Head On!

Location:

Nicargua to Costa Rica

The road when we cross to Nicaragua is unbelievably good and nothing like when we were here four years ago. Smooth clear tarmac leads the way. We leave Ocotal at 5am and arrive at the border at about 9.30am to leave Nicaragua and enter Costa Rica. We cannot belive how quick it has been done. We are now entering Costa Rica only a couple of hours behind plan.

Costa Rica had two major hurdles - another capital city to cross and the Cerro del Muerte (Mountain of Death). As we hit road works in San JOse and lost all signs, we reverted to the taxi trick again to get us through.

The road out of San Jose climbs upwards for the best part of 60 miles to over 3,500 metres. It is late afternoon. We start to lose light and it gets cold. The higher we get the more mist swirls around and the thicker it gets. In parts visibility is down to only twenty metres of so. Our danger here is the cars without lights and the very slow trucks. Go round a sharp bend too fast and a truck crawling along may as well be a brick wall.

The most scarey thing is the impatience of the cars coming the other way. As we reached night with still 40 miles to go before our stop point that day, we faced a head on around a blind bend. Kev swerved to the right, inches from the edge of the road, braking and with the thinest of margins we stayed up right and on the road.

The final hour riding saw me turn to a shaking wreck, as every glare of lights and bend posed real danger.

Arriving in San Isidro, we have one more day of riding ahead to make Panama by deadline.