listen to the rich sounds of the jungle. It was just like the movies and it was a short and sweet little experience.

Madeline took us to a cave and we wandered in with our flip flops and flashlights. You need the flashlights but you regret using them when you see large spiders and other bugs crawling around near your feet. Or when you look up and you see clusters of bats hanging in the pockets of the ceilings, shivering and twittering at your light.

The time at Bocas was relaxing during the day but tiring at night. I was getting sick of all the partying and felt myself slowing down. It had been about four weeks of traveling and my body and mind were telling me that I needed to slow down to recharge.

We left Bocas on Monday and retrieved our bikes from the parking lot. It was great to jump back on but putting my riding gear back on was no fun in the heat and humidity. Back on the road, I got my riding legs back and relished the feeling of riding through the jungle. This was the kind of riding I had been waiting for and what I had envisioned whenever I daydreamed about this South America roadtrip. I wanted to ride through the jungle and here I was, doing it. The only thing missing was crazy dirt roads but I settled for pavement. We had mostly beautiful pavement that cut through beautifully colorful  jungle. I never noticed before but just the thousand different shades and shapes of green made the jungle a lot more interesting  to look at then the monotonous green you see on TV. But we had other colors, too, from the wild plants and flowers, some of which people planted in their yards and some of which were just wild.

We’ve had many interesting coincidences on this trip. We meet people and then run into them a few towns away, a couple of hundred miles away, or even a couple of countries away. My favorite coincidence so far is a two to three year old little brown girl with a bright pink dress that stood out brilliantly because of her skin. She was sitting on the bench ahead of us with her mother in the water taxi from Bocas to the mainland. She gave Roar cute little smiles and laughs during the whole boat ride. Maybe she had never seen a white Norwegian ghost before.

After the first couple of hours of riding away through the jungle, Roar and I stopped at a gas station at a junction for a short break and a soda. I returned from the bathroom to see a pretty little girl in a pink dress approach Roar, who was dressed quite differently from the boat ride in his motorcycle jacket and riding gear. Roar said como esta? and, with a huge smile, the girl stuck out her hand to shake his. I could hear the mother call out to her daughter to come back and stop bothering the crazy foreigner. I joked to Roar and asked if he was sure that he hadn’t visited Panama before about three years ago. No, seriously, it was a funny, sweet coincidence that we stopped at the same place and that the girl recognized Roar. As we sped off, the girl stuck her head out of their car window to yell some sort of three year old goodbye.

The ride continued to impress us as we climbed out of the jungle and into a cloud forest. The temperature dropped to a point where my legs got cold, which hadn’t happened to me since Guatemala. We even got a little bit of rain.

We rode down from the mountain, took some wrong turns (hey, you get to see more of the country that way) and arrived at our intended destination, David, Panama…..

We left Puerto Viejo on a paved two lane highway through the jungle. No shoulders, just jungle ready to encroach upon the road if workers with machetes forgot to keep it back. Sometimes the landscape would open up to reveal large farms of banana trees, making everything seem even more primordial. It was only about half an hour till we reached the dreaded border crossing at Bilxboa.

It was the easiest exit yet, we waited behind one guy in line to exit Coast Rica and then just handed in our vehicle paperwork at the other window. It took less than five minutes. (Note: Be sure to change your Costa Rican colones with the moneychangers on the Costa Rican side. There were none on the Panamanian side and we still haven’t been able to change them  four days later.)

The bridge across the river to Panama was an old, converted railway bridge. They converted it by placing long wooden planks to the outsides of the rails. That way cars, trucks, and huge tractor trailers could cross while watching pedestrians scramble to hold onto the outside supports of the bridge. I knew it might be sketchy but I just wanted to get it over with.

As I rode slowly towards it I could see that there were only two planks side by side and that they weren’t wedged in tight. They were loose and I could see gaps that could snag my front tire. I could see that there were large gaps in the center between the railway ties and also to the outside of the planks. That left me with about two feet to play with, and not a solid two feet either. The planks moved up and down and a little bit side to side as I rode over them.

Well….I had been proud of my improved riding over the last four weeks. I’d say I’d even gotten a little cocky. This stuff sketched me out and about twenty yards into it I did what I wasn’t supposed to do: I didn’t look where I wanted to go, I looked at what I shouldn’t have. Instead of looking two or three plank lengths ahead my vision dropped down to the gap between the right rail and the adjacent plank. And that’s exactly where my front wheel went. And my other mistake was taking both feet off the pegs. You lose a lot of control.

The front wheel caught, my left leg stretched out to the ground and found nothing but air, just the gap between the railway ties, and the bike fell over to my right side. The right handlebar hit the side of the bridge and my right leg went straight through the gap and dangled over the river, twenty feet below. Shit!

I regained my footing, struggled with the bike, and got it back upright. Roar had stopped right behind me but there was nothing he could do. There was no place to put the kickstand down so he just waited behind me. I tried to get the front tire out but it was wedged in tight. Shit!

Luckily a couple of random passers by walked over and helped me lift the front wheel out. Once the front wheel was free I could get the back tire out myself. Back on the bike I took it slow. I feathered the clutch and kept one foot on the peg while the other foot took steps on the planks. It was slow going and I was sweating bullets. Everyone said that it was not possible to fall completely off the bridge but I beg to differ. There’s a section in the middle where the fence on the outer part of the bridge has rusted and worn down to where if you had a little bit of speed you could fall  over the side. At this part I took a little breather and noticed that a semi was coming up behind us. Great….

I headed out at full concentration and brought my speed up. Thankfully, it opened up to three planks wide and I gained more confidence and speed and finished the crossing. Usually, I handle as much of the immigrations and customs issues as possible since I speak more Spanish than Roar. This time Roar handled everything as I recovered and let a couple of kids shine my boots. (There was no damage to the bike, the bolt of the handguard and the hardcase made contact with bridge at about 0 mph.)

I didn’t mind the 45 minute wait although Roar said he never saw anyone type so slowly in his life while in the customs office.

We rode through more cleared out jungle. Banana farms everywhere, other fruits, too. We were bombarded with fresh, stale, and spoiled fruit smells as we rode by the different farms. After taking one long route in the wrong direction, we found the road we needed and saw a line of stopped up traffic. Another railway bridge! No one told us about this one! We made our way to the front of the line and made it to the front just as our side got its turn (only one lane, one way at a time). This time there was traffic on both ends and I was determined not to be that guy that would cause a traffic jam with fifty cars waiting on each end.

This one was easy. Three planks wide but I kept my vision to the three planks ahead of me like a robot. When I hit gaps, I hit the throttle, felt the front wheel shimmy and kept going. There was no stopping for me and this crossing was twice as long as the first. Piece of cake! And redemption, too…

We arrived at Almirante and decided to park our motorcycles in a secure parking lot and become regular travelers. I took one of my hardcases and my backpack and left everything else on the bike or in a storage room. Roar and I took a water taxi and 30 minutes later we were in Bocas del Toro, one of Panama’s most popular tourist destinations.

We’ve been riding on some pretty nasty stuff and the bikes shake quite a bit on their own being one-cylinder engines. Screws have been falling out of both bikes since we got them and we go over them once in a while to tighten them up. Still, we’ve lost some.

About 2000 miles into our trip I noticed that my GPS holder was broken and that the GPS unit itself had cracks all over the case. The battery-lid was broken and is now held in place by duct-tap.

On the road to hell (the road to San Carlos, Nicaragua) my left case damn-near fell off after I had bottomed out the rear suspension for the n-th time. I guess my load is too heavy… anyway, the left case is sort of useless now, I managed to bend back the bendt parts but the case just won’t fit like it used to. Luckily I brought a duffel-bag with me so I re-packed all of my stuff, placing most of it in the duffel, threw away some things I had not used yet and strapped the duffel to my bike using rope.

The fancy hard cases are now nothing more than dead weight and I would like to just toss them… but it’s hard to do because they were expensive.

If I had to do it over I would not get hard cases at all, I would get a larger duffel-bag and some straps, that’s it! It’s cheap, it’s light-weight, it’s simple, it can be fixed anywhere in the world without special equipment. Duct-tape and zip-ties!

On that same road, The Road To Hell, it seems my steering-stem nut has shaken loose and my front forks are now producing these awful ‘clunck’ noises when I go over bumps. I hope to have that fixed tomorrow when we meet with an American KLR owner living nearby Boquete. I hope the bearings are still OK!

Oh, and my sunglasses broke too!

Not to worry, all is well!

This was my second time in Costa Rica and I am still impressed by how nice it is. The country is beautiful, the roads are nice, and people really take pride in their houses, yards, and stores. It’s a nice place and it’s no surprise that so many tourists go there. However, that doesn’t make it as attractive to us….we need a little bit more on the difficult, adventurous side. It’s no fun if things are as easy as in the States.

We motored straight through the country. On my first trip to Costa Rica I saw the policia run radar so we were more careful about our speed here. On a busy highway we found ourselves caught behind a slow police truck and kept our speed down. Earlier we had been passing lines and lines of trucks. We soon passed a police speed trap running radar and counted ourselves lucky that we were inadverdantly saved.

We arrived in Puerto Viejo de Tala (something or other). It’s a popular hippie slash surfer hang out. Roar will tell you that I really don’t like hippies but somehow we keep running into them. But the place had a decent vibe and I have to admit that the place was fun. We had another great night meeting and hanging out with locals. The only thing we both regretted was having some local concoction of some clear liquor. The next day hurt a little bit.

The next day we bounced out of town for the border with Panama. I wasn’t really looking forward to it because Roar had told me stories about how this was supposed to be a unusual border crossing. The crossing was  some rickety, wooden bridge with planks covering up the holes to the river twenty feet below. Some people have written  posts on the Adventure Rider website about how difficult the crossing was, and, of course, that made Roar want to see it for himself….

Walking down from the house under construction to the existing farmhouse

Every time we had a meal we ate outside and the farm dogs would come to stand with these pathetic beggar faces waiting for scraps. They were well behaved and didn’t try to jump on you or anything. They just stood and waited. Of course, it worked and they got food from us. Come on, look at ‘em.

This mama had the best beggar face I had ever seen in my life. You’re not human if you can look at this face directly and not feel anything. She was just skin and bones and an udder working at full capacity feeding ten puppies. She can’t even stand here begging without having little ones taking milk from her.