Central America 2016

Pittsburgh to the bottom of western Mexico

Luckily, the weather got a bit warmer at the end of January, so we were able to leave home on bikes (instead of having to ship them somewhere south) - still, there was snow all around and the ride from Pittsburgh to Princeton, West Virginia felt like downhill skiing on a cold winter day. The second day was even longer (7 hours, or 400mi) but much better - we started in winter, spent the day in spring, and ended near Atlanta, Georgia on what felt like a warm May evening (where we spent the night in a very shady motel: some people actually lived in it, and they even had cats! Not to mention the dude that was living in a car parked under our balcony).

On day 3, we rode longer still, for 500mi/800km, through storms, gusty winds and tornado warnings, but made it to one of Stina's favorite cities, New Orleans, without a problem: and although we were exhausted, we had to get some of the amazing local food and then walk along the Bourbon street, to visit our favorite 19th-century style bar and be served cocktails by one of the most amazing bartenders/mixologists in the country. :)

Refreshed, we moved on, but the temperatures became freezing again as we rode through the bayous and into Texas - ending the day with a good beer in a shitty hotel in a stupid town. The long distances and the need to pick up some bike parts were bogging us down, so even though we were tired and cold and wanted badly to go south, we had to stay patient... On day 5 it was like we did training for "Riding through Alaska" - we had everything we had on, including those stupid hats we bought in Newfoundland the year before, because it was so cold. We made it to Salt Lick though, i.e. probably the best BBQ in the world. Then we just decided to stay in Austin and went to Stina's favorite, the huge and decadent original Whole Foods Store, and so again, we had amazing beer and food, plus saw an awesome blues concert in a dive bar (and slept in a junk motel again). Day 6 was a boring day, we changed some tires and oil and waited on parts in San Antonio, but at 5PM it was finally time to hit the road for Mexico!

We were such rookies then - we were scared about entering that dangerous country (and we cannot tell you how many people warned us against it!) :D We didn't know yet that it was going to be the most pleasant country of our trip (and the most pleasant border as well), and that even today, we would still want to go back to see more! But back then, we decided to stay brave and just go for it, and so we did... Crossing the border was surreal: they never even checked our passports, apparently you can just ride right through into Mexico - but you need paperwork done, of course (or lose your bikes when you exit), and it's incredibly hard to find the customs offices, because they just don't care :D On the other hand, once we found them, the office bureaucrats were very nice and quick. And so finally, just like that, we were in Mexico!

After spending the night in an unexpectedly decent hotel (the only difference was that they served tortillas instead of bread for breakfast) in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, we started walking around, looking for a clinic to get the many recommended vaccines. The town was a poor mess compared to the USA, but felt safe. We didn't find anything, and were worried about that (so funny to us now - we later realized that you really don't need any hepatitis etc. vaccines in Mexico, not even officially), but we moved on, riding through the desert, west towards the Monterrey mountains of northern Mexico; we landed in the pretty mountain city of Sallito (population over 700,000) where we had really good street tacos with some old local men. :) Our first impressions from the road, as written in our notebook: Mexico is polluted and dirty, but gigantic and with beautiful mountains, much colder in the winter than we thought, and with the traffic rules blissfully stuck in the 1970s; the people don't speak any English (not even at the border or in hotels) which is not fun because we hardly speak any Spanish, and they are incredibly nice.

After a few days of boring cold riding in the highlands (the fact that the travelling through this huge country is slow on those messy country roads - unless you're willing to pay a lot for the fancy highways - doesn't help), we decided to visit the UNESCO-protected Monarch Butterfly Reserve, where millions of monarchs spend the winter, and then head towards the much warmer coast. The monarchs were amazing (though there are less and less every winter, due to the destruction of their habitat), but the hike up (over 3000m) was hard on the chest.

So far Mexico is a cliché itself: cowboys with hats who are plowing fields with livestock, lots of colors, women washing laundry in the streams, crazy cemeteries and shrines... in short, messed up, backwards and beautiful. Not so beautiful is their attitude towards dogs (in two days, we saw hundreds of nice stray dogs who mostly looked hungry and sick, and many of them end up as roadkill) and the fact that most days were not only cold and grey, but absolutely full of trash, pollution, bad smells and sad-looking towns. ....We cut our day short due to exhaustion and ended in Valle de Bravo, where they served some stew at our motel that smelled great but had pig genitalia in it, and where the roads are so messed up that everybody rides a dirtbike or a quad.

Another long hard day, and we were finally on the coast, in the famous Acapulco! And it was suddenly incredibly hot - and it turned out that something went terribly wrong in that former dream-city, loved by such superstars as Elvis and Elisabeth Taylor - it is now run-down and ugly. Fun facts: apparently, all the VW beetles go there to die - some are just decaying there, but most work as taxis; also, if you want to drive there, you better have offroad experience, Balkan attitude and sharp instincts (but it's actually fun and everybody is a good driver).

P.S. We had no idea (did you?) that Mexican pastry is awesome! Not awesome, sublime just like the tacos!

We left the hot ugly Acapulco in a hurry, rode south, and ended the day in the little sleepy fishing village of Playa Ventura. Home for the night was a place owned by a German and Mexican couple; Kyle really loved the place, and even shared a beer with some locals... We finally made it to the Pacific, it's rough but surprisingly warm, and the long amber sunsets are absolutely gorgeous!

We rode another long day, in tropical heat (for which we were grateful after all the freezing, but we were now boiling under our black riding gear) and moving really slowly: it takes forever to get anywhere (as mentioned, if you take side roads it takes even longer, especially because of the endless amount of speed bumps in every little settlement; but you pretty much have to take those side roads, because the toll highways, or "Cuotas", are just too expensive, you can easily spend $30 per day!). We also started realizing that we are total rookies as far as traveling down here: our way, which is trying to go as far as we can, is not working in this world - we get to our end destination too tired and too late to find any decent accommodation! After boiling in our helmets all day we ended in the tiny hippy/hipster enclave of Mazunte (pop. 870). Blue-green Pacific waves, hot sun, cool breeze, tequila - after twelve days of constant riding, we just had to stop and take a day off! The place was packed though, and we arrived late as usual, so the options were limited: all that was left was an expensive cabaña right on the beach (gorgeous location, but the place was terrible, with no toilet seat or doors, and with suspicious-looking sheets). We didn't like being stupid tourists at the mercy of greedy locals - but we did get to watch the unforgettable ocean sunrise and sunset from our bed, and the perfect beach was right at our doorstep!

We had to leave the following morning though, we were on our way to Panama, not on a beach vacation, so many more miles to go! We continued south on Route 200, and it got so brutally hot that we had to find a beach to cool off - and we did, and it was even more perfect than the one in Mazunte - well, first we had to trick the locals who wanted to charge us for entering the beach road, but then it was all white sand, perfect water, and nobody around, as far as the eye can see! :) Moving on, we immediately got just as hot as before the refreshing swim, plus we were warned by a local that we're headed into an area of strong winds. The man was right: at first, it felt like fifty hairdryers started blowing into your face; gradually that changed to fresh winds, and then progressed into tornado gusts, to the point where it was really hard to keep the bikes straight, even when we were just standing!

After 50km of this terror we landed in Juchitan, the town where many old ladies still dress into traditional Istemeño clothing, and which is famed for its 'muxes' - openly gay, often cross-dressing men, who are nevertheless fully accepted in the local society. We saw some from afar (and didn't take pictures), and had fun walking around in general, especially as we were looking for dinner at the lively street market; we tried some strange but decent beverage that they all seem to drink (no idea what it was, but it was warm and soothing like cocoa, and it had the milky part, and the brown sweet foamy part which they constantly whip with a stick). Another strange item sold at the market were the iguanas - dead, as food, we mean. :( Which, again, reminds us that there is a dark side to Mexico (and as we would find out later, this gets worse down in Central America) - their treatment of animals. In the main square, a dog was dying for everyone to see, and no one seemed to mind...

It was warm and quiet in Juchitan, but as soon as we left we were back at the mercy of the severe winds; after they smacked us around for an hour, we went back into dry heat, and then into the mountains, where it was a little fresher, plus we had a twisty mountain road all to ourselves; we found a great spot for lunch under a giant tree and next to a weird roadside shrine, so our spirits were up, and we were looking forward to visiting the pretty, old colonial highland town of San Cristóbal de las Casas. Upon arriving there, however, we learned two things: one, evenings are alpine fresh there and two, the Pope was coming to town the next day. Obviously, exploring the town was off the table now, but we did manage to find parking and a cheap hostel (with not enough blankets, mind you, we were super cold all night), and even some beer before they imposed an alcohol ban for the duration of the holly visit. Plus, it was beautiful to walk around and people-watch, so many different traditional outfits everywhere!

Rather than wait all day with the rest of the crowd to spot the pope driving by, we escaped the chaos and rode on, south through little mountain villages of indigenous people of the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas: rebellious, Zapatistas (i.e. members of the far-left libertarian-socialist political and militant group that controls a substantial amount of territory in Chiapas), living in traditional homes, wearing traditional garments and refusing to be part of Mexico (they don't even speak Spanish), they of course really interested us, and we wanted to take all kinds of pictures (every village had a different style of outfits, many women were doing traditional weaving in front of their homes, farmers were carrying wood on their backs with straps going across their foreheads to support the load, etc. So cool!), but everyone was staring at us (makes sense, not too many Gringos come through here) and so we wisely decided to behave ourselves - just rode on :D

The road towards Guatemala was super twisty and fun; in the span of two hours we went from cool air in the mountains to hot dry air across the plains to the humid jungle at the border, and the Pan-American highway turned into a messy gravel road. The border area literally looked like a door to hell: we had to ride past giant garbage dumps that were on fire in many places, with sinister vultures sitting on tops!

Crossing into Guatemala was a bit confusing, but we managed; also, the police, army and customs were all nice to us, and the whole process only took two hours.

So now we were in Quatemala, Central America!!! ...But that's another story. :)

P.S. Sombreros don't exist in Mexico and neither does what we understand under salsa. But the bakeries, tequila, and rotisserie chicken from the street are awesome.

Also, we kept seeing this weird Sol beer everywhere and decided to try it: it's beer with tomato & onion, and it is terrible - think bloody mary with lite beer, or pasta sauce with beer. Yummy!

Western Guatemala

At first glance, Guatemala seemed quite similar to Mexico (colorful and chaotic, with garbage and stray dogs everywhere), just more intense: all the small town streets were bursting with life and insane traffic. Crossing borders takes time, and the highland roads are a mess, so we were running late and ended up riding in the dark - which is unfortunate, not only because we probably missed some amazing nature as we were riding for two hours through the river valley that was surrounded with imposing mountains, but also because riding at night is simply very dangerous.

We spent the night in Huehuetenango, and visited their colorful and weird street market the next morning - what looked like pearl necklaces were actually chorizo sausages, we saw a lady cutting meat off the sheep jaw, and another one carrying live turkeys tied into a bunch on her head...

Then we were back on the road, where we were entertained by more unusual and rustic scenery: cows grazing on soccer fields, farmers plowing with livestock, brightly painted and decorated chicken buses (old school buses from the US come here to get pimped out with chrome, colors, LED lights and religious stickers), pick-up trucks insanely packed with people (who were all always staring at us) and their packages, vultures feasting on dead dogs like in some western movie, cemeteries with huge colorful crypts, men making big clay&straw bricks with which they build their houses and shops, young women in traditional outfits carrying babies on their backs (we never saw any strollers in Central and South America, babies are always carried in a pouch, strapped onto mother's back), knitting or weaving baskets as they went, and on and on... Next, we rode up into the pine forests and mountains, enjoying the awesome views and blissfully staring at traditionally dressed mountain folk (who were staring back at us even more intensely - fair enough! :D ).

We stopped in Chichicastenango, a pretty ancient town in the Guatemalan highlands (at almost 2000m/over 6000ft), known for its open-air craft market and indigenous Maya culture. Walking around, we felt like awkward giants compared to the tiny, dark, traditionally-clad locals, and everything was too small for us, from the streets to the chairs and tables. :D We went to check out the 16th-century Catholic church Santo Tomás Apóstol, which is used for both Catholic worship and Maya rituals, and we were lucky enough (or maybe it happens all the time?) to witness the locals practicing their rituals in front of the church which definitely didn't look like Catholic rituals, more like something ancient and shamanic... The scene blew our minds: this is a church but the rituals are Mayan, and the steps leading to the main gate serve the same purpose as the Mayan pyramids; there is a fire at the bottom of the steps, and a prayer leader on top, swinging incense and chanting magic words. Nonbelievers are not allowed to walk on the steps, they must use the side door; inside the church, the floor is covered with corn, flowers and bottles of liquor - gifts for those buried underneath. To add to the incredible experience, a small religious procession came by, carrying a figurine of Holy Mary while playing and chanting a Mayan tune...

By that point, we gathered so many amazing impressions and photos of this incredible country that just that in itself would make an unforgettable and fulfilling journey; words cannot describe how our minds were blown by Guatemalan daily culture and beautiful nature! But of course, we only just started our tour, there was so much more to come - but that's another story....

We arrived at Lake Atitlan very late, so we had to spend the night in the very touristy town of Panajachel; we moved on first thing in the morning, to a more low-key town of San Pedro. The road to San Pedro was rough, Stina was not too happy with the dusty hot ride on the off-road track full of hills, rocks and deep sand - not to mention that it was our wedding anniversary... We arrived to our destination pretty destroyed - and oblivious to the fact that we were actually lucky, we didn't know that but that road was famous for robberies (we were told later that robbers use the road's tough spots to stop and rob travelers). The views were great, though: Atitlan is a beautiful lake, surrounded by mountains and volcanos; there were terraces and coffee plantations (all that coffee must be for export, though, it was nearly impossible to find coffee that is not instant), rustic villages (it really seems like every village has a different traditional dress-code!), ducks and traditional wooden carved boats on the lake, and trucks packed-full of people on the road... but of course, there was also lots of garbage and pollution everywhere, and not much access to the lake - which makes no sense if you're trying to get people to come enjoy it :D.

San Pedro was a nice small town, typical (lots of messed-up buildings, crowded streets, religious signs everywhere etc.) but with good stores - we even found coffee, and unsweetened yogurt (so Stina proceeded to make lunch - cereal - by the side of the road, which local women found highly amusing), and a few fellow travelers: one was Patrick who was riding to South America all alone, without maps, a phone or a GPS, and we also met the nicest couple from NYC, with whom we would later travel together for a bit, and a few years later even visit them in New York for New Year's Eve. :)

Next, we went to Antigua, the beautiful colonial Unesco-protected town on the edge of the mountains, surrounded by three volcanos. Most buildings are from 17/18th centuries (it was already the capital 200 years before then, but the government moved the capital elsewhere because Antigua was constantly razed by earthquakes), and it's a joy to walk around town: mild climate, the splendid architecture of the weathered ruins, most famous of which is the yellow Santa Catalina Arch with a clock (and no wonder the buildings look tired, they went through a bunch of earthquakes, floods, and centuries!), great coffee, lots of young people (not that there is much night life - and in any case, Antiqua can be dangerous at night), even a McDonald's (we never eat there, but we did learn to appreciate it when we travel: they always have clean potable water, coffee and ice, and AC and wifi!), and then there is the lush nature and volcanoes, covered with clouds all around...

We were also lucky to be able to stay at an awesome place, Casa Elena, a hostel that is run by two Americans who give 50% off to motorcyclists and who have cool stories to share, because they had traveled and lived all over the world.

We decided against the popular over-night backpacking volcano hike, because it was too cold up there at the time; but as we left Antigua after two days, one of them had a surprise for us: apparently eruptions happen weekly there, but for us, that was the first sight of an active volcano, and we were in awe!

El Salvador

Next, we rode towards El Salvador, the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America; after centuries of being a part of other Central American countries and a decade-long civil war in 1980s, it is now an independent country... with lost of issues, especially high rates of poverty, inequality, and gang-related violent crime.

We will never forget the insanity of the Guatemala-Salvador border: On the Guatemalan side, there were miles and miles of trucks (it must take them days to cross the border!), at first lined up nicely enough for us to go past fairly easily; but then that line turned into a pile of semi trucks, just sitting everywhere, close to one another, with people and occasional carts and bikes jammed in there, so now we had to slalom around, hoping we wouldn't get helplessly stuck in that hot mess. In the midst of this insane, loud chaos and unbearable heat, we also had to push away "the helpers" (guys who want paid to get you through the border - we would meet many more of those in our later travels, but would never once use them). The customs weren't much help and even misinformed us (and of course, helpers spoke fluent English - and the customs not a word); it became clear that they were also in business with the helpers (as in, you pay a helper, and then the customs agent does his job and gets a cut from the helper). We managed to get through by staying patient and firmly saying no to helpers, while still taking their unsolicited advice. The El Salvadorian side, on the other hand, had English-speaking custom officers, orderly lines, AC in the office, and strictly did not allow helpers! After a few hours which felt like eternity, we made it through, mentally destroyed and exhausted from the heat, and rode on, into the new country.

We noticed three things on the road in El Salvador: the traffic was now well ordered (they wore helmets and obeyed the rules - but were still terrible drivers), people's skin color was lighter than up north (we later read that this was due to the fact that the Hispanics wiped out the local indigenous people), and most women wore short lacey aprons as a part of their daily attire.

We stopped in Santa Tecla, a town near San Salvador, famous for its vibrant nightlife - we had a well-deserved cold beer, good street food (we ordered way too much by accident, because we didn't realize yet that food was amazing, but dirt-cheap in this country - one pupusa cost only 30cents! Pupusa, by the way, is their typical dish and Kyle's favorite: it's made out of corn meal and stuffed with cheese, beans, and/or pork rinds), and enjoyed the fresh evening while walking around the lively streets.

On the next day, we rode Ruta de las Flores, a cute 20-mile mountain road connecting small towns which are full of markets; it was ok, but we didn't find it to be anything special, plus it was just ungodly hot; we did see some interesting things (horses with diapers, iguanas on the grill, traditional aprons on market ladies) and Stina discovered her favorite snack - grated unripe mango with tomato sauce and ground pumpkin seeds (it sounds weird, but it was delicious; and anyways, all their fruits and veggies turned out to taste amazing, we made a big delicious salad every day out of the locally grown avocado, cilantro, tomato, cucumber and lemon, all for a few dollars).

We then moved on to the capital, San Salvador: it's a big city, dirty and really rough around the edges (nothing like the nearby clean, safe and cosmopolitan Santa Tecla), very vibrant and packed with markets (and with scary-looking homeless people everywhere). We gladly left after a day, but just before, we were really surprised to find a cool, the most bizarre-looking church we'd ever seen, Iglesia El Rosario: it was made of concrete, metal and colored glass, had scrap-metal sculpture inside, and just looked like a bizarre airplane hanger - we loved it!

We left the hot mess of San Salvador - only to boil even more on the road to El Cuco on the southern coast: we rode past old volcanos, parched landscape, meeting many men who were returning from working in the fields or in the jungle and who were, just like in Guatemala, all carrying a machete...

When we arrived at the recommended hippy hostel Turtuga Verde, we were at first told that there was no room; thankfully, the eccentric owner Tom saw our bikes, gave orders to his staff, and all of the sudden there was room for us! The compound was a coconut palm-tree paradise (if we ignore the usual Central American music, i.e. really loud disco crap), lined with hammocks, right on the beach... We immediately jumped into the water to lower our body temperature, and promptly decided to stay another night. Refreshed and happy (Stina even did yoga), we saw our NYC-friends that we'd met at Lake Atitlan roll in on their bike, so now we even had company! We all went for a sunset swim, played with the happy and well-nourished local dogs and kittens, and then joined the happy hour, and life was perfect...except that soon after, we all got bad food poisoning, one after another within a few hours. It was really bad, but didn't last long - still, we all stayed inside the next day, close to our sinks and toilets, feeling like dying. Getting out of the hammocks was still hard the following day, we felt weak and thus even less excited about what was coming: we were about to cross both into and then out of Honduras to get to Nicaragua in one day (there is a sliver of Honduras between Salvador and Nicaragua, and both borders have a bad reputation)...

So that was it for El Salvador. It's a nice little country, but apart from the amazing (and cheap) food, it's not really worth the trouble of getting in and out, we won't be going back anytime soon. On to Nicaragua!

Western Nicaragua

After we finally felt healthy enough, we and our new friends headed for the dreaded double border crossing, from El Salvador to Honduras and from Honduras to Nicaragua. We were lucky that it was a little less hot because it was a cloudy day, plus none of the helpers were trying to blackmail us, but it still took us all day and consumed all of our energy. The border crossings are hell, you need to have a boat-load of paperwork done and have copies of everything (but you never have the right ones, of course), and they rape you with their endless fees and long lines. After the first border, we drove through Honduras for two hours, and it felt like we stepped back in time; but there was no time to hang around, we'll see Honduras on the way back, we had another border to cross... The sun was going down when we reached Nicaragua, and then our friends hit a big pig (they were shocked but fine, but the pig, though he run away into the bushes, was probably hurt), so we called it a night in the small town of Chinandega, Nicaragua. The roads are full of everything here, people, animals, giant pot holes, etc., everybody practically lives on and along the road - which is great in a way, you get to see everything without ever leaving the road, but it's also very dangerous, no matter how much attention you're trying to pay.

First impressions in Nicaragua were that it seemed a little cleaner and a little safer than El Salvador - and that it was even hotter than we expected (we were now boiling at night, as well). Nicaragua is the largest Central American country: it's tropical, multiethnic, full of lakes and volcanos and beaches, and famous for political unrests (dictatorships, fiscal crises, revolutions, wars...); the mixture of cultural traditions (mostly European, Indigenous, and black, i.e. English-speaking Creoles who are the descendants of escaped or shipwrecked slaves) has generated a diversity in folklore, cuisine, music, and literature.

We rode past cane fields and volcanos, passing many horse carts and horse-riders with machetes (most Nicaraguans use the little local horses for transportation), and arrived to León, the second largest city (pop. 200,000) which has long been the political and intellectual center of the nation (its university, UNAN, was founded in 1813, making it the second oldest university in Central America). León is also an important industrial, agricultural, and commercial center for Nicaragua, and, independently-minded as it is, it has been home to many of Nicaragua's artists, especially poets. We found it to be a lovely town, full of crumbling churches and 17th-century buildings, especially the pretty white cathedral, nice stores and markets (in which there is always a ton of little plastic bags of ketchup, mustard, salsa inglesa (Worcester sauce), mayo and relish; everything is sold in bags here, even water!), lively night clubs and a good contemporary art museum, Museo de Arte (where Kyle was really happy to find an amazing contemporary installation by an artist who was deconstructing figures of saints). We liked it in this developed and colonial city, but we were constantly reminded, like when we stepped over somebody who was blissfully sleeping on the side walk (well, it's hot and siesta time, what don't you understand?), that we were also definitely in Nicaragua.

After about a month, it occurred to us that we started to feel like true travelers, we were far away enough from the US, literally and mentally, to start forgetting about that world, open our minds and stop seeing everything as "the other" - and instead began to notice the differences between local cultures (for example, the Mexican people were the warmest so far, whereas the Nicaraguans seemed to only want our money and could be quite rude). Still, we are westerners, and to us it's baffling (and funny when it doesn't concern us - but very frustrating when it does!) to see how daily life functions down here: nothing gets done, it literally takes three people 15min to make coffee! There could be five hostels in a row, and the only one functioning among them (and packed-full of people) is the gringo one, while the local ones, though they want to make money too, are terrible (and empty) but the owners are not prepared to change a thing…. We would prefer to stay at a local place, but we need a decent bed and shower and safe parking, and they just don't get it, though they want and need money, and it's confusing to us. (We sound post-colonial now, we know, but it's true, as probably any other well-traveled person will tell you.)

We also happily realized that we became a part of the adventure-motorcycle culture: we would meet fellow bikers, and then meet them again down the road somewhere, sometimes days or weeks later; it's awesome how these total adventurers would just come to us, not wanting to know who we are but just to share the experiences of life on the road.

We went to Granada, an ancient colonial trade center on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. It's beautiful with its multiple Spanish colonial buildings (which have survived repeated pirate invasions), and the city’s main square, Central Park, is dominated by the colorful, neoclassical facade of the Cathedral of Granada, originally dating to 1583; its not too touristy and not too expensive, so we safely parked our bikes (which meant that we parked them inside the hostel, where they were resting under the protection of the images of Che and Jesus hanging on the wall above them) and stayed for two nights, walking around the lively streets and markets (where we tried their typical street dish: plantain and yuca with boiled beef, wrapped in fresh banana leaves), checking out their colorful churches (they show their love for the saints by dressing them up like dolls!), and enjoyed the various street performances and traditional dances in the evenings.

We took a ride to the recommended nearby "pueblos blancos", and while there wasn't much to see but an occasional crater lake by the road, the pre-Columbian style pottery they make was amazing (and cheap too) - so for once, we were really sad we had no room on our bikes to buy anything!

Next, we were off to the much-hyped island of Ometepe on Lake Nicaragua. The ferry was so packed that Stina got the very last spot, and had to climb out of the parking area by using the side of the truck that was parked next to her bike, and the ferry-ride was spent talking to some cool people: a Canadian couple who were spending six months in Central America, and with an Italian rider who had moved to the island five years ago and owned an organic farm/hostel there.

The lake is pretty but polluted (and used by local women for laundry washing, and by local cows as a refreshing swimming pool), and Conception, an active volcano, is an imposing presence on the island - but we still never figured out what all the fuss was about. It's a tourist trap, you get charged for everything: the beaches are nothing special, and besides hiking the volcano (which we skipped because its a 12-hour round-trip hike in scorching heat), there isn't much authentic to do. Still, we sneaked into a biological reserve area and found howler monkeys, and Stina was overjoyed to see her first monkeys in the wild.

We rode on to San Juan del Sur, a famous beach town in southwest Nicaragua, and were again underwhelmed. It's way overpriced, and the beach isn't that great, plus, due to some weird current, the water there is incredibly cold. The upsides: the climate is obviously conducive to deep backbends, so Stina, an avid Ashtangi who tries to practice three times a week when we travel, was able to touch her forehead with her toes which was impossible until then, and, more importantly: this is the land of rum, coconuts and pineapples, so in this party town, the cocktails like piña colada are a dream!

Time to move south again, Costa Rica is next!

Western Costa Rica

After three long hours at the border, we arrived in Tamarindo, the town in Peninsula de Nicoya in the northwest of the country, after dark, and had to settle in an awful camp for the night... but we were in Costa Rica!

Due to the very many American tourists, the town is known as "Tamagringo" by the locals; we left after a day, but it's not all bad: the stores are well-stocked and camping is cheap, the water is nice, and there is an abundance of wildlife (including a big important turtle nesting beach a mile from town, and crocodiles right next to the city beach, where the river runs into the sea).

We were exploring Nicoya for a few days, and while we didn't discover many camps with showers, wifi or even power, it was fun: the area is known for its many beaches and surfing, the nature is beautiful and lush, there is a lot less trash than elsewhere in Central America and dogs are well-fed, and most people speak English. But, again, it's all very westernized there, any local culture seems to be gone and the standard is very high ($10 for peanut butter in the store, for example).

On our way to Montezuma, the famous beach town in the south of the peninsula, we learned that this expensive country has the worst roads in Central America: we took the main road, which was all dirt and crossed three rivers! Sure, it was beautiful and great fun (especially since the bikes were agitating the many howler monkeys - have you ever heard them howl?! Incredible, like thunder!) and it was funny watching the traffic going for a swim, but it was a very long, hot, wet, dirty, and exhausting ride (and yes, there were some falls and tears, and we're not talking about Kyle...).

Montezuma is a popular little beach town, full of wannabe hippies and young hipsters (with some actual cool people dispersed in-between) who stay in fancy lodges, order $30 breakfast and then don't eat it, spend their days chilling and smoking pot in hammocks and their nights playing Hotel California around the beach fires. It's a lovely place though, where the country's moto, "Pura Vida", is definitely taking place - not just on the sandy beach and in little cafes and yoga places, but also at the Montezuma waterfalls, hidden in the forest behind town and surrounded with monkeys; and since Costa Rica is nice enough to allow free camping on their beaches, we did just that - we didn't have much, but we were swimming, trying new delicious fruits (like the purple caimitos, which was full of creamy milky sticky sweetness), and falling asleep to the sound of the waves under the bright Milky Way...

On the ferry to the mainland (which was cheap, clean and on time!) we met an awesome couple, a yoga teacher from Germany and a sculptor from Switzerland who had moved to Montezuma decades ago, absolutely love it there, and are running a yoga shala - it was a lovely chat (and we stayed in contact afterwards) and Stina was sorry she never got to practice at their place (instead, homeless as we were, she did yoga in a bizarre public spot - between camper vans, a cemetery, and a busy dirt-road :D ). On our way south, we crossed the Crocodile Bridge: for some reason, there are always around 30 crocks basking in the sun under that loud and busy bridge - we counted 23! We made a stop at Carara, a tiny national park, which was totally worth the visit (even though we literally sweated our asses off in that jungle!): we saw a tucan, the rare scarlet macaws and a trogon! We ended the long day in the messy touristy town of Jacó, where we found good beer and where we came to the conclusion that Costa Rica is beautiful, but that there is way more civilization and tourism than we thought and that we cannot wait to make it to the the more remote south....but that's another story.

We were moving south, towards the wildlife haven of Peninsula de Osa, but we took the long way, riding over the mountains and then down to Manuel Antonio, the smallest National Park, where beach meets jungle. It was hopelessly expensive and full of American tourists yet packed with wildlife: we saw our first sloth there, and then a mom sloth with her baby, capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys (who are so small you could hold them in the palm of your hand), and some animals we never knew existed (like a tailess rat that was quietly picking up what monkeys above it had dropped on the ground), etc.

We rode on, stopped in occasional little town (one had an amazing bakery, Stina will never forget their pineapple rice cakes!) and finally, we entered Osa, wild and vast peninsula in southwestern Costa Rica that consists of rainforest, surrounded with beautiful wild beaches.

Our first camp was at the very beginning of Osa and nothing special, but even there, we were all alone, and it was incredibly hot during the day as we swam and watched macaws and other birds fly above our heads, and then at night we fell asleep like babies as the waves were lapping under a starry night...

It's not our style, but we stopped at Finca (farm) Kobo, an organic chocolate farm in the area because it was recommended to us by our new yoga friends from Montezuma. The chocolate was ridiculously delicious, but whatever we meant to take home with us died of all that tropical heat within weeks (contrary to what the owner claimed - according to her, chocolate of this quality never melts and would make it... still, it did make it back to south Mexico!) The next afternoon was spent at Playa Pan Dulce on the elbow of the peninsula: the waves there were strong, yet the mildest in the area, and the gorgeous water felt like a hot bath, no exaggeration! But it was beautiful: turquoise water, white sand, colorful crabs, and a macaw in the tall palm who was having a snack and dropping the peels on our bikes...heaven!

Most of the peninsula is part of Corcovado National Park, but the rest is just as wild, except that there is one local bar (that closes at 6pm) and lots of incredibly expensive eco lodges. But like we said: luckily for us, camping on the beach is permitted by law, for free! Plus, we skipped going into the park due to the high fees - $85 per person per day, and you must hire a guide. (Actually, we found this whole national park situation a bit greedy. In Manuel Antonio National Park for example, we were told that without hiring a guide it would take us seven hours and we might not see wildlife, which was a blatant lie - it took us two hours and we saw everything.) Turns out that there is not much need to go into the park, because just by camping along its edges, all the wildlife will come to you.

We moved to a different spot, so that we could be near that only bar around, because it was Kyle's birthday (it was also right behind a posh lodge, so we were able to steal their wifi). We checked in the morning just to be sure, but still found the bar closed later in the day. We were lucky to spot the guy who helps at the place, and he was kind enough to sell us a six pack! So, we cooked an awesome simple dinner over a fire (rice with chicken, curry and pineapple), had an amazing chocolate cake from the cocoa farm, and had our half-cold beers by the little fire... and just as Stina started to worry that maybe this birthday is a little lame (because we were all alone instead in a bar), we saw an anteater climbing trees right above us! :)

We decided to explore some more, and went to Carate, where the road ends and jungle begins. And as is tradition on the steaming hot Osa, this road too was rough, slippery, steep and when not crossing a river, incredibly dusty - and as is also tradition, Stina fell more than once, was bruised, crying and completely exhausted... but it was just beautiful, monkeys and sloths in the trees all around, and a beautiful beach at the end (though the waves there will break your bones, even in the shallows)...

After a few days of wild-camping in paradise, it was time to go back to Puerto Jimenez, a hot dusty town with coffee, beer and stores. Sometimes you're lucky with your lodging, and Lunas Hostel was such a place: the hostel was nice and rooms were cheap, and the owner Alex was very nice and helpful - he let us wash the bikes (they needed it badly!), do yoga, use the fridge (so precious around there), have all the coffee we wanted (the Costa Rican brewing method works, but looks funny - a filter that holds coffee and into which you poor hot water looks like a sock), and kept bringing us fruit, some of which we didn't even know before.

To sum up, it was steaming hot but we absolutely loved Osa peninsula, and even today, it's still one of our favorite places. It was time to move on though, to our southernmost country of this trip - Panama!

Panama

After having boiled ourselves to death at the border for almost four hours (the most fun part of which was that customs messed up our paperwork; luckily, we noticed the mistake, returned, and figured it out), we made it into Panama!

Thankfully, our first stop was the nearby Boquete, a mountain town that is famous for its perfect climate and coffee plantations, so we cooled off there in the evening. This surprisingly fresh climate brings in lots of tourists, which is not bad in some ways: the stores are good, and so is beer in the local brewery (we sampled Coconut Pilsner, and it was really good!). It was pleasant and strange to walk around the village with Alpine-style houses (it never snows there, mind you), and then ride around in the volcanic highlands, past locals in warm jackets, meadows and mountain flowers, and small farmers markets...

We returned to the tropical hot sea level, to explore the Azuero Peninsula, a cowboyesque area with rolling hills and many beaches. We spent the first night wild-camping on a very windy beach, and woke up to some fisherman getting ready for the day next to us, with the tide so high that it flooded the coastal trees. We moved on to Chitré, a nice town on the peninsula, where we met up with the fellow rider Phil from Canada, who had a beach house there and offered to take us in (to practice hosting, he was planning to rent the place to adventure bikers when it was ready). He also took us on an awesome ride across the sunny hills, past the Monkey Bridge (where who knows why, monkeys always hang out), and to some lovely beach, known for the many animals (again, who knows why, but they are always hanging around there).

Next, we rode south towards Panama City; so far, we had learned that Panama was more expensive than we thought (Pittsburgh/Slovenia prices), the police were pretty much everywhere and they kept stopping us (mainly because they were interested in checking out our bikes, which was a bit weird because this was the first Central American country where we saw a lot of big bikes), the roads were great, they used US dollar as their currency (except for the $1 coin, which was called Balboa), the women wore simple long dresses that came in all colors, and, unfortunately, the stray dogs and trash were back.

Panama City greeted us with a skyline that rivals Manhattan, insane traffic, and scorching heat and humidity. It seems that everyone drives here with one goal in mind: go forward. It doesn't matter how or where, but they will push into you, push you around, or just blatantly push you out of the way - it's chaotic and always clogged (but where they are going, nobody knows - wherever you land, city or not, there are the typical Central American lines where nobody is in any rush at all) and if you don't play along, you will get hurt. And make no mistake, though it sits in the midst of Central America, this is a proper, big, developed city: people are much more concerned with staring at their cell phones than at you, there are joggers, the malls are full of designer stores, and the slums are right across the street, followed by endless sprawls. It's an impressive, exhausting city. It is also very photogenic: against the backdrop of high-rise towers stand the ruins of Panamá Viejo, the original Panama City (founded in the 16th century, it was later plundered until nothing was left, and today it lies half-buried under a poor neighborhood. It's supposed to be worth visiting but for $12 per person, a few photos from the street had to do), from the causeway that loops above the Panama Bay, you can simultaneously admire the skyline, the old town Casco Viejo, and the ghetto full of fishermen and their boats....in short, you always have a view of at least two realities of this city, simultaneously opposing and somehow completing each other.

We went to Casco Viejo, also known as the Old Quarter or San Felipe (the ruined old town was abandoned and they moved to this site, 8km away, for better defenses), where we were able to park the bikes right in front of the cathedral and then walked around: the colonial buildings were mixed with traditional homes (one of the common sights in Central America is the open front door, so that the passers-by can see into the living room, where the family is chatting or watching tv on the couch, surrounded by proudly displayed family photos, religious altars, statues, and other kitsch), the old streets were full of fancy cafes and restaurants and southern Caribbeans selling jewelry...with the dirty destroyed ghetto always just a few blocks away.

We did go and check out the Panama Canal, but as impressive as that achievement was, it was nothing special to look at: there are big boats, coming in very slowly, boats that are waiting for the water levels to lower, and you can see the locks and tugboats that are pushing the big boats into position - but unless you take the tour, there are no great views of the canal itself.

Panama City was great (even though we later discovered that Stina had bedbug bites on her leg - of all the places we stayed at, this happened in a hostel in a big city!), but we were tired of it and wanted to move on. So after Kyle changed the oil in a mall parking garage, and after we fought our way out of the city (the struggle included dealing with guys selling stuff at every red light - they will try to sell you everything and anything, from water and Coke to sunglasses, USB chargers, avocados, brooms, you name it!), we were on our way to the bottom of Panama, to the little town of Yaviza that sits at the end of the road! ...But that is another story.

Next, we started riding south to the end of the road in Yaviza. The Panamerican highway was a mess, 90% (1000 km) of it being under construction at the time, full of huge potholes, workers and blockages, and endless gravel; the last few hundred kilometers were especially slow, with endless amounts of police checkpoints and nothing special to see, plus, you then have to backtrack and go back to Panama City... Still, we wanted to reach the very end, and it was interesting to just ride and observe the local life from the road: little towns, villages by the rivers where they build their houses at the edge of the cliff (and then throw all their daily trash over that cliff - behind every house, there was an avalanche of trash going down the hill and into the river, in which the locals then swam and did laundry!), an occasional modest bar in front of which a few parked horses patiently wait while the farmers are having a beer, little houses full of people in hammocks (hammocks are how you chill around here, they hang everywhere and are used instead of beds, rocking chairs and couches)...

Then, just like that, the famous road simply narrows into one lane that loops around the little town of Yaviza; you have to stop at the heart of it - in front of a few mini markets, a cheap eatery, and a few small boats that are waiting to take goods across the river. If you do want to continue, you actually can - there is a suspension bridge, just wide enough for a bike to cross. On the other side is the Darien, a true tropical wilderness in which there are no roads, just some villages, followed by forests and swamps, and some of those areas are downright dangerous: due to the lack of any infrastructure, drugs are smuggled through the jungle, and it's a perfect hideout for runaways and Colombian guerilla fighters... In short, it is possible to find your way through to Colombia, and it has been done (mind you, you will need to find a boat out there), but many travelers get lost, kidnapped or killed in the Darien.

As for regular folks like us, the road ends in Yaviza - from there, you need to walk, sail or fly to South America; and since we're Moto Migrants, not Hiker or Boat Migrants, this is where we turned around. It took us exactly 7 weeks and around 6,800miles (11.000km) to get to the bottom of Central America - and the timing was perfect too, we were starting to return north on the first day of spring. :) ...And if we may be even a little more poetic (give us a break, we were really proud to have made it down here, we were just two clueless people, crazy enough to tackle this challenge!): at the very end of the road, there was another construction-area sign (we had seen about a thousand of those along Panamericana!), but this time, it didn't annoy, it made us think instead how the roads down here are not just crucial, but the beating heart of the local life. Since Mexico, they have been the center of everything that happens, of all the market and other businesses, all the drama, family affairs, and traditions, it all goes on alongside or literally on the road - and that is not including the thousands of cows, dogs, horses, mules, chickens and goats that accompany them.

From this halfway point, we turned around and started returning north on the Caribbean side - goodbye west coast and Pacific, it was time to explore the Atlantic side!

Our first stop was Portobelo, a Caribbean fishing village with a reggae vibe (in fact, the messy hostel where we stayed was full of young potheads, who were visited by the police the next morning, lol). It was once the greatest Spanish port in Central America; named by Columbus, it was used by the Spanish as a port for stolen riches and gold, and then destroyed in the 18th century.

We liked this little town, full of pretty ruins, lush nature and local clichés; our hostel was right in the middle of a small neighborhood, and it was fun to just walk around. The old fortress was surrounded by beat-up houses with countless satellite dishes on their roofs, little boys were playing soccer in front of the old colonial warehouse, then there were canons that had not moved in centuries and were surrounded by absolutely gorgeous nature, and the church was full of loud and shiny things that draw attention (neon signs, decorations, and lavishly dressed up saints, including the black Jesus who was famous for some miracles - but he should really be famous for his coat! We never got tired of checking out the churches: Central American Catholicism seems to be pretty close to an emotional soap opera, and the statues of saints are lovingly dressed up like dolls)...

But, as usual, there was a truly dark side to it all: there was garbage everywhere in this paradise, on every meadow and in every stream, and then we found a crushed monkey, living in a small cage in front of the mayor's house, like some sort of trophy. It was all alone, surrounded with trash, and looked broken and insane, it was just heartbraking. We were tempted to strap a rope to the bike and rip the fence off - but were honestly too scared to challenge the locals... We find this attitude towards animals impossible to understand, and we found it all over Panama: in addition to the usual misery of hungry stray dogs, they seem to love putting animals, especially birds, into really tiny cages with not a twig in them.

Moving on, we crossed the mountains, so that we could rest at the famous archipelago Bocas del Toro in northeast Panama.

After making a quick stop at the still hot and dry Nata, to see one of the oldest churches in the Americas (16th century), we followed the road up into the mountains where the breeze was pleasantly fresh at first, but soon started to become quite strong, and then it turned into a borderline hurricane-force. We were starting to be blown around like ragdolls - at one point Stina stopped, and a gust promptly blew her right over! The clouds were moving even faster as we continued up, and it went from mist to rain... Coming around a bend, we were stopped dead in our tracks by the gail-force winds: Kyle was in front (as always, because he is a much better rider), shocked, he had never been literally stopped by the wind before, it was unbelievably strong; he looked into his mirror and watched the gust just throw Stina to the ground again; he parked his bike, went to help Stina, but honestly, we didn't know what to do to get out of this insane situation, and within seconds, his parked bike was on the ground as well. Luckily, a local came in a car and told us it gets worse and that we needed to use his car as a shield, to block the wind as we ride across the summit. Stina got in, and Kyle rode his bike next to the car, as the wind went absolutely crazy at the top... He made it, and he and the local had to return for Stina's bike and repeat ordeal.

Now wet but safe and sound, we thanked the local and his family (his wife and little boy were also in the car and glad they could help), and continued down through the rain forest, past some beautiful jungle villages. Kyle was starting to realize that he probably scratched the guy's car and felt bad... We made a quick stop, and met a young German couple who were riding around the world, two-up on a DR650, and as we happily exchanged experiences, our car came by again - so Kyle was glad to be able to pay the kind stranger for the little damage. :)

We spent the night in a sinister banana port, and then took the ferry to Bocas del Toro, looking forward to a much needed break from riding.

The islands are a beautiful tropical mix of rainforest and sandy beaches: the main island, Colon, is touristy and not cheap, full of Chinese stores with terrible groceries (which is the case all over Panama, it's hard to find a store that is not owned by a Chinese family), but our hostel where we camped took us on a boat tour and it was awesome:

We saw dolphins, sloths, snorkeled at coral reefs and swam at amazing beaches... It was very nice, but we're not sure that we got rested, it was unbelievably hot and rainy every night, and our tent also couldn't stop the terrible loud beats from the disco down the street, celebrating Santa Semana (Easter) - we had no choice but to stay up with beer ourselves! By the way, Easter is a huge deal in Central America, and alcohol is banned during the holiday on Bocas del Toro, so it was funny watching the tourists (who just arrived for a party weekend and had no idea about the ban until then) running to the stores just before noon, when the ban began taking place!

Due to the heavy rains, we had to stop just before the border and overpay for a terrible room in a very shady town - we liked Panama, but were super ready to return to the much more pleasant and clean Costa Rica! But that's another story...

Eastern Costa Rica

Heading north, we crossed into Costa Rica on the caribbean side, looking forward to a week full of amistad - we were going to meet not one, but three friends!

The border was a breeze, one hour in and out, which is our new record! After that it was just massive banana plantations all along the road, green and boring pretty much until we reached our first destination, Puerto Viejo, where we were going to meet with the first set of amigos.

The area was touristy, and it was grey and rainy when we arrived, but the caribbean beaches and wildlife here are known to be stunning - so while we were waiting, we took our usual lunch (cereal and local fruit) and went for a nice hike in Cahuita National Park. When our friends Todd and Amy arrived, they took us in at the cabin they rented. It was so nice to be spoiled for a few days, have a kitchen, and hang out with friends: we rode around, exploring the beautiful coast (some beaches have white sand, some black, there was some good snorkeling, and the water was really nice), and in the evening we cooked and made piña coladas while watching toucans, Stina's favorite birds (usually very hard to find, but plentiful around Puerto Viejo) playing in the palm trees... we left rested and really grateful.

The ride up along the coast was beautiful, until we got to the port town of Limon; then it was just a dusty, trash-filled road full of semi trucks. We stopped at La Fortuna to swim in the volcano hot springs: the river is heated by the nearby Arenal volcano, and it feels like sitting in a hot tub on a hot summer day, yet is somehow still relaxing and nice. Then we continued inland to the famous Monteverde National Park. The road from La Fortuna follows the beautiful Lake Arenal with all its twists and hills and views of volcanos - and is occasionally temporarily closed due to a crowd of cute little coatis crossing the road.

Going towards Monteverde (the most famous national park up in the mountains) the road turns to gravel and then dirt, until it basically becomes a dusty excuse for a road. Stina was having a really hard time, we were constantly dirty up to our ears, and on top of that, the park wasn't all that great - it was nice to walk through the jungle, and the sunsets in our camp were beautiful, but we hardly saw any wildlife - which is rarely the case in Costa Rica. We did almost see the elusive resplendent quetzal: there was a long shiny tail sticking out of her nest, and we waited for a looong time for her to come out...then we hiked some more...then we came back. Same tail sticking out. Then we really left; what can you do, it's nature, it has its own schedule.

But amigo #2, Ryan decided to show up (whom we had met in Guatemala and rode with for a few days) so we had a fun night with some other travelers at our hostel/campground. The next day the three of us left for the Viento Fresco Waterfalls - but before we did, we got invited to the Quaker worship; Stina had read a lot about them (in short, they are a pacifist Christian sect who left USA to avoid being drafted into the army; they call everyone "a friend" to avoid hierarchy, and they worship in a circle, in silence), so we decided to join them. Surprisingly, it was not awkward at all, it was nice! Young and old meditated together, old couples holding hands in peaceful silence, a cat joining us and napping on the bench...very peaceful, we all felt better, more quiet and centered afterwards, we loved the unexpected experience of the western kind of meditation.

Then we took off together, chasing each other up in the highlands, stopping only once to check out the local Sunday afternoon mountain town honky-tonk event, until we made it to the waterfalls.

The hike down to the five Viento Fresco waterfalls was hot and strenuous, but rewarded us with a refreshing swim in the cool water....but of course, then we had to take the over 400 steep steps back up to the bikes, so we were even hotter in the end...

We went back towards Lake Arenal to a camp area that Ryan had found a few weeks earlier; a few other moto travelers showed up too, and we had a nice night of beers, sausages and fire side stories by the gorgeous lake.

We said goodbye to Ryan the next morning, as he was on his way down to Columbia and beyond, and then we went to see amiga #3. Doree was only 75km from us, on an assignment to check out the local tourist and wedding destinations - we couldn't let this one slide, so before we left Costa Rica, we had to head down to Liberia (no need to ever go there otherwise) to meet up with her for a day.

It was awesome to spend time with lovely people in this lovely country - but it was time to move on, to Nicaragua and Honduras! But that's another story...

Northern Nicaragua

Continuing north, we returned to Nicaragua and stayed for a few days because we still wanted to explore a few places. Everything was cheaper compared to Costa Rica, beer was better (we loved their Toña cerveza!), roads were much better, and we were back in the beautiful chaos (our favorite was spotting mopeds transporting everything, from building materials to whole families). And yes, the trash was back too, with full force, as soon as we crossed the border.

We stopped in Masaya: it was a good place to land after the border, a nice town with surprisingly good pizza and a really good indoor market (where you can buy hammocks, leather goods, shirts, all decent stuff) - but their volcano that we had already tried to visit on the way down was still closed for public. This was one of our major disappointments: we were so looking forward to actually riding all the way to the edge of the crater, but due to a lot of volcanic activity, they didn't allow visitors at the time, and this time was no different. Oh well.

Then we headed north, towards the highlands and to the town of Esteli; the area is known for its coffee plantations and ranchero/cowboy culture, which sounded interesting and remote enough for us to include it into our trip. It was fun to ride through the country, past farms and into the pretty hills (well, not all of it was fun - there was a kilometer or so where guys were selling chained exotic animals on the side of the road; so if you couldn't care less about animal welfare and want a parrot on a stick or a monkey on a chain, this is where you can find them).

We did some awesome riding through the mountains (where the roads were great, even those made of bricks), checking out Esteli and other rebellious smaller cowboy-mountain towns like Jinotega and Matagalpa (the hometown of Carlos Fonseca, the famous revolutionary; and while Nicaragua was full of pink posters promoting the president/dictator Ortega, there were no such posters in the area), had some awesome coffee, visited some markets, and met some fellow travelers.

Our last stop was the pretty Somoto Cañon: it is a slot canyon that you swim and hike through (and the last section is done on a row boat), and we opted for the four-hour hike with a local guide, and got to camp in their back yard in exchange. It was pretty, refreshing and fun!

So that was it for Nicaragua; at the border we met the Nicaraguan biker gang named Legendaros (all men, of course) who were on their way to a biker rally in El Salvador...and then we entered Honduras! But that is another story.

Honduras

Entering Honduras, we were a little scared and excited, because the country has a really bad reputation and we had no clue what to expect. The ride from the border to the capital was the hottest ride of our Central American tour so far, and it was nice, good mountain roads and amazing landscapes, but the smog and pollution were suffocating, endless, and depressing. As it turned out later, this would pretty much sum up our experience here - pretty but trashed.

It was recommended that we skip the capital and head towards the coast; looking back, we are glad we were unable to skip Tegucigalpa - and were not too impressed with the coast.

We loved the capital despite the bad reputation for crime and murder; it's a colorful mess, chaotic but pleasant and alive, something like a tropical Albanianian Detroit (including all the usual stuff, like every vegetable wrapped in a separate plastic bag, truck beds packed-full of people, traffic jams, messed-up houses and electric wires, colorful street life, plus some well-preserved Spanish colonial architecture, like the 18th-century cathedral at the main Plaza Morazán). Once the sun goes down, it becomes a little sketchy (and every downtown store closes), but we didn't have any problems, even though we went to the local bar in the evening (and played some Laibach there, which was not received too well :D ). In fact, in this “murder capital of the world” we found the best grocery stores so far, one even had three kinds of escargot (not that we wanted escargot, but Stina was very happy in there, looking at stuff and choosing salad dressings and whatnot and was just in no hurry at all, to the point where her exhausted husband got seriously impatient, and we almost ended up having marital problems! :D )

The ride from Tegus (local slang, pretty sure we are allowed to use it now!) north to Lago de Yojoa was amazing: twisty, new and smooth roads through the mountains, and all that impeccable asphalt and beautiful views were for free for motorcycles, we had big smiles all afternoon.

We landed at the famous D&D Brewery next to the lake, looking forward to some easy camping and good beer. Well, the beer sucked, and despite claims of many beers on tap and 30+ bottled options, we only found two (noncarbonated, syrupy and sour) beers on tap and two bad brands of beer in the fridge. The brewery is in an area that doesn't allow sales of alcohol, and the stores are far away, so you are trapped with what you get. Needless to say, we were left with a sour taste in our mouth (pun intended). And that taste stayed with us all the way to the Caribbean coast: the nature around the lake and the coast was truly breathtaking (and the stalls by the road sold delicious cheap corn, we kept stopping for it, feeling giant standing next to the little locals), but it was covered with trash and smog, and the coastal town of Tela was a dirty, overpriced town with not much going on.

As for the Garifuna culture (the black slaves who moved to the coast after liberation, Stina was looking forward to exploring their culture a little bit), there was nothing happening on their annual liberation day. This was really bizarre, because that was the main reason we rode up to the area and our timing was right. The run-down but pretty Garifuna villages had no events and no drum sessions, there were only a few bored black people walking around (we did find the Garifuna coconut bread, and it was very good). A day there was enough, so we continued to a party beach town of La Ceiba which was the same as Tela, only bigger and more expensive, and had little to offer for us. Finally, we had enough of the coast, and moved on, north towards Gracias and Copan Ruins.

We rode all day, into the western mountains of Honduras. Our destination, Gracias, was supposed to be sleepy (which was great, we needed to rest, we were exhausted) - and it was a nice quaint colonial/cowboy town, but more dead than sleepy, even the grocery store closed at 5pm. And since we were on a budget and only went to grocery stores or had street food (we had only eaten at a restaurant five times so far), we moved on to the Copan Ruins.

We liked Copan right away, and decided to stay in our otherwise completely empty hostel for three nights. The main attraction of Copan are of course the Mayan ruins (finally, our first Mayan ruins!), but the town itself is pleasant, traveler-friendly and pretty with its cobble stone streets. We also found Sol de Copan, an awesome German pub with the best beer and real German food, so we were all set!

The ruins of Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization; it was occupied for over two thousand years, and the capital city of a major kingdom from the 5th to 9th centuries AD. A significant portion of the acropolis was eroded away by the Copán River, but it is now under Unesco protection, and the river has since been diverted to protect the site from further damage. The place is huge, and though half-destroyed, there are still many stelae and intricate carvings to be found as you walk freely around the pyramids, courts and plazas - while red macaws, majestic and free, fly above your head.

Stina's favorite by far was Macaw Mountain, a tropical bird sanctuary and breeding center just outside of town. There, we got to hang out with all kinds of rescued, endangered and abandoned birds - macaws, toucans, parrots and others. The ticket was good for three days and so we went every afternoon (hence all the bird photos), it was just so much fun to have toucans and macaws climb on you and be silly (many of these birds are used to people and cannot be reintroduced into the wild, so you get to interact with them: toucans wanted our camelback mouth piece and kept climbing on us with their pretty warm blue feet, macaws talked to us and took fruit out of our hands), and it was also incredibly moving to see all these abused and neglected birds getting better (there was a toucan with an artificial beak, and many bald macaws - they pluck out their feathers when they are stressed, but many do get better here, with the help of the staff and other macaws). We were glad we contributed a little bit to this awesome cause, and in return, we got so much fun and joy!

In the end we liked Honduras again and as a bonus, we crossed into nearby Guatemala in a record 33 minutes!

Eastern Guatemala

Back in Guatemala, we finally got a fresh coconut from the side of the road (they open it for you with a machete, and it's delicious, cheap, and available all over - we have no clue why we waited for ten weeks before we bought one!); we returned because we had one more major stop, the ruins of Tikal, but since we had to cross a border for that, we added a stop at Rio Dulce as well.

The boat ride down the Rio Dulce starts at Lake Izabal, goes through some pretty rough open water on the lake, then through a river canyon, and ends at the Garifuna town of Livingston.

The ride itself was not very romantic, it was more of a bone-crushing roller-coaster ride than a slow cruise through the jungle, and they constantly tried to sell us something during the boat trip (we stopped at one place, were approached by village boats full of souvenirs at the other, etc.), but the views were great: the sides of the river were in bloom, and we went past the 17th-century Spanish fortress, castle El Castillo de San Felipe, which was built to protect the villages from pirates (it wasn't very successful though, so then it was turned into a prison, before it became abandoned 200 years ago), and on through the protected Bird Islands, where hundreds of birds were sitting on mangroves in the river...

The Garifuna town Livingston isn't much of a destination (and there are no roads to it, and it's a bit expensive - in short, it is yet another picturesque rundown town where you can't get anything you need, but you can get very overpriced touristy stuff everywhere), but they did have some really good traditional food, most notably the to-die-for tapado - a rich stew made from all kinds of seafood, coconut milk, plantain and cilantro.

Next was Tikal, the ruins of a large ancient Mayan city, hidden in the tropical forest of eastern Guatemala. We stayed in the small town of Flores, which was nice but seemed to basically cater to Tikal tourists (it never ceased to amaze us how pricey things can be in Central America, like here, a cup of coffee at Burger King was $2, and a basic room with nothing but a fan was $25). But while we ended up sleeping in a hot, packed, miserable dorm, we loved Tikal:

Settled as early as 600 B.C., and abandoned (for reasons that are still a mystery) in the 10th century, Tikal had a population of 10,000 to 100,000 people in its heyday, A.D. 550-900; in the year 800, it was larger than London, and some of Tikal's skyscraping temples, which rise through the tops of dense jungle canopy, were the tallest buildings in the New World until the 19th century. Most of these monumental major buildings viewable today date to that time.

For whatever reason, the Mayans chose a location that would hold tens of thousands of people yet had no river or major body of water. They relied completely on seasonal rainfall for their water supply, which they collected in reservoirs. While no one knows for certain what happened to the Mayans of Tikal, it is clear that they were dependent on rainfall and with a growing population, Tikal was vulnerable to drought and extinction.

This was an advanced civilization that knew engineering, math and astronomy possibly better than Europeans in the 8th century (they created a calendar with 365 days, and their lunar cycle was only seven minutes off the best that modern instruments can calculate).

Archaeologists have uncovered 3,000 structures over a six-mile-square area, with more than 200 sculptured stone monuments and altars. At the center of it all lies the Great Plaza, the ceremonial center of Tikal; steep, pyramid-like temples reach for the sky around the Grand Plaza - some 10 acres' worth, paved with limestone. There are several ball courts, one in the main plaza, where ancient sportsmen tried to keep a rubber-like ball in the air as long as possible without using their hands (this was some hardcore pre-soccer game: experts say the penalty for losing was death for the leader of the luckless team. Others think it was the victors who were treated to the honor of a ceremonial death.)

The place is huge, magnificent and well-preserved, and the awesome tall crumbling temples, surrounded by endless jungle and wildlife, are a joy to explore (a few years later, we saw the more famous Peruvian Macchu Picchu, and realized that we found Tikal much more impressive). If you're fit and still have some energy left, you can climb those steep 60m-tall temples - and from the tops, you can see the white rooftop combs of other temples poking through the rainforest. Awesome.

On to our last new country - Belize!

Belize

Hello from Belize! It is the only English-speaking country in Central America, so the border was a bit easier, and we were pleasantly confused by the fact that we can communicate with everybody for the first day (it's Caribbean English, it sounded similar to Jamaican accent).

We rode towards the coast, along the Hummingbird Highway, a beautiful stretch of road through the tropical jungle, with little civilization or pollution, lots of green and an occasional Mennonite waving at us.

We spent our first night in Dangriga: the cheapest place we could find was $25 (in a dark basement room; but we did become friends with the owner's little daughter) and there was nothing there, restaurants were closed, no real stores (just mini stores for your very basic needs, like beer and pasta) and only one bar.

Going south, we passed many rustic little Mayan houses, and made it to Punta Gorda, a small southern port town; it basically consisted of one street with a square, and had a good funky Garifuna vibe, a nice chill town at the end of the road.

We spent a night at Placencia, another little town that relaxes at the end of a long peninsula. Since they had built the road, the mega condos had been moving in (even though we didn't think the beaches were that great), but for the time being, the town itself at the end of the road was still an incredibly pleasant laid-back fishing village, where bakery looked like something from the 19th century, and everybody said hi to us (and they were mostly barefoot). Plus, we stayed at a local fisherman's place, and so the seafood dinner, which consisted of conch steak and hog seabass, was amazing.

Since the beaches were not that great and there was not much to do, we turned around and started heading back north, making a quick stop here and there, in other sleeping fishing villages like Hopkins, until we made it to the destination we were really looking for - the Belize Zoo.

The Belize Zoo is a collection of animals only native to Belize that have been rescued from collectors or were found abandoned in the wild. (Wikipedia: It is home to more than 175 animals, all native to Belize. The natural environment of Belize is left entirely intact within the zoo. The dense, natural vegetation is separated only by gravel trails through the forest. The Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center receives over 68,000 visitors annually, with 15,000 being students, teachers, and parents. It focuses on educating visitors about the wildlife of Belize through encountering the animals in their natural habitat. The aim is to instill appreciation and pride, and a desire to protect and conserve Belize's natural resources.).

It was awesome to walk around and meet all these amazing animals, some of which we had never even heard of before (the midsized wild cat jaguarundi and the small ocelot, the four-feet/120cm-tall Jabiru stork that looks like it has a ballsack on its neck, tapir which is Belize's national animal and is super cute with its funny soft nose, etc.).

We found the Zoo to be a rare gem, and only the third place in Central America (the first two being national parks of Costa Rica and the Macaw Mountain in Honduras) where they really cared about their wildlife.

Coming into the nearby Belize City, everything around us looked more and more shady, and when we realized that not only does the main road lead through the cemetery, but that there were graves on the island in the middle of the road as well, we were really starting to wonder... It turned out that Belize City was not really not a city, it was a bizzare town: there were no tall buildings, no real stores, no bars...not even a McDonalds! However, the cheapest room we could find cost $30 (and the old Indian landlady was a no-nonsense boss, and the house was wrapped with razor wire), and the only pizza we could find looked absolutely terrible, was tiny, and cost $20. It was Friday night, but the streets looked suspicious, so we bought sandwich material and some cheap beer, stayed in, bought fruit at the market the next morning - and left!

To sum up: Belize was a green, pretty little country (although there was still garbage), with no real cities, grocery stores, or proper beaches (only seagrass/mangrove/trash covered coast). It was wonderful to ride through all that nature, and even better to see that they cared about their wildlife. The population was a colorful mix of the black Garifuna, Maya (who seemed to be doing better in Belize than anywhere else) and Mennonites (similar to Amish; the more conservative ones moved from the Northern America to El Salvador, and then, due to the civil war, to Belize. By the way, Belize in general is just as obsessed with Christianity as the rest of Central America).

Everyone was very nice, even when they were not trying to sell us anything; they did however charge us a ton of money for absolutely nothing (we paid over $40 per person on borders just to ride through the country, pizza was $20, etc). The towns were either lovely with a relaxing, breezy and barefoot kind of vibe, or they were sad and broke. Either way, we were not able to buy any proper food anywhere, and what we could buy was really expensive - so we made sure we were done with Belize in three days. We are glad we came, and even more glad to be leaving! :D

P.S. During our exploration of Belize, Prince died. This has nothing to do with our travels, of course, and we obviously never met the man and are not obsessed, but Stina was inexplicably, really sad the whole time... The world lost a true giant. RIP Prince.

Eastern Mexico to Pittsburgh

We would never have thought, when we first entered Mexico months ago, all scared and new to the area, that after traveling deep into Central America, returning back to Mexico was going to feel like a happy homecoming! We knew the country, how things function, even where to get coffee, and so we felt super comfortable there now! It was a cultural shock after the rest of Central America, everything was so readily available and cheap and simple, especially because we entered at the most touristy area - Riviera Maya on the Yucatan peninsula. Traveling felt like a vacation now, so we decided to take a day or two off (since we didn't in Belize), but it didn't go quite as we imagined - we learned that, as travelers, either we absolutely love it somewhere - or a day is enough, we get fidgety and have to move on.

Tulum is known for its coastal Mayan ruins on a tropical beach. The small town itself was really nice, and it still felt authentic: the bars had awesome local live music, both traditional and contemporary, and the street food was amazing and dirt cheap (the pathetic $20 pizza from Belize still being fresh on our minds) - and of course, our hostel's toilet was guarded by a kitschy shrine, and there were nuns on the beach. The 13th-century Mayan ruins were nothing special, there are way more magnificent ruins to be found on the peninsula - but they were a pretty sight, together with the Castillo watchtower, sitting on the cliffs above the beautiful Caribbean beach. But, there was really only that one beach, and it was packed, so we decided to move on.

Playa del Carmen, our next stop, had changed a lot (according to Kyle, who had been there nine years before), it was much bigger now, its awesome beach attracting masses of tourists. The town had one long pedestrian zone which was a serious shopping and party central, with plenty of chic bars, restaurants and clubs mixed in. We couldn't find our usual cheap lodging, but we still decided to stay and take a day off (after over two weeks): we slept in, spent the day on the beach, found good food and a cool bar... It was great not to have any surprises and any adventures, sometimes a lame comfy day is perfection. :)

Cancun probably used to have really nice beaches too, but those were now suffocating under a million massive hotels and ruthless mass-tourism. We got there, stayed at a bizarre hostel in an abandoned mall that was falling apart behind a giant hotel (which might have been fancy, we don't know, and we did see a young couple get married all alone on the beach behind the hotel), but there was nothing to see or do outside the resorts, and so we decided to leave this rundown town the next day - after we changed the oil (our trip had hit 10,000mi/16,000km, so it was time!) and did a snorkeling trip to the Museum of Underwater Sculpture.

The Cancún Underwater Museum is a non-profit organization, devoted to the art of conservation; the museum has a total of 500 sculptures, most by the British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, that are submerged between three and six meters deep in the ocean at the Cancún National Marine Park. The objective of the museum is saving the nearby coral reefs by providing an alternative destination for divers - but we did not know that, and opted for a tour that included the reef as well, and it was fun, we saw tons of fish, squid, barracudas, and even a turtle! (the pictures are a bit blurry, that's what you get if you buy a $40 knock-off GoPro ;) ).

We left Cancun in a hurry, and headed west to the cheaper, colonial side of the Yucatan peninsula. That part is not that famous, but let us tell you what it is: it's HOT. We thought we knew hot, hot weather is all we'd had on this trip, but this was insane: it was at least 40°C/100°F and it never cooled off, not even at night. Riding boiled our brain, turned our blood into syrup and mentally killed us, and while sightseeing was hard, sleeping without AC was even harder (we did though, for days).

We made it to Valladolid the first night: we were totally shocked by the heat and had just a small fan in a shithole of a room, so we don't have much to say about this slow, little colonial town, except that we somehow made it through the night and that, as is tradition, being in a new region meant that we were seeing new, colorful traditional dresses.

The main sight of the area is, of course, Chichen Itza:

Chichen Itza was one of the largest Maya cities and a major economic power; the city may have had the most diverse population in the Maya world, a factor that could have contributed to the variety of architectural styles at the site.

The site contains many fine stone buildings in various states of preservation, and many have been restored. Many of these stone buildings were originally painted in red, green, blue and purple colors, so the site must be imagined as a colorful one, not like it is today.

There vere many different architectural complexes: three best known of these are The Osario Group, the Central Group, and the most impressive, the Great North Platform, which includes El Castillo, Temple of Warriors, and the Great Ball Court.

The 30m-tall Castillo (Temple of Kukulcan) dominates the site; a lot of beautiful sculptures and human remains were found in it, and it may have actually been a massive Mayan calendar (there are 365 steps, carved serpents light up during equinoxes, etc.); the Great Ball Court is the largest, most preserved and most impressive Mayan ball court of ancient Mesoamerica, and its amazing acoustics are still a mystery - it's bounded by parallel walls, set with stone rings, and the base of the walls are slanted benches with sculpted panels of teams of ball players (in one panel, one of the players has been decapitated; the wound emits streams of blood in the form of wriggling snakes).

In short, it was fun to explore Chichen Itza, lots of mystery and variety, we really liked it - well, except for the fact that there were hundreds of kitch-selling stalls all around, and all the sellers bugged us, which was especially annoying because of the oppressive heat!

Next, we went to the bigger colonial city of Merida and stayed a while, because the Nomadas Hostel was a true oasis, it was nice and pleasant and had an awesome, decadent pool. We did go out and explore, but this climate is nothing for gringos: the market was even louder and more packed than usual, and it felt like sauna, so we couldn't handle staying in there for more than 20 minutes; we also found a nice German pub, but the beer got warm within minutes, and eating spaetzle, boiled cabbage and pork was just a bad idea... But our hostel kept saving our sanity and kept us healthy - around noon, we literally went for a swim to lower our body temperature, and then we chilled on the hammocks, hanging over the water. ...The thought of leaving and dealing with the heat, in full gear, was appalling - but eventually, we had to move on.

We made a quick stop at Campeche, a Unesco colonial town and possibly the hottest place on Earth (we know we bore you with the hot-weather report, but it was truly unbelievable) and from there, it was a boiling hot, long two-and-a half-day ride to Oaxaca - we were thankful for every Oxxo (a chain of mini stores, usually at gas stations, that always had coffee and AC), and hostel that let us safely park inside (sometimes, that meant we rode the bikes right through the front door and into the lobby, where the receptionist wouldn't even look up at us from her knitting :D ).

The hot gulf coast was beautiful, full of wilderness and birds, but sadly, there was no reason to hang out: the cities and beaches were very trashed and polluted - at one point, the local dump must have been on fire too, because trash was literally falling from the sky like black dry rain.

Next, we were going to go inland and enter the mountains - and we were looking forward to that fresh climate!

On our way from the gulf coast into the mountains, the climate finally became fresher and the nature greener (and we greeted an enormous group of Mexican riders, there were hundreds of them riding by, it was an awesome view after all these months of hardly seeing any bikes... unlike us, they weren't too impressed, we must have looked like bums to them on our small, packed, muddy bikes :D), and within hours, we went from wearing nothing to wearing everything we owned. The crazy ride over the continental divide had literally over 1000 sharp turns, which took us up to 3000m/10,000ft and into the clouds, and made us forget what a straight road looked like. At the top, the clouds suddenly disappeared, and it was warm again; a few hours later we arrived in Oaxaca.

Oaxaca is the capital of the state with the same name; the area is best known for its indigenous peoples and cultures which survived better than most others in Mexico, due to the state's rugged and isolating terrain - and for mole, the famous thick sauce that comes in many varieties (and often includes both beans and chocolate).

It is a beautiful, colonial mountain city that was named a World Heritage Site. While it relies on tourism, it still feels authentic; and with a temperate climate and a nicely walkable layout, we found Oaxaca easy to love and hard to leave:

We took it easy for two days, enjoying the sights, markets, and the fresh summer weather (and drank mescal and their weird typical drink that resembles chocolate milk, ate elote - their delicious corn that is much less sweet that the American kind, did laundry in the sink, and watched a big colorful political rally).

We left the beautiful mountains, and then Kyle's bike decided to not run well and we had to stop at a parking lot in an industrial area, and after a few hours we were starting to get worried (there was nothing around, not even a toilet) - but with the help of the friends back home, Kyle was able to figure it out - it was the carburetor - and we moved on, towards our last destination: Mexico City!

The ride from Oaxaca through the majestic mountains was beautiful, and then we started to descend into a dry, hilly country, covered with giant cactuses, until it all turned into a smoggy, urban, industrial landscape of the high-altitude Valley of Mexico. We had been dreading the notorious traffic of the densely populated Mexico City, so we decided to spend our first night on the southern edge of the city, in Coyoacan, near the Frida Kahlo Museum. (As it turned out, we never had any problems with traffic while in Mexico City, it was very moderate, no jams or craziness).

Coyoacan, the birthplace of Frida Kahlo, used to be a village, but it soon became a part of the expanding city; it is full of colonial architecture and tree-lined cobblestone streets, and we spent a delightful evening walking around, watching people dance in the main square, and, after all these months on the road, really enjoying its urban, hipster feel (and the urban, hipster beer).

The bright-blue Museo de Frida Kahlo, showcasing her life and work, is here too. The building was Kahlo's birthplace, the home where she grew up, lived with her husband Diego Rivera for a number of years (and Trotsky lived there for a while too), and where she later died in a room on the upper floor.

The museum contains a collection of artwork by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and other artists along with the couple's Mexican folk art, pre-Hispanic artifacts, traditional Mexican cookware and linens, photographs, memorabilia, and personal items; they cooked big, old-school meals for their many friends in their colorful Mexican kitchen, and Frida's wardrobe is a beautiful fashion-show based on traditional garments from all over the country; you can tell that this was a home to open-minded, talented, brave and loving people, and it also gives you an idea of the lifestyle of wealthy Mexican bohemian artists and intellectuals during the first half of the 20th century.

On the upper floor are Frida's final bedroom and studio area; the original furniture is still there, and in one corner, her ashes are on display in an urn, which is surrounded by a funeral mask, some personal items, and mirrors on the ceiling. On her bed is a painted plaster corset she was forced to wear to support her badly damaged spine, and under the canopy is a mirror facing down which she used to paint her many self-portraits. The head of the bed contains the painting of a dead child, and the foot contains a photo montage of Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Mao Zedong. The pillow is embroidered with the words "Do not forget me, my love."

We were both somewhat familiar with her work and personality, but we, especially Stina, were not expecting to like the museum so much, and be blown away by getting to know Frida: she was a brilliant artist, a charismatic woman and an extraordinary fashionista, and she lived and loved with integrity and an intense passion; she was also a proud woman, who dealt with her intense chronical pain without complaining all her life.