End of the Road

Location:	Panama City
Mileage:	9,000

We leave San Isidro in Costa Rica very early as the aim is to get to Pamana by mid afternoon and then visit the SOS Village. It is dark when we leave.

The road seems good but it has pot holes to catch you out. In the dusky morning hours, we miss avoiding one big one and the bike takes a huge thud. A bang so big you can't belive that you can get away with it. Sure enough within a few miles and hearing a flapping sound, we get off the bike expecting to see the back tyre deflating.

In fact a closer inspection shows the tyres are fine but that we are missing six spokes in one section of the back wheel and have taken a small dent to the rim. We limp into a petrol station. As always it is a Sunday. It is ony 6.30am. The only thing we can do as dawn breaks is to make a temporary repair. We ave no spare spokes with us. We have to jiggle around the remaining spokes to evenly space out where the gaps are.

This is now going to be hairy. With me on the back and all the luggage, most of the weight rests over the back wheel. If it was Kev on his own, we would not worry. I don't want to get back on the bike but there is no choice. We edge slowly down the road and take is at an easy 40mph for the next 20 miles of so and inspect the wheel again. It appears to be holding but we know we have no contingency there. Every other pothole has to be avoided. Just how strong will it be when the bike is at maximum load capacity? How far can we push it?

It is 100 miles to the Panama border and in Panama the dealer is expecting us for a sevice the next day. We have to make it to cross the border.

The further we go the braver we get until, we are at the border. This final border is the cheapest, quickest and simplest yet. But we are now losing time because we have to go slow. Any hope of getting to Panama City to see SOS this afternoon is gone.

The norther section of the road is poor. Many cracks and potholes and we slalom around them. By Aguadulce, we are onto dual carriageway all the way in. But we are losing light again and within 10 miles of Panama City, it is dark. Traffic is heavy as everyone is coming back from the beach. They drive like maniacs when it is straight, inches behind the car in front but do not know how to drive through bends, and drift all over. Within less than one miles we see three accidents blocking the road, with police and ambulances there.

For us the City was easy to negotiate, even at night, and following signs for Ave Balbao, we find the InterContinental Hotel, recopmmended to us by the Food and Beverage Manager who we met at the Panama border. It looks out over the bay. It is sheer decadence. We have never stayed in such a luxury hotel like this, but we have two days before we hit South America.

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.

Onward!

Location:

Nicaragua

I race over to the Nicargua side of the border and ask in my broken Spanish if they will process the bike this evening and the Aduana nods his head to me. Running back to Honduras, we sign us and the bike out. We are now in no mans land.

Kevin deals with the Nicarguan Aduana for the bike. I take our passports to Immigracion for stamping. The officer looks at his watch and waggles his finger "No - manana a las ocho". It is ten past five. My heart sinks and he sits there smugly and repeats his phrase.

You know what comes next. We pay double for our Nicaraguan tourist immigracion card, but he then lets us in. The bus arrives at the border five minutes later to take all the border staff away and in the time it takes us to get oursleves sorted the border is deserted. We have made a double border crossing on one day by the skin of our teeth.

We then realise we have no Nicarguan cordobas and what´s more we are losing light rapidlay. There is a small comedor over the border and a one eyed old man called Raphael, shuffles out with a wad of notes in his hand. We get another fleecing on our rate, but change enough money to get fuel and lodging for the night.

We end up in Ocotal, now knowing that we have really taken a big chunk nack out of the lost day.

Nicaragua or bust!

Location:

Esquipalas to Ocotal

We are at the border when it opens at 6am. Leaving Guatemala is held up because we need photocopies of our Guatemala bike permit and the photocopy man is not there. We should not have worried because by the time we clear here and get to the Hondura crossing a couple of kilometres down the road, the Aduana is not there. We do immigration and then wait. Our guide tells us that the Aduana will arrive at 8am. We sit around until 8.30am before he arrives.

Then it is a little bit of corruption. If we want the permit done quickly we have to pay big dollars for him to push it up the queue. Otherwise he has two other vehicles to do first. (Probably from last night!)

No amount of arguing gets us anywhere and we are caught. We hate paying over the odds - it makes it worse for the next traveller - but we cannot wait here for the best part of the morning.

We pay the extra dollars and feel angry at being fleeced, but leave the border by 9am. We have to try and make a double border crossing today into Nicaragua if we are to catch up.

The day is tedious. We only stop a couple of times for fuel and water. We miss any food breaks. Our only saving is that unlike Guatemala City, Teguicigalpa signs the road straight through for us. We weave in and out of the trucks as the clock counts down. LP says the border closes at 5.30pm.

We arrive at five to five with a sigh of releif only to be have a rising tide of panic when they say the border closes at five. They will process us out of Honduras but will Nicaragua let us in??

Claw Back time?

Location:

Acapulco to Tapachula

We still have not caught up our lost day. We leave Acapulco at 4.30am. Just to tread water we have to get to the Tapachula and the Guatemalan Border. It is a 700 mile day, all still on our favourite Highway 200. I don´t see that we are going to claw back today.

Our start is crap. We follow the Airport signs, which is to the south of the city and where we need to go, but end up at the Departure Terminal (is someone trying to tell us something?) We are not going mad, once again, Mexican signing leaves a lot to be desired.

The road continues to give us glimpses of spectacular coast line, endless stretches of beach with huge crashing surf or craggy cliff faces with swirling masses of foam. Little hippy surf towns lie just out of reach. We plough on through curve after curve, slowing to snails pace behind huge lorries, risking quick overtakes to get some speed up. It is hard hard work in the midday sun. Our faces and hands are burning and our arses are really beginning to feel the effects of nine days in the saddle.

We have little relief along this stretch of road. Even getting something to eat is turning into a nightmare. Having not eaten for over 24 hours, we finally stop at a well signed restaurant, only to find it a back room of a house, with plenty of flies. Mama cleans the toilet for us and cooks our food - a huge plate of camerones, complete with all bits. It takes us more energy to eat it than we take in. Let´s hope we feel no after effects!

As for the bike, he is holding up well. Plenty of punishment, lots of weight, but as expected from the BMW, has not let us down.

Central America

Location:	Tapachula
Mileage:	Approx 6,000 in total

Our status on the record is still one day behind plan. Mexico has been much tougher than expected. We now have four days to cover five countries and still make our BMW service which is planned for Monday 1 September at 8am in Panama City. Not only that we have SOS to visit in Panama too!

Luckily we planned Central America on a much more cautious basis and provide the borders are good to us, we are confident we can get back our precious day.

Entering Guatemala

Location:

Talisman to Esquipalas

We arrived at the border crossing early but only to find that they would not process the bike documentation. They sent us back to a point 10 miles earlier where late last night, tired and weary, we had passed without seeing it. It causes us a delay of 1 1/2 hours. It is a bad start to the day.

We get a guide to help us crossing into Guatemala. For a few dollars they take all the paperwork and run around for you. It is painless and the costs of getting into Guatemala are low - the permit for the bike is only about $4.

Guatemala is hot steamy and very tropical. We run the CA1 and then head into Guatemala City. This route will take us direct to Honduras and miss El Salvador, avoiding a border crossing here.

The city is hell. The road dumps you in a myriad of narrow streets with no signs and bumper to bumper traffic. In desperation, we have to hire a taxi to follow out of the city. It is all eating into time. As we finaly hit the road from Guatemala, it runs a series of steep ridges, clogged by old trucks doing 10 mph and belching out fumes. Our time is ticking away today. If we want to claw back our day we have to try and cross into Honduras today as well.

The border closes at 6pm. We miss it by half an hour. The Aduana office is closed. We have to go back to Esquipalas and hole up there for the night. We are still one day behind our plan.