Keeping up with my journals and photographs is sometimes overwhelming. I sit here in shabby motel room. A cheap fan whirs back and forth and the sound of diesel trucks grinding gears sneaks through the slotted windows. My motorcycle boots caked in mud lie on the floor next to my dry bag. Various clothes are […]
Have Your Papers In Order! Everything I’d heard and read about the Costa Rica border crossing at Peñas Blancas had been negative. Perhaps only overshadowed in notoriety by the Guatemalan/ El Salvador crossing which I unfortunately missed. Weekend border crossings are always a bit sketchy. Stories of long lunches, closed offices and under staffing fill […]
The recommendations for staying on the island of Ometape (Isla de Ometepe) were overwhelming. I originally planned to spend more time in Costa Rica, but with stories of pot-holed ridden roads, higher costs and lots of rain I was easily convinced to take in the majestic beauty of this island sitting gracefully under two volcanoes. […]
With nearly three weeks of solitary riding and experiencing Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua I had no idea that I’d reunite with friends I met when in Chihuahua at the Creel Horizons Unlimited meeting two months ago. Pulling into a local hotel in Granada — the second city (some will say first) founded by Fernandez Francisco […]
It’s amazing who you just might meet when rolling into a new town. Leaving León was tough. Last night a group of boys in their early twenties approached me in Parque Central. One of them had been hitting the cerveza pretty hard and kept repeating himself. But sans motorcycle they were interested in learning where […]
León has a distinctively comopolitan flair. But not as you find in more internationally famous cities such as New York, Paris, Rome or San Francisco, but rather unique amongst its Central American counterparts. Not gentrified and roaming with gringo tourists as you might find in Antigua, rather still brimming with a traditional culture yet reaching […]
I find the road leaving Selva Negra to Matagalpa and then onto Managua much different in sunlight than my previous experience in rain. It’s easier to avoid the potholes and I’m quickly buzzing through Managua making my way to Leon – one of the oldest cities in all of Central America. Along the way I […]
By the time I avoided my 900th pothole and was in the city limits of Matagalpa, Nicaragua’s 4th largest city a worn hand-painted sign welcoming me simply and scribbly stated that the national government was responsible for the condition of the road. Up till then the Nicaraguan roads had been perhaps the best I’d encountered […]
The Honduran/Nicaraguan border at Los Manos was the busiest and most frenetic I’d encountered. Before I could pull my GPS off my trusty Touratech mount I was surrounded by young boys. One wants to watch my bike, the others are shoving immigration forms into my hand. I do the best I can to explain that […]
I had hoped to make it close to the Nicaraguan border before sunset. Even the one-legged man at the gas station in Tegucigalpa assured me that I’d get to Danli before nightfall. In his sixties, he had an easy going demeanor for a panhandler. A torn and dirty baseball cap slipped over his matted straw-like […]
