Thanks for the info!!

Just one question, how's the road between Yaviza and the Colombian border? Just curious.

Thanks,

John

__________________
John C.

There isn't one. Search for "Darien Gap"

Put it this way:

Bring a boat, good hiking shoes, and several guards with machineguns.

__________________
SF to Panama and back
How I Nearly Killed My Friends In Baja

Several to be read as many!!!!

Sjoerd,
A bit of advice on the Rio Sereno / San Vito crossing: There is no Costa Rican insurance available at Rio Sereno, although it is required. This can cause a problem. We had six bike to cross and they (CR customs) made five of us wait in Rio Sereno while the sixth went to San Vito to get insurance.

__________________
Steve Barnett
Panama City, Panama

As I said earlier, I think, Yaviza is at the end of the road . And that is END, no mas caretera !
No problem about CR insurance here Steve, I bought that on the first run down and it is still valid. Actually somehow on that pass I managed to get in without doing the temp. import thing even though I got shunted around in proper sequence between al the correct wickets of migracion and aduana and they all signed off on my slips and sent me on my way . Then as I was leaving at Sixaola the aduana guy noticed the bike was not ïmported yet! He phoned the entry border an nope, not done. But he said, bah, not a problem. The bike technically has not been in CR , so on the way back just get it imported. So I´ll se how that goes in the morning. You see , with all the time and distractions en route via Volcan and all the neat roads and scenery there up in the hills I did not make the border before 5pm closing. So I called it a day, took a room in the hospedaje and will set off in the morning. It is nice when one does not have a travel time schedule.

__________________
http://advrider.com/index.php?thread....207964/page-5 then scroll down to post #93

Thanks for the recon. Did you go all the way to the end of the road?

Indeed I did go all the way to the end of the road. Yaviza is situated in the horseshoe bend of a river and the Panam highway runs right into the town where it becomes a narrow one-kilometer loop of concrete , the main street of the town. There is where all the shops and 2 hotels and restaurants can be found. There are also a number of other dirt streets to north of the town center .There is a suspended footbridge across the river to some more concrete walks and dirt paths but NO MORE ROAD. Thats it, Finito. Het einde.
If anybody wants to travel farther they will have to talk to the army for permission and be ready to hike or take a boat. But you can NOT ride or drive to Colombia even if it is only 50km away.( on maps they do show a mine or two far away but that is not for travel, maybe they fly or float their supplies in.)

Now as to my crossing from Panama into Costa Rica which I mentioned last time -- it was a breeze. The Panama customs stamped my passport out in about 3 minutes and 100m away the Costa Rican border post was equally as fast. I don`t know why the CR border guy at Sixaola said I did not have the import permit - I did too have it, a big one page printout. Maybe he was new on the job. Every border crossing in CA should be this simple and fast. And not one single ``helper`` pestering me and the only othe r traveler there at that hour.
A note on open hourst 8am to 5 pm PANAMA TIME ( Eastern)
Costa Rica time is one hour later (Central) so don`t get caught by this. Also shorter hours on certain spacial days.
If you do find it closed , no big deal ,In Panama Rio Sereno has two hotels and in CR the first little town 8km from the border ,gravel road, has several hotels.

Now as I add this a day later I get the picture of why the Sixaola aduana said my bike was not imported. I did indeed get a full page document with stamps and signatures stating all the particulars of temp import. When I asked multiple times if that was what I needed and if I was done with the formalities at entry point they repeatedly answered ....yes, all finished ,go away. . What they neglected was to tell me to go 100m south to another aduana building and get that document stamped yet again and pay the import fee.Having crossed this same border point multiple times before I should probably have remembered that but hey,I assumed they all knew their jobs and I was glad to sort of find that the process had been simplified a bit. So today when crossing the same border back to Nica it is of course a total mess as there are looooong lineups from multiple busloads as the locals are all off work for some superstition week and heading to the beaches. The actual processing only took a few minutes....once I got done waiting an hour and more in the lineups.This time the guy who issued the import permit in the first place initialed the pages as ''non pagado'' and sent me to the missed office. There the guy just took the papers and said '' listo'', did not make any hassel, no payments no fines. So, I saved a few bucks on not importing the BMW and it is quite clear that all the import rigamarole is totally pointless. A big load of beurocratic BS and job creation for deskjockies.

__________________
http://advrider.com/index.php?thread....207964/page-5 then scroll down to post #93