michaellmcc
New member
It began with a discussion about joining another rider in South America for a trip to Tierra del Fuego. His bike was already down there. Ultimately, his description of the trip and what he wanted to do were not too enticing, plus I was not enamored of shipping my bike there and back, so I suggested to Darrel that we ride to Panama instead. Just sort of rolled off the tongue. Simple. All land. Only 3,500 miles one-way, give or take. So The Three Amigos, Mike, Darrel, and Olie, embarked on the Passage to Panama on February 9th. Embark, Passage, and Panama (as in Canal) sound slightly nautical, but our chosen mode of transport was not a boat, rather the best big, wide, shaft-driven, dual-sport motorbikes that money can buy (more or less) – one GSW, one GSAW, and one Super “Tinnerie”.
We secured our temporary vehicle import permits for Mexico on-line, so had only to obtain visitor’s permits when we entered Mexico at Ojinaga, just across the Rio Grande from Presidio, TX. I’ve crossed the border at Ojinaga three times, and it’s an easy transition because of its low traffic volume. In fairly short order, we were on the long, deserted road southwest. Our target destination for our first night’s stay was the Gomez Palacio/Torreon area, which we made well before dark.
The next morning we continued our journey south and, after 2-1/2 days of easy riding through north-central Mexico, took a break in beautiful San Miguel de Allende. The sun and cool temps had been a constant. It was warm by noon the day we arrived, but we were still buttoned up due to the cold morning. We routed right through the city’s el centro: Three tall, loaded bikes; narrow, cobblestone streets; pedestrians; cars, taxis, and buses. The drivers in Mexico and beyond all have a habit of stopping at the myriad topes (speed bumps), instead of just rolling over. Continual stop and go on cobblestones uphill and down was not fun – we almost overheated. By that I mean us, not the bikes.
After a pleasant stay at a hotel that was reminiscent of the paradors in Spain or posadas in Portugal, we left San Miguel on Saturday morning. Against my better judgment and instead of using ‘pilotage’, I let Senorita Garmin plot our exit from town (by the way, her Spanish is atrocious). She routed us straight up the mountainside, through the old barrio, steep cobblestone streets and all. When I say steep, I mean stand up on the pegs, lean forward as far as you can, give it gas, don’t back off, and hope-no-one-gets-in-the-way steep. There were several turns to negotiate, even a car or two to pass, but eventually I topped out at the main road. Olie showed up a few minutes later, but unfortunately, no Darrel. After about an hour, I finally got phone service and had a text message – Darrel had lost us at one of the turns and returned to our hotel. No big deal – I rode back down via the highway this time, fetched him at the hotel, then met with Olie and set out for Cordoba.
As we continued south, the highways ranged from deserted two lanes, to fantastic sections of smooth-as-glass tollways, to pavement-sorely-needed, truck-rich “five lanes”. They were five lanes because you could get that much traffic on a two lane highway. The center section right down the middle was for passing, leaving two lanes as well as two shoulders. The shoulder would be where you go when a truck is passing another truck or bus. All swerve to miss the constant potholes, so when you’re passing you could easily get a surprise. But the drivers were not at all mean-spirited (ever drive in Houston?) and everyone seemed to know the rules of the road.
The ride to Cordoba was one to be remembered, as we had to compromise a lot: Lane splitting when we encountered several miles of stacked-up trucks prior to one of the many tollbooths, then, when we reached a tollway that was completely closed due to an accident, lane splitting, shoulder riding, cutting through parking lots and gas stations, riding up the dirt “sidewalk” in town, etc., followed by nighttime riding to get to our destination. All against our own rules. After several detours, we were finally making progress once again, and made our way to Cordoba. Riding through the mountains, we topped out in the clouds. There were a lot of switchbacks, tunnels to negotiate, bonfires where trucks were stopped, and fields of rubble burning, which all added up to an eerie ride. But the hotel and dinner between ten and eleven PM were a great relief.
From Cordoba, we headed generally south to Tuxtlan Gutierrez. The calendar said it was Saturday, February 13th, when we stopped there for the night. The land had morphed from Chihuahuan desert and gradually-changing semi-arid landscapes to suddenly mountainous and semi-tropical. The afternoon ride through the mountains from Minatitlan to Tuxtlan Gutierrez was glorious – two lane highway, not a lot of traffic, beautiful green, karst mountains.
On Sunday we headed for the Guatemalan border. Our timing was impeccable - the Pope was due in Tuxtlan Guiterrez the next day, and it would have been a madhouse. Our route was east toward Guatemala, and there was a constant stream of Federales heading in the opposite direction toward Tuxtlan Gutiérrez. We had one military checkpoint before arriving at the Guatemalan border; they simply wanted to verify that we weren’t carrying contraband. We talked, Darrel gave them some hard candy, took a photo or two, then we were off. The border crossing itself took about ninety minutes – no lines to wait in, but los documentos tend to take a while (a recurring theme). After clearing the border, we rode to Huehuetenango, Guatemala, and found a great motel with Italian restaurant next door, continuing our string of good hotels and food.
The next day’s ride in Guatemala was a long and exciting one. Constant mountains. Very difficult to identify roads, very hard to find the right one out of the towns. Suddenly we would find ourselves “downtown” in the narrow, dead end, and one way streets, and the “highway” out was not apparent. We took one way streets the wrong way on a number of occasions – people might point it out to us, but no one got excited. We also missed an unmarked, hidden turn in the mountains twice – both going and coming back after our turnaround, so took some major detours. Once on the right road, as we ascended again the pavement disappeared. We then had a long, rough, ascending and descending ride of indeterminate length. In other words, we had no idea how far it was to our destination or when (or if) pavement would reappear. It didn’t until we hit the edge of the city of Coban. It took us a while to find a hotel, and we even had a policewoman who was directing traffic stop her work, help us park along the plaza, then direct us to a nearby hotel, all after dark.
We finally made it across Guatemala and entered Honduras on February 16th. The border formalities took two hours. We tried to arrive at border crossings and allow a few hours to get it done, and still make our target destination and hotel before dark. It generally worked out, so there we were just inside Honduras at Copan Ruinas. We were going to visit the adjacent Mayan ruins the next day, but it was raining off and on. Instead, we geared up and negotiated the wet, steep cobblestone streets until we were out of town. The rain didn’t last long.
We had hoped to make it across Honduras and near the Nicaraguan border in two days, but that turned out to be “a bridge too far”, because of continuous mountains, roads of varying quality, truck traffic, construction stoppages, etc. So our second night in Honduras was at Siguatepeque, north of Tegucigalpa. We lost Olie for a time in Tegucigalpa (read on), but just a delay of an hour or so. The next morning we were off again, headed for Nicaragua. After yet another border crossing, we were on our way across the country. Our route took us on the north side of Lake Nicaragua, but the volcanoes in the lake were not quite in sight.
Compared to Guatemala and Honduras, we saw improved highways in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Still very slow at times due to 18-wheelers, other trucks, buses of every type, pick-ups, cars, small motorcycles, bicycles, carts, pedestrians, cattle, horses, dogs, chickens, etc.
After leaving Costa Rica, our destination was Santiago, Panama. We had spent the previous night on Costa Rica’s NE Caribbean coast, in the small beachfront town of Puerto Viejo (“old port”). It was about 50km from the border with Panama, so easy early morning ride for the crossing, and a very old bridge across the river. The crossing formalities usually comprised export self, export bike, have bike fumigated (sprayed), import self, import bike, pay for insurance, pay municipal tax. After a couple of two-hour crossings, the next two were at least three hours.
Often the traffic on the highway just comes to a stop at speed bumps, construction, buses disgorging people, cars stopping, cattle crossing, people walking, etc. In other words, you have to pay attention. As Ringo shouted on the White Album, “I’VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS”. Not literally, but last summer’s calluses were certainly re-established on my clutch hand since we had been constantly up and down the gears, up and down in speed, up and down in position, and up and down the mountains.
We became accustomed to using the “GS pass”: When cars and trucks come to a sudden stop at speed bumps or construction or any change in the pavement, we would zip around them on either side, adjusting the speed to manage the obstacles. Speed bumps (known as topes or tumulos) came in all sizes, shapes, heights, and degrees of abruptness. There were even times we used the edge of the road or the shoulder/borrow ditch if there was any real estate there. We’re on dual sports after all!
Darrel had one flat that he had to repair, and a broken mudguard to remove (his GSAW was really loaded and the back end banged down hard a few times). Olie had a boot failure and his topcase bracket broke (similar reason to Darrel’s mudguard). But nothing serious. Olie tended to creep in speed when he was out front (not too often), and as he was opening up a gap on Darrel and me, he was stopped by the police. Luckily, no ticket or he would have had to backtrack to town and find the magistrate for payment. We were stopped to have our documentos examined several times in Panama, and saw a lot of motorcycle officers stopped beside the highway with radar guns. That’s what got Olie.
We largely navigated with maps, since the GPS simply doesn’t do the job in Central America. Its compass was useful, and it occasionally showed the highways and major intersections, but not much more helpful than that despite my purchase of Central America maps. Most of the time I’d see a motorbike icon in the middle of a blank screen. I’m sure it’s the lack of good data that makes it almost irrelevant. Most highways were not marked, nor were intersections, so I led the charge based on the map and gut feel. An occasional turnaround resulted when the compass said we were not going the right direction.
The ride from the Caribbean coast south across Panama was through the mountains yet again, then about 60 miles of construction on the Panamerican Highway. We arrived at our destination, Panama City, around noon on February 24th, after 14-1/2 days of riding. At about 4,000 miles, it turned out to be a few hundred more than my original estimate. We were glad to stop there, park the bike for a while, wash the road-weary riding suit, and visit the canal. We took one full day off, found a very nice, economical hotel with a great location near numerous restaurants, and a coin op laundry nearby. We all did a little laundry, including, in my and Olie’s case, the riding suit. Darrel had vowed to not wash his suit until he was back home safely. It was light grey starting out…
The highlight of the stop was visiting the canal, of course – and seeing it up close and in action. Amazing that it has been in use for over a century. That says a lot about the vision and perseverance of those who conceived, designed, and constructed it. New parallel locks (wider and longer) should be complete this year and will allow more, larger ships to pass.
We left Panama City Thursday, February 26th, spending the first night in David, Panama, followed by Liberia, Costa Rica. They were long days with no stops except for gas. Our return route took us along the Pacific and the view was beautiful in spots. It was Panama all day Thursday, Costa Rica on Friday, Nicaragua on Saturday, and there we were Sunday evening, February 29th, back in Siguatepeque, Honduras. The border crossings, although not particularly busy, were slow and laborious, and we averaged at least two hours per. The good news at this point was that we were back in the cool mountains. Since crossing the mountains in Panama earlier and spending time on the Pacific side, it had been hot. The wind along the Pacific side had also been howling down the slopes, making riding a struggle at times.
We lost Olie in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, twice – both going and coming. When going south, he got up beside me (maybe not the best way to follow ) and was boxed out when I took a quick exit to our highway south. Darrel was farther back (correct way to follow ) and made the turn, so he and I waited for an hour or so for Olie to go up the loop for several miles, find a turnaround spot, and return to us. The second time, on the way home, I pointed out a McDonalds as we passed, but missed the exit so took the next one, rode perpendicular to our route, turned around in a gas station, went back over the highway and directly to the McDonalds. Olie had been in the middle, between Darrel and me, but somehow he didn’t follow us out of the gas station. Nor did he come to the McDonalds, which we’ve talked about as our own special “town center”, using their WiFi and facilities a couple of times. So we took off for our destination city (Siguatepeque), sans Olie. He finally called and made his way there after a couple of hours. I’m going to recommend he tether his bike to mine if we ever go through Tegucigalpa again.
The next few days would see us head for the northern edge of Honduras, where we hoped to visit the Mayan ruins that we missed due to weather when we were traveling south. Then it was shoot across Guatemala again, but not too fast on account of the roads, their direction (they don’t necessarily go directly to where we want to go), the towns, one way streets, etc., etc. But I Guatemala is very interesting and has an old world feeling.
The calendar said it was March 3rd - I have to admit that much of the time I didn’t know what day it was; when you’re on the bikes for an extended period, it doesn’t make any difference anyway – when we were ready to re-enter Mexico from Guatemala. We finally found an uncrowded, efficient, quick border crossing. The formalities of exiting Guatemala and entering Mexico were conducted quickly and effortlessly by the two very pleasant immigration officials, maybe five minutes each. The only problem was that the two countries’ border stations were separated by about three hours, and miles of rough, rocky, hilly, two-track dirt road and a wide, swift-moving river. WITHOUT a bridge. The “ferry” noted on one of our maps turned out to be a bunch of long, narrow launches the locals use to go back and forth between the two countries. People movers that is, not built for vehicles, especially the big ass, wide load, heavy dual sport bikes that we know and love…
To digress, we spent our last night in Honduras in Copan Ruinas, at the same small hotel we used going south. Nice people, nice little town, good restaurant nearby, a coffee shop that served espresso, and Mayan ruins to visit. The ruins at Copan were near the southeastern edge of the Mayan empire and were interesting to see, as were the colorful macaws flying around and squawking. So we had a rare afternoon off for a history lesson.
Upon leaving Copan Ruinas, we crossed from Honduras back to Guatemala. Leaving Honduras wasn’t too bad, but getting back into Guatemala was another slow-moving bureaucratic maze, meaning 2-3 hours in the hot sun. Nice officials, but officials and official documents, and getting said documents signed and checked and stamped, and having them copied, takes time. Perfectly understandable…you can never be too careful with gringos and motorcycles and immigration and customs and fees and taxes. No telling what kind of nefarious schemes we might have up our hot, sweaty, dirty sleeves…
Once in Guatemala, we made our way northward to Flores, where we stopped for the night. It was our worst hotel of the trip (Darrel selected it) - A/C didn’t cool all night, mosquitos outside (dare I mention the word “Zika”??), bugs in the bathroom. But we survived and headed across Guatemala the following morning. We cleverly settled on a small, out of the way border crossing. Our maps showed it to be a proper highway, with a ferry across the river…
I may have mentioned that not only the GPS is useless beyond Mexico, the maps obviously leave a certain amount of information to your imagination. Our “highway” (shown like most real highways, a solid green line on Olie’s map, red on mine) to the border turned into wide, packed dirt. Despite our hopes, not a construction zone since it never turned back into pavement. It just got narrower and rougher. In other words, the pavement ended well before the border; over forty miles according to Olie’s odometer. We never saw the Guatemala immigration office set back from the road, but thank goodness they were alert and yelled and whistled at Darrel and Olie after I blew by. Back to the station, learned that they couldn’t properly export our bikes there. If we took them out of the country, there’d be the devil to pay if we ever returned to Guatemala. Somehow we decided that was OK (!) and had our passports stamped anyway. After cooling off for a while, back to the bikes and the dirt road. No man’s land between countries (in an official, diplomatic sense) wouldn’t be an issue, since Mexico was just a few miles and minutes away. Or so we thought.
After winding and climbing up and down on a two-track dirt road for an hour and half or so, we arrived at a small village on the riverside. The only concrete in town was a street/ramp leading down to the river. It looked promising until we walked out to the end – steep concrete steps that ended well above the rough river’s edge. No way any bike was going down that. A couple of locals led us farther down river to a steep bulldozed road that ended on the same rocky beach. Then up pulled the ferry, which was a launch. A long discussion ensued. The launch was about 30’ long, 6’ wide in the center, pointed at both ends, and had 18-24” gunwales (sides). Despite the assurances of the locals, we thought, “How the heck are you going to get a big motorcycle on that?”.
After returning to the village, cooling down with water and Gatorade, sitting on the concrete ramp, and carefully considering our status and alternatives – officially out of one country, no bike export stamp, not yet into the other country - we decided the boat was a perfectly rational choice. No, the bikes were not insured in that particular country. But I volunteered to go first, so back down the road and onto the rocky beach. The process was to remove the panniers and top case to lighten the bike (not by much!); get everyone psyched up; put a short, steep ramp alongside the bow of the boat; about five of us rolled the front wheel up, then alternately lifted and moved the front and rear wheels to turn the bike; rolled it down another steep ramp into the boat; tied it down; crossed the river after a couple of swimmers navigated us through the shallows; beached the boat on the other side; pushed the bike up the ramp onto the prow; lifted it off. Voila - I was dry and in Mexico! Olie and the boat departed for the Guatemala side to get his bike, along with Darrel and his bike. After a couple of hours, they returned with two bikes on two boats. Olie’s boat had no thatched cover, so it must have been a freighter. The only place for him was astride his bike and he’d vowed to “go down with the bike” if anything happened. It didn’t.
As I was waiting in Mexico for the others, a great song from the film The Motorcycle Diaries sprang to mind - “Al Otro Lado del Rio” (the other side of the river). In the movie, Che swam it; thankfully, we didn’t have to.
After clearing the river and finding the Mexican immigration office, we mounted up and rode the hundred miles to Palenque, Mexico (site of another Mayan city), where we took only our second day of the trip off!
The objective the next day was to relax, wash clothes again, repair Olie’s top case mount and boots that were coming apart, generally catch up on the world. Then it was ride the length of Mexico again, at least as far as Matamoros, and cross back into the USA. So that’s what we did, routing through Cordoba, the famous port cities of Veracruz and Tampico, and along the Gulf Coast on a great deserted highway to Brownsville, TX. Nice ride back to Texas and home.
Our hotels on the trip ranged from acceptable to very, very good, as did food. Finding gas was never a problem. At most military or police checkpoints, they just waved us through, although a couple of times they asked where we had been and wanted to see import documents for the bikes.
The standard question from John Q. Public goes something like, “Is Mexico (or fill in the country of your choice) safe?” I’d sum it up scorecard-style:
6,700 miles outside of the USA
6 countries
28 days
3 times one rider became separated from the other two (Olie)
2 cases of mild food poisoning (Darrel)
½ dozen times up or down a one-way street the wrong way (me)
1 real river crossing
2 small bike breakages due to rough roads (Darrel and Olie)
1 day of rain
Lots of nice, normal, hard-working people - everyone we came across
0 accidents, incidents, breakdowns, robberies, muggings, kidnappings, high crimes, or misdemeanors. In other words, ZILCH, NADA, NIL
Finally, thanks to Truckin’ from The Grateful Dead:
Bored with the long story? Here's the five minute version: [video=vimeo;160844261]https://vimeo.com/160844261?utm_source=email&utm_medium=vimeo-cliptranscode-201504&utm_campaign=29220[/video]
We secured our temporary vehicle import permits for Mexico on-line, so had only to obtain visitor’s permits when we entered Mexico at Ojinaga, just across the Rio Grande from Presidio, TX. I’ve crossed the border at Ojinaga three times, and it’s an easy transition because of its low traffic volume. In fairly short order, we were on the long, deserted road southwest. Our target destination for our first night’s stay was the Gomez Palacio/Torreon area, which we made well before dark.
The next morning we continued our journey south and, after 2-1/2 days of easy riding through north-central Mexico, took a break in beautiful San Miguel de Allende. The sun and cool temps had been a constant. It was warm by noon the day we arrived, but we were still buttoned up due to the cold morning. We routed right through the city’s el centro: Three tall, loaded bikes; narrow, cobblestone streets; pedestrians; cars, taxis, and buses. The drivers in Mexico and beyond all have a habit of stopping at the myriad topes (speed bumps), instead of just rolling over. Continual stop and go on cobblestones uphill and down was not fun – we almost overheated. By that I mean us, not the bikes.
After a pleasant stay at a hotel that was reminiscent of the paradors in Spain or posadas in Portugal, we left San Miguel on Saturday morning. Against my better judgment and instead of using ‘pilotage’, I let Senorita Garmin plot our exit from town (by the way, her Spanish is atrocious). She routed us straight up the mountainside, through the old barrio, steep cobblestone streets and all. When I say steep, I mean stand up on the pegs, lean forward as far as you can, give it gas, don’t back off, and hope-no-one-gets-in-the-way steep. There were several turns to negotiate, even a car or two to pass, but eventually I topped out at the main road. Olie showed up a few minutes later, but unfortunately, no Darrel. After about an hour, I finally got phone service and had a text message – Darrel had lost us at one of the turns and returned to our hotel. No big deal – I rode back down via the highway this time, fetched him at the hotel, then met with Olie and set out for Cordoba.
As we continued south, the highways ranged from deserted two lanes, to fantastic sections of smooth-as-glass tollways, to pavement-sorely-needed, truck-rich “five lanes”. They were five lanes because you could get that much traffic on a two lane highway. The center section right down the middle was for passing, leaving two lanes as well as two shoulders. The shoulder would be where you go when a truck is passing another truck or bus. All swerve to miss the constant potholes, so when you’re passing you could easily get a surprise. But the drivers were not at all mean-spirited (ever drive in Houston?) and everyone seemed to know the rules of the road.
The ride to Cordoba was one to be remembered, as we had to compromise a lot: Lane splitting when we encountered several miles of stacked-up trucks prior to one of the many tollbooths, then, when we reached a tollway that was completely closed due to an accident, lane splitting, shoulder riding, cutting through parking lots and gas stations, riding up the dirt “sidewalk” in town, etc., followed by nighttime riding to get to our destination. All against our own rules. After several detours, we were finally making progress once again, and made our way to Cordoba. Riding through the mountains, we topped out in the clouds. There were a lot of switchbacks, tunnels to negotiate, bonfires where trucks were stopped, and fields of rubble burning, which all added up to an eerie ride. But the hotel and dinner between ten and eleven PM were a great relief.
From Cordoba, we headed generally south to Tuxtlan Gutierrez. The calendar said it was Saturday, February 13th, when we stopped there for the night. The land had morphed from Chihuahuan desert and gradually-changing semi-arid landscapes to suddenly mountainous and semi-tropical. The afternoon ride through the mountains from Minatitlan to Tuxtlan Gutierrez was glorious – two lane highway, not a lot of traffic, beautiful green, karst mountains.
On Sunday we headed for the Guatemalan border. Our timing was impeccable - the Pope was due in Tuxtlan Guiterrez the next day, and it would have been a madhouse. Our route was east toward Guatemala, and there was a constant stream of Federales heading in the opposite direction toward Tuxtlan Gutiérrez. We had one military checkpoint before arriving at the Guatemalan border; they simply wanted to verify that we weren’t carrying contraband. We talked, Darrel gave them some hard candy, took a photo or two, then we were off. The border crossing itself took about ninety minutes – no lines to wait in, but los documentos tend to take a while (a recurring theme). After clearing the border, we rode to Huehuetenango, Guatemala, and found a great motel with Italian restaurant next door, continuing our string of good hotels and food.
The next day’s ride in Guatemala was a long and exciting one. Constant mountains. Very difficult to identify roads, very hard to find the right one out of the towns. Suddenly we would find ourselves “downtown” in the narrow, dead end, and one way streets, and the “highway” out was not apparent. We took one way streets the wrong way on a number of occasions – people might point it out to us, but no one got excited. We also missed an unmarked, hidden turn in the mountains twice – both going and coming back after our turnaround, so took some major detours. Once on the right road, as we ascended again the pavement disappeared. We then had a long, rough, ascending and descending ride of indeterminate length. In other words, we had no idea how far it was to our destination or when (or if) pavement would reappear. It didn’t until we hit the edge of the city of Coban. It took us a while to find a hotel, and we even had a policewoman who was directing traffic stop her work, help us park along the plaza, then direct us to a nearby hotel, all after dark.
We finally made it across Guatemala and entered Honduras on February 16th. The border formalities took two hours. We tried to arrive at border crossings and allow a few hours to get it done, and still make our target destination and hotel before dark. It generally worked out, so there we were just inside Honduras at Copan Ruinas. We were going to visit the adjacent Mayan ruins the next day, but it was raining off and on. Instead, we geared up and negotiated the wet, steep cobblestone streets until we were out of town. The rain didn’t last long.
We had hoped to make it across Honduras and near the Nicaraguan border in two days, but that turned out to be “a bridge too far”, because of continuous mountains, roads of varying quality, truck traffic, construction stoppages, etc. So our second night in Honduras was at Siguatepeque, north of Tegucigalpa. We lost Olie for a time in Tegucigalpa (read on), but just a delay of an hour or so. The next morning we were off again, headed for Nicaragua. After yet another border crossing, we were on our way across the country. Our route took us on the north side of Lake Nicaragua, but the volcanoes in the lake were not quite in sight.
Compared to Guatemala and Honduras, we saw improved highways in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Still very slow at times due to 18-wheelers, other trucks, buses of every type, pick-ups, cars, small motorcycles, bicycles, carts, pedestrians, cattle, horses, dogs, chickens, etc.
After leaving Costa Rica, our destination was Santiago, Panama. We had spent the previous night on Costa Rica’s NE Caribbean coast, in the small beachfront town of Puerto Viejo (“old port”). It was about 50km from the border with Panama, so easy early morning ride for the crossing, and a very old bridge across the river. The crossing formalities usually comprised export self, export bike, have bike fumigated (sprayed), import self, import bike, pay for insurance, pay municipal tax. After a couple of two-hour crossings, the next two were at least three hours.
Often the traffic on the highway just comes to a stop at speed bumps, construction, buses disgorging people, cars stopping, cattle crossing, people walking, etc. In other words, you have to pay attention. As Ringo shouted on the White Album, “I’VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS”. Not literally, but last summer’s calluses were certainly re-established on my clutch hand since we had been constantly up and down the gears, up and down in speed, up and down in position, and up and down the mountains.
We became accustomed to using the “GS pass”: When cars and trucks come to a sudden stop at speed bumps or construction or any change in the pavement, we would zip around them on either side, adjusting the speed to manage the obstacles. Speed bumps (known as topes or tumulos) came in all sizes, shapes, heights, and degrees of abruptness. There were even times we used the edge of the road or the shoulder/borrow ditch if there was any real estate there. We’re on dual sports after all!
Darrel had one flat that he had to repair, and a broken mudguard to remove (his GSAW was really loaded and the back end banged down hard a few times). Olie had a boot failure and his topcase bracket broke (similar reason to Darrel’s mudguard). But nothing serious. Olie tended to creep in speed when he was out front (not too often), and as he was opening up a gap on Darrel and me, he was stopped by the police. Luckily, no ticket or he would have had to backtrack to town and find the magistrate for payment. We were stopped to have our documentos examined several times in Panama, and saw a lot of motorcycle officers stopped beside the highway with radar guns. That’s what got Olie.
We largely navigated with maps, since the GPS simply doesn’t do the job in Central America. Its compass was useful, and it occasionally showed the highways and major intersections, but not much more helpful than that despite my purchase of Central America maps. Most of the time I’d see a motorbike icon in the middle of a blank screen. I’m sure it’s the lack of good data that makes it almost irrelevant. Most highways were not marked, nor were intersections, so I led the charge based on the map and gut feel. An occasional turnaround resulted when the compass said we were not going the right direction.
The ride from the Caribbean coast south across Panama was through the mountains yet again, then about 60 miles of construction on the Panamerican Highway. We arrived at our destination, Panama City, around noon on February 24th, after 14-1/2 days of riding. At about 4,000 miles, it turned out to be a few hundred more than my original estimate. We were glad to stop there, park the bike for a while, wash the road-weary riding suit, and visit the canal. We took one full day off, found a very nice, economical hotel with a great location near numerous restaurants, and a coin op laundry nearby. We all did a little laundry, including, in my and Olie’s case, the riding suit. Darrel had vowed to not wash his suit until he was back home safely. It was light grey starting out…
The highlight of the stop was visiting the canal, of course – and seeing it up close and in action. Amazing that it has been in use for over a century. That says a lot about the vision and perseverance of those who conceived, designed, and constructed it. New parallel locks (wider and longer) should be complete this year and will allow more, larger ships to pass.
We left Panama City Thursday, February 26th, spending the first night in David, Panama, followed by Liberia, Costa Rica. They were long days with no stops except for gas. Our return route took us along the Pacific and the view was beautiful in spots. It was Panama all day Thursday, Costa Rica on Friday, Nicaragua on Saturday, and there we were Sunday evening, February 29th, back in Siguatepeque, Honduras. The border crossings, although not particularly busy, were slow and laborious, and we averaged at least two hours per. The good news at this point was that we were back in the cool mountains. Since crossing the mountains in Panama earlier and spending time on the Pacific side, it had been hot. The wind along the Pacific side had also been howling down the slopes, making riding a struggle at times.
We lost Olie in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, twice – both going and coming. When going south, he got up beside me (maybe not the best way to follow ) and was boxed out when I took a quick exit to our highway south. Darrel was farther back (correct way to follow ) and made the turn, so he and I waited for an hour or so for Olie to go up the loop for several miles, find a turnaround spot, and return to us. The second time, on the way home, I pointed out a McDonalds as we passed, but missed the exit so took the next one, rode perpendicular to our route, turned around in a gas station, went back over the highway and directly to the McDonalds. Olie had been in the middle, between Darrel and me, but somehow he didn’t follow us out of the gas station. Nor did he come to the McDonalds, which we’ve talked about as our own special “town center”, using their WiFi and facilities a couple of times. So we took off for our destination city (Siguatepeque), sans Olie. He finally called and made his way there after a couple of hours. I’m going to recommend he tether his bike to mine if we ever go through Tegucigalpa again.
The next few days would see us head for the northern edge of Honduras, where we hoped to visit the Mayan ruins that we missed due to weather when we were traveling south. Then it was shoot across Guatemala again, but not too fast on account of the roads, their direction (they don’t necessarily go directly to where we want to go), the towns, one way streets, etc., etc. But I Guatemala is very interesting and has an old world feeling.
The calendar said it was March 3rd - I have to admit that much of the time I didn’t know what day it was; when you’re on the bikes for an extended period, it doesn’t make any difference anyway – when we were ready to re-enter Mexico from Guatemala. We finally found an uncrowded, efficient, quick border crossing. The formalities of exiting Guatemala and entering Mexico were conducted quickly and effortlessly by the two very pleasant immigration officials, maybe five minutes each. The only problem was that the two countries’ border stations were separated by about three hours, and miles of rough, rocky, hilly, two-track dirt road and a wide, swift-moving river. WITHOUT a bridge. The “ferry” noted on one of our maps turned out to be a bunch of long, narrow launches the locals use to go back and forth between the two countries. People movers that is, not built for vehicles, especially the big ass, wide load, heavy dual sport bikes that we know and love…
To digress, we spent our last night in Honduras in Copan Ruinas, at the same small hotel we used going south. Nice people, nice little town, good restaurant nearby, a coffee shop that served espresso, and Mayan ruins to visit. The ruins at Copan were near the southeastern edge of the Mayan empire and were interesting to see, as were the colorful macaws flying around and squawking. So we had a rare afternoon off for a history lesson.
Upon leaving Copan Ruinas, we crossed from Honduras back to Guatemala. Leaving Honduras wasn’t too bad, but getting back into Guatemala was another slow-moving bureaucratic maze, meaning 2-3 hours in the hot sun. Nice officials, but officials and official documents, and getting said documents signed and checked and stamped, and having them copied, takes time. Perfectly understandable…you can never be too careful with gringos and motorcycles and immigration and customs and fees and taxes. No telling what kind of nefarious schemes we might have up our hot, sweaty, dirty sleeves…
Once in Guatemala, we made our way northward to Flores, where we stopped for the night. It was our worst hotel of the trip (Darrel selected it) - A/C didn’t cool all night, mosquitos outside (dare I mention the word “Zika”??), bugs in the bathroom. But we survived and headed across Guatemala the following morning. We cleverly settled on a small, out of the way border crossing. Our maps showed it to be a proper highway, with a ferry across the river…
I may have mentioned that not only the GPS is useless beyond Mexico, the maps obviously leave a certain amount of information to your imagination. Our “highway” (shown like most real highways, a solid green line on Olie’s map, red on mine) to the border turned into wide, packed dirt. Despite our hopes, not a construction zone since it never turned back into pavement. It just got narrower and rougher. In other words, the pavement ended well before the border; over forty miles according to Olie’s odometer. We never saw the Guatemala immigration office set back from the road, but thank goodness they were alert and yelled and whistled at Darrel and Olie after I blew by. Back to the station, learned that they couldn’t properly export our bikes there. If we took them out of the country, there’d be the devil to pay if we ever returned to Guatemala. Somehow we decided that was OK (!) and had our passports stamped anyway. After cooling off for a while, back to the bikes and the dirt road. No man’s land between countries (in an official, diplomatic sense) wouldn’t be an issue, since Mexico was just a few miles and minutes away. Or so we thought.
After winding and climbing up and down on a two-track dirt road for an hour and half or so, we arrived at a small village on the riverside. The only concrete in town was a street/ramp leading down to the river. It looked promising until we walked out to the end – steep concrete steps that ended well above the rough river’s edge. No way any bike was going down that. A couple of locals led us farther down river to a steep bulldozed road that ended on the same rocky beach. Then up pulled the ferry, which was a launch. A long discussion ensued. The launch was about 30’ long, 6’ wide in the center, pointed at both ends, and had 18-24” gunwales (sides). Despite the assurances of the locals, we thought, “How the heck are you going to get a big motorcycle on that?”.
After returning to the village, cooling down with water and Gatorade, sitting on the concrete ramp, and carefully considering our status and alternatives – officially out of one country, no bike export stamp, not yet into the other country - we decided the boat was a perfectly rational choice. No, the bikes were not insured in that particular country. But I volunteered to go first, so back down the road and onto the rocky beach. The process was to remove the panniers and top case to lighten the bike (not by much!); get everyone psyched up; put a short, steep ramp alongside the bow of the boat; about five of us rolled the front wheel up, then alternately lifted and moved the front and rear wheels to turn the bike; rolled it down another steep ramp into the boat; tied it down; crossed the river after a couple of swimmers navigated us through the shallows; beached the boat on the other side; pushed the bike up the ramp onto the prow; lifted it off. Voila - I was dry and in Mexico! Olie and the boat departed for the Guatemala side to get his bike, along with Darrel and his bike. After a couple of hours, they returned with two bikes on two boats. Olie’s boat had no thatched cover, so it must have been a freighter. The only place for him was astride his bike and he’d vowed to “go down with the bike” if anything happened. It didn’t.
As I was waiting in Mexico for the others, a great song from the film The Motorcycle Diaries sprang to mind - “Al Otro Lado del Rio” (the other side of the river). In the movie, Che swam it; thankfully, we didn’t have to.
After clearing the river and finding the Mexican immigration office, we mounted up and rode the hundred miles to Palenque, Mexico (site of another Mayan city), where we took only our second day of the trip off!
The objective the next day was to relax, wash clothes again, repair Olie’s top case mount and boots that were coming apart, generally catch up on the world. Then it was ride the length of Mexico again, at least as far as Matamoros, and cross back into the USA. So that’s what we did, routing through Cordoba, the famous port cities of Veracruz and Tampico, and along the Gulf Coast on a great deserted highway to Brownsville, TX. Nice ride back to Texas and home.
Our hotels on the trip ranged from acceptable to very, very good, as did food. Finding gas was never a problem. At most military or police checkpoints, they just waved us through, although a couple of times they asked where we had been and wanted to see import documents for the bikes.
The standard question from John Q. Public goes something like, “Is Mexico (or fill in the country of your choice) safe?” I’d sum it up scorecard-style:
6,700 miles outside of the USA
6 countries
28 days
3 times one rider became separated from the other two (Olie)
2 cases of mild food poisoning (Darrel)
½ dozen times up or down a one-way street the wrong way (me)
1 real river crossing
2 small bike breakages due to rough roads (Darrel and Olie)
1 day of rain
Lots of nice, normal, hard-working people - everyone we came across
0 accidents, incidents, breakdowns, robberies, muggings, kidnappings, high crimes, or misdemeanors. In other words, ZILCH, NADA, NIL
Finally, thanks to Truckin’ from The Grateful Dead:
“Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Bored with the long story? Here's the five minute version: [video=vimeo;160844261]https://vimeo.com/160844261?utm_source=email&utm_medium=vimeo-cliptranscode-201504&utm_campaign=29220[/video]
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