Hi, just stumbled across this post, so starting at the beginning...as you do. This is of interest to me, somewhere else to bear in mind for my future travels.
Cheers MotoMike

Julian,
You are right-Mexico and Brazil are the only places left that still produce bug parts, in particular, Mexico had the beetles in production until not long ago.
The breakdowns are all part of the adventure. Thank God they're just little ones thus far. I'm feeling much better and we are back on the road again.

motomike,
Thanks for tuning in. You have a lot of posts to read. Better you than me ; )
Here's another one guys:

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AUG 24TH. LA VENTOSA WIND FARM

Somehow I woke up without an alarm at 8:40 a.m. I jumped in the shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to see if the departure time was still 9 a.m. Knowing that Chris had just gone to sleep at 7:00 am or so and that some of the team was sleeping as well, just Alex, Andy, and I rode in the van to La Ventosa. Claudio had spent the night at La Ventosa in hopes of getting more sleep by eliminating the commuting time.

I wasn’t exactly sure what made me wake up early and go along but I was interested in the possibility of a tour of the wind farm. Amazingly we got better than that! The staff arranged for us to climb a wind turbine. They asked if we wanted to climb the shorter one or the taller one. We all said the taller one which is 44 meters high. They gave us white jumpsuits to put on over our clothing to protect us from the grease. We went down a dirt road in a truck to the designated turbine. Alex and I got suited up and put on the protective harnesses and got hooked onto the cable running up the turbine. I naively thought that we were going to walk up actual stairs. I gulped when I looked up and realized instead I would be climbing a ladder reaching up to the sky. “Ok, that’s tall,” I thought. “But no sweat, I can do this,” I gave myself a pep talk. The no sweat part wasn’t literal as already with my two feet planted firmly on the ground, I was sweating quite a bit thanks to the full-body jumpsuit and wishing that I had drank more water. I started up the ladder after the engineer who was leading us, and Alex, who was scampering up like a monkey up a tree. I was toting the camera, and by a third of the way up, was thoroughly spent. I should mention that I can’t do a pull-up to save my life as I have always had a pitiful lack of upper-body strength. I handed off the camera to Alex to carry at the halfway point and dragged myself up the rest of the way. Once at the top, I was hoping I didn’t stupidly pass out as I was hot and dehydrated.

The day was already gorgeous. I’m talking blue skies painted with fluffy white clouds and lush green all around as it is the rainy season. But from the top of a wind turbine, the 360 degree views were absolutely spectacular. I didn’t want to come down at all. Alex and I snapped some photos and then reluctantly headed down.

We went back to the hotel to get the rest of the guys. By the time we got there it was past 3 p.m., and the guys were waiting in the lobby. Poor Chris was feeling very sick. None of us had eaten yet, so we started to eat at a restaurant by the gas station while Chris started to put in a new clutch cable (Many thanks to Tom Kent for that spare cable! That came in handy sooner than expected!). The second he started fixing the cable, surprise, it started pouring again!

We headed out at near dusk for Tapachula, Chiapas, México, our last stop before crossing the border to Guatemala. We had 180 miles before us and the rain was not going to let us travel unaccompanied. If we were on our own, we would be much more reticent about driving at night as it is safer to travel by day for a number of reasons. However due to unavoidable factors, at times it becomes a necessity. We drove into the night, sadly missing all the scenery on our last night in Mexico. Chris was sick and the rain pretty much put him over the edge of what he could bear. We arrived in Tapachula at 3 am, and we got to bed around 4:00 a.m. We are crossing the border to Guatemala tomorrow morning if everything goes well.

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ENTERING GUATEMALA

We arrived at the Guatemalan border to find out that we should have gone to the customs 40 minutes back in Talachupa to process the cancellation of the Mexican registration/import permit. Apparently, if you don’t cancel this permit before leaving the country and don’t came back into the country before it expires, you will be charged $500.00, plus a fine if you try to enter into the Mexico again with a vehicle. We tried to see if we could sort this out by email or phone but were told that no, each car had to go back to La Garita or else potentially be charged $500.00. The RGE guys contacted the British embassy to see how negative the ramifications would be if we didn’t go back. They said it would mostly likely be ok and that they would call the custom for us from the British embassy.

We barely went a few meters out of the border queue and ended up mobbed by a crowd and unable to move. The police were quick to respond, and they guarded us guns in hand and offered to escort us all the way to our destination at Guatemala City. We had a long delay at that juncture as we worked on sorting out the temporary importation status of the vehicles. Apparently, we had gone to a different place to cross the border than where we had originally planned to cross which is partly why things didn’t go as smoothly.

With a throng of people around us, we waited around and made conversations with the locals. All the tropical rain had washed off my shoe polish so I got the best shoeshine of my life from a little boy who worked on my shoes as if I was the president. For one dollar, my combat boots were as shiny as any General’s. A lady gave Cynthia a Rombego (a local fruit) to try for free as we didn’t have any cash, and later a girl approached us and gave us a whole bag of the spiny red fruits. On the inside they look like a large peeled grape and turned out to be succulent and delicious. We shared some with the kids and the police, and the girl invited us to her mother’s store and they gave us a picture to remember our time there and gave Cynthia a keychain. Once again, we have been impressed by the kindness of people to complete strangers.

Finally around 6 p.m, the border ordeal was over, and we started out on the road to Guatemala City. The road was lined by palm trees, banana plants, and many other lush plants. We passed grazing cows, chickens, muddy rivers, and many people walking along the road or riding in bike-cart taxis. After a gas station stop to fuel up for the bike, it was a bit surreal to see how the police with their guns stopped traffic for us to merge back onto our route for no apparent reason other than they could! By now it was dark. Almost immediately we started to encounter potholes of a size and frequency that made me feel like I was trapped in a video game. Trying to avoid them and radio back to the SRZero was quite a feat and took all my concentration. It was pouring as well, naturally. The hours of riding in the rain didn’t help. When we arrived to Guatemala City around 4 a.m., I was more sick, hypothermic, tired and ready for the bed.

Our stay in Guatemala didn’t turn out to be what I envisioned. I wanted to stay at least a month in Guatemala since this country is in the grip of a protracted food insecurity crisis, and the current situation of food insecurity is worsening what is already one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world (affecting 43% of children below five years of age). We highlighted a malnutrition clinic in Guatemala a few post back. While it was our wish to visit this clinic personally, we were disappointed that the strict schedule of the RGE team prevented us from being able to visit there or other clinics. Needless to say, this is a country with tremendous needs.

I also had a few contacts and a motorcycle club I wanted to visit while there which we had to skip as well. We stayed in Guatemala for 2 days and I honestly don’t remember a minute of it. I was down with high fever and the next thing I remember is getting back on the bike heading fast for El Salvador.

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Andrea,

Thanks for tuning in and welcome to the forum. i'm honored to have your first post . keep on reading.

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EL SALVADOR, THE MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRY

I was still in recovery mode so Claudio took on the riding task with Cynthia going as pillion. I got lucky as the second they took off, the monstrous rain started again, and this time it rained so hard that small rivers started forming on the road. We left Guatemala prematurely and headed flying for the border of El Salvador. The border was pretty impressive. One side was Guatemala, other side El Salvador, and a raging river separated the two land masses. The border ordeal was a typical one lasting several hours. A million signatures, 200 copies of every document and at the end getting a license plate number wrong and having to do it all over again.

El Salvador is a different country and you can tell the second you pass over the border. Every house and I mean, literally, every house is protected with a tall fence plus broken glass and barbwire on top. Armed guards are everywhere, from gas stations to even a simple doctor’s office or pharmacy. Our hotel in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, had a guard with a chopped-off shotgun and a Glock, and this was a very good neighborhood to begin with. The capital city looked like an American colony with the only difference being the language. From Wal-Mart to Pizza Hut and Starbucks to Subway, the streets are filled with American brands and American- made cars. The currency is even the US dollar, and the government is rightly accused of being an American puppet.

El Salvador has one of the biggest gang problems in Latin America which is not surprising, and is home to the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (the MS-13 gang). It came out of a bloody civil war which took 13 years and left more than 75,000 dead on both sides of the conflict. Many families fled the country and the majority landed in the United States. Many El Salvadorians kids grew up in the US during the war and when they returned home (in most cases deported because of their criminal acts), they had nothing in common with the locals. These very same young men started their own US influenced gangs and started killing each other for lack of better things to do. Most of these gang members speak perfect English with an American accent and not so much Spanish and are covered in fierce tattoos from head to toe.

El Salvador, like Guatemala, struggles with food security and has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in Central America. The problem starts with poverty and combined with a lack of education, creates a horrific result. To compound the situation, Latin Americans are mostly devout Catholic, and one thing the Catholic Church promotes and never condemns is having more babies.

In rural El Salvador the men are typically found passed out on hammocks outside of the shacks, while the women do every hard labor chore imaginable. These very same men take many women, and some have more than 12 children with no income to speak of. Women are forced to raise the kids on their own. The mothers are often malnourished themselves with no breast milk to speak of. Coffee and tortilla, the only two food staples at hand, are made into a mush to feed the babies. In three weeks, the babies are so sick and skinny that many of them die in the jungles before reaching their first month. The government figures of the fatality rate for children in El Salvador are inaccurate as most of these babies are born without ever having a birth certificate let alone a death certificate.

To make it worse, the malnutrition programs are run by the government and when admitted to the hospitals, eight out of ten babies will never make it out. The governmental hospitals typically only treat the presenting illness but do not treat malnutrition nor provide any education or help to the families.

While in San Salvador, we were hosted by a super nice Salvadorian family and they showed us the utmost hospitality. Claudia Aguirre and her father run the KMPG office in San Salvador. (KPMG is a global financial institution in a nutshell). They put us up in a hotel and drove us all around the town for our every need. Over the mealtime, when they found out that we are raising awareness for world hunger, they arranged for us to visit their friends who run a malnutrition clinic (the report on this visit will be in the next post). El Salvador is a beautiful country with wonderfully hospitable people. So far on the trip, El Salvador is the place that has felt most like home.

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SEP 6TH. THE LOVE LINK

Is it destiny that makes our course or is it the path that dictates our fate? Many follow their fate, but a few write their own. Sam Hawkins is such a person. Two weeks after we met this incredible man, he had a misfortune and while opening a bottle of chemicals, it exploded in his face and resulted in second degree burns from the neck up. When I received the news I was in shock as to why such a calamity could happen to such a saint-like person.

At age 71, Sam is as young at heart as any child. The twinkle in his eyes, his enthusiasm, his cowboy boots and thick Texan accent set him apart from the Salvadorians, but if that wasn’t enough, at six foot and some change, he stands out in the middle of the short Latin American crowd. Sam and his lovely wife, Julie, came on a church mission trip to El Salvador years ago during the civil war. But it wasn’t the church mission that changed him; it was a little malnourished baby boy, abandoned in a sugar cane field that made Sam who he is today. Sam and Julie took the boy in, cared for him and after long nights of struggle, he made it. Twenty-two years later, he’s alive and well and residing in Bangor, Maine and is getting married in a few months. They named him Eric. Since Eric, Sam and Julie made it their life work to open their door to every malnourished child they could find, and they have treated and saved over 1200 malnourished babies to this day. They made El Salvador their home and as Sam puts it, “I’ll never leave El Salvador.”

We met Sam through Claudia Aguirre who arranged the meeting at her office. We met Sam at 8 am and talked for hours before heading for the baby house. Before we left, I took him out on the bike for a ride and he loved it. His eyes were lit up like a little boy, and he hung on to me for the dear life as sped up through the tight streets of San Salvador. He really wants a motorcycle, but his wife Julie is very apprehensive. With a funny/sad face he said “She won’t let me.”

The baby house was incredibly clean and bright. Apparently Sam worked out at the gym next to the richest guy in El Salvador, neither of them knowing what the other person did. They talked about everything and anything but work. The guy finally found out about what Sam did and he donated the current baby house for the cause before he died. We met Julie at the baby house and she had no less enthusiasm than Sam. They are a perfect couple and they work together in perfect harmony. We played with the kids, got the tour and were amazed at their generosity. Over lunch, Sam told me about his other work. He started to visit prisons trying to rehabilitate the Salvadorian gang members. The government just puts more pressure on the gangs, shooting them when they can and treating them brutally when they get their hands on them (and they probably deserve it), but Sam’s way is the love way. The gang members actually listen to him, and no one bothers him. He created this program which he signs out prisoners and brings them back to society. He trains them, gives them the means and opportunity to have a job and education. They make handmade boots which they sell at the market and reinvest the profit back into the program. That’s why Sam is so proud of his boots.

We spent the night at Sam’s house, and after a delicious breakfast with Julie, we bid them farewell and got back on the road. It is heartwarming to see that there are still a few good men left who do everything and expect nothing in return. Get well soon Sam and thank you for being who you are. If you like to help out in his mission, consider making a donation of any amount, and we will forward it right to him. He has a nonprofit organization called the Love Link, but the website is not up to date and is hard to use. If you like to get a hold of him directly, contact me and I’ll provide you with the information.

Thanks to the wonderful KPMG staff, our stay in El Salvador was a memorable one. Salvadorian hospitality is hard to beat and this country will always stay in my memory. I hope I can make it back one day. Next stop: Honduras.

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POTHOLES IN HONDURAS

We left El Salvador amidst warm farewells from our new friends and with a police escort arranged by KPMG. Before we left, Edgar gave us a blue flashing police light, and I mounted it on the left front box. It’s fascinating to see how the traffic gets out of your way with a $6 light, and no one questions your identity. The rain made its customary appearance for part of the trip but abated by the border. We had made good time and were eager to do the border crossing and get to our destination. However, with all the good border crossings and encounters with police that we had so far, it was only a matter of time before we ran into one unscrupulous border agent. The mention of the word “embassy” (The RGE Team has letters from the British Embassy) didn’t seem to settle well with this guy who proceeded to detain us for 5 hours while everyone else was blithely passing on through. Of course, as with any stop we make, the SRZero and the bike were immediately surrounded by curious little and big people wanting to know about the car and bike and take pictures with their cell phones and cameras.

While waiting at the border we met some raw-food vegan cyclists from the US who were pushing to get to Panama on single gear bikes! They had no saddlebags, no tent or sleeping bag and what they wore was what they had. They slept at gas stations whenever they couldn’t stay awake to bike anymore and ate nuts and fruits to stay alive. I don’t know how they do it as I would die if I didn’t eat meat for one day. We wish them a safe and successful journey. Cynthia got a warm welcome to Honduras by a zealous bee, and while that sucker stung, the welt it left wasn’t any bigger than that of the monster mosquito bites she had acquired. In the end the whole delay at the border was solved by a “deal” between our overly friendly, conveniently English-speaking “fixer” and the grumpy border patrol man. Of course this deal involved paying some wads of cash.

We started not liking Honduras from the very start, and it kept getting worse. When we were “allowed” to cross the border, it was already dark and our destination was 200k away. The rain came down lashing again, and the roads turned into Swiss cheese. The potholes got bigger and bigger to the point that it was hard to go any speed higher that 25mph. I radioed back to the SRzero and the van with directions on how to avoid each pothole. We got stuck behind a long truck line, and as I tried to pass, I sped up and entered the other lane and there it was: an abyss as wide as the road. I broke hard, but it wasn’t enough, and we hit the hole with full force. The headlight went black, the front brake caliper jammed and the suspension bottomed out to the point that I heard a crack on my spine.

We limped to our destination about a mile away, and I started assessing the damage. The front rim was bent, sticking out about an inch. The right caliper was jammed, and the brake rotor was almost red from the heat. The headlight was busted, one fog light was out and a marker light lens broken. I started by dumping water on the rotor to cool it off and took the caliper apart. One of the slides was bent from the knock force, and it caused the jam. I hammered the slide back to shape and filed away the burrs, and it worked. The rim was more serious, and it took some precise banging and bending to get back to shape. When I got done with it, it was almost unnoticeable.

We ended up staying at the Lufassa power plant which provides approximately 33% of the Honduran electricity. We were hosted by Juan, the manager of the plant who took us to dinner at a seaside German restaurant. Juan was a very nice guy, and gave us a tour of his power plant which was impressive.

We left early the next morning to get to the Nicaraguan border, but as we entered the town of Choluteca, the rear tire went flat, our first flat of the trip. To my astonishment, the RGE team couldn’t be bothered to wait for us and left us there with no help and continued on to have their lunch and cross into Nicaragua! Thankfully Juan came to our aid and had one of his guys go tube hunting with me. Finding the tube was the easy part, and we proceeded to a tire shop to change the tire. I took the wheel off, and the shop changed the tire for $5 USD. Juan arranged our own motorcycle police escort to the border, and we were home free. I’m still amazed that after helping the RGE guys out so much through these potholes, night after night, in the rain and in the middle of the night, they could just leave us there. I’m not doing this for money, and I can take care of myself just fine, but their lack of consideration made me uneasy. Claudio ended up having to yell at them and stop them at the border to at least wait for us.

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THE RAIN IN SPAIN STAYS MAINLY…

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Costa Rica

There is a two-step process to crossing borders in Central America. First you have to “exit” the country you are in. If you are taking a vehicle through the border, that is an extra step. Then once you are free to go, you end up going through the “entry” into the next country just a few feet away and do it all over again.

We hoped to get a quick passage into Costa Rica, however our hopes were dashed as it soon became clear that we would be playing the waiting game for quite a while. We ate some local fare (beans, rice, plantains, meat), and as the waiting went on, we got more bored. While trying some fancy footwork with a soccer ball, I accidentally kicked the ax lashed to the front pannier of the bike, and it cut a deep gash into my combat boot. I franticly took off my boot to check for chopped off toes as my foot was in excruciating pain, but I was relieved to see all my toes intact. I keep this ax religiously sharp, and I only moved it out of the rear box 5 months ago to make more room for Cynthia’s stuff, hence it being mounted on the front box. People always made fun of it and thought that it was dangerous to have an ax exposed right up front, but I always replied: what idiot would possibly hit the ax?! and if it happened, he probably deserved it. That idiot turned out to be me!

The drive from the border to Liberia (not the country) was a nice drive. The roads started to improve and the rain was off and on. We stayed at a little hotel in Liberia and got killed by mosquitoes. Mosquitoes usually don’t like me, but Costa Rican mosquitoes were as friendly as they come. We tried to get some sleep, but the whizzing and the sharp stings didn’t help at all. At 5:30 a.m. another whizzing noise joined the choir. It was Cynthia swatting at mosquitoes while sitting in the bathroom, waving the little hairdryer aimlessly at my jeans, barely making any headway in taking the moisture out. It was time again to get up.

Costa Rica literally means the “Rich Coast,” and rightly so. It is the most expensive Central American country. It has two beautiful coasts, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south and the Caribbean Sea to the east. The middle is covered by some serious jungles, mountains and active volcanoes. We headed out to visit an impressive geothermal power plant in the countryside, next to the Miravalles Volcano. It lies between the two massive volcanoes, Poas and Barva, forming a wall to the north of the valley. Miravalles sits in the Guanacaste Province in the northwest part of the country, and if you can take your eyes off the extremely narrow and twisty road, you can see miles of coffee plantations in each direction on a clear day.

In a nutshell, how the geothermal plants work is that they extract the boiling underground waters and use the steam for running the electric turbines. To give you an idea, it’s kind of like tapping Old Faithful in Yellow Stone National Park to a steam generator. The environmental impact of the plant itself is minimal but building roads and getting there is what causes all the concerns. Since nine out of ten of best geothermal sites in Costa Rica sit in protected forests, there are no more expansions as of yet, but that could change with the next government. It’s interesting to note that the United States is the leader in geothermal electricity production with 3,086 MW of installed capacity from 77 power plants. The largest group of geothermal power plants in the world is located at The Geysers, a geothermal field in California.

We watched a powerpoint presentation and then got to tromp around through the lush vegetation in the rain to the lower hot springs. The water was boiling hot, and the steam that rose from it covered the whole area. In this lush and hot environment, every species has claimed a corner to itself, and they all live in harmony. From giant spiders to monkeys, Costa Rica has something exotic to offer to tourists. With all the advertising and National Geographic ads they put out every year, it’s not surprising to know that it is also the number one destination for tourists in Central America.

We were touring, but we weren’t tourists so we got back on the long road to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. The drive through winding one-lane roads on the hilly landscape was made even more challenging as night fell. The visibility was extremely poor, and we were going at about 30mph at best which was no fun. At one point, we passed massive car-sized boulders in the oncoming lane which had just fallen from the hills above us coming to rest partially on the highway, just at some houses’ doorsteps. Locals told us tragic stories about how people had been buried and never found again in rock avalanches, as well as swept away by the ground giving way from the massive rains. We were glad to make it to a dry place and have dinner before calling it a night.

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REACHING THE PACIFIC

San José, the capital of Costa Rica, is a giant city which doesn’t resemble anything of the beautiful Costa Rica. Like any other metropolitan area in the world, San José is made out of very poor neighborhoods to high society mansions. But they all have one thing in common: no street addresses of any kind. In our voyage to find bike parts and a lens cap for the camera, we learned that directions and addresses in Costa Rica generally run something like: go past the yellow house, turn left after the 2nd post, and right by the mango tree. In fact, the owner of the camera shop we visited assured us that if he were to visit his employee’s house, he would never find it based on the address alone, unless he were with her, or she drew him a detailed map. So needless to say, we had a bit of an adventure going around the city. The GPS was all but useless and good only for the coordinates. We finished off the errands with getting the oil changed on the bike and a much needed wash. Oil is like gold down here. A regular quart size bottle of oil runs about 8 USD, gas was almost $5 a gallon, and a regular meal in the range of 12 USD.

Just as we got back to the hotel, the headlight went out. That sealed the rest of my evening, as I then proceeded to try to figure out the problem and get the necessary parts. The lamp by itself was fine so I suspected the switch. It would come on and go off by itself after cycling between the high and low beam and suddenly not at all. I took the switch apart and that was a big mistake. Six little springs flew in every direction in the dark and complicated the matter. The switch was really corroded and I needed to clean it, but I had no electrical cleaner. I went inside and asked the bartender for a glass of coke. The coke was flat and didn’t do a very good job of cleaning the contacts so I asked the bartender for a few limes. The limes did a better job, but I wasn’t still satisfied. So again, I asked for baking soda and water and that did the trick. The doorman at the hotel was watching me silently the whole time and was amazed at the cleaning cocktail I was making. He couldn’t hold it anymore and came and asked what the hell I was doing as he couldn’t understand why I was feeding my bike coke, lime, and white watery stuff, glass after glass. After all that cleaning, it turned out that the switch was fine and actually the relay was going bad. I could read voltage at the light, but the second I turned it on, there was no amperage. I replaced the relay, and the life was good again, but now I had a broken switch.

The sun hadn’t yet made its appearance when the profane sound of the phone ringing roused me from my slumber. Painfully peeling my eyes open I answered the 4:20 a.m. wake-up call. We were meeting downstairs to load up at 5:00 a.m. for our 240 mile journey to David, Panama. The plan, an early start to make the border crossing in good time and (hopefully) miss the rain. The drive out of San Jose led us through layers of mountains peaking out through mist and clouds as the sun started to shine. We passed bottomless gorges and ravines, and the vegetation on both sides of the road grew more dense and lush as we went on. One river we stopped at yielded a little early morning excitement when we spotted a couple of fat alligators lazing in the muddy river banks, and for the first time, we caught a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. The rest of the way was just one mesmerizing scene after another until we reached a dead stop two kilometer before the border, literally 3-5 lanes of absolute gridlock in both directions.

The rain was coming down in sheets again and the road started to flood. I went ahead on the bike but even on the bike, I could only get about 1 km up the road before I, too, had to stop. After asking around, we were told that it would take about 4-5 hours just to get to the border and that traffic was backed up on both sides. Kevin Augello (the second British camera man who joined us in Guatemala City) was my passenger that day and we decided to pull over under a porch and wait to see what happens. Hours passed and the traffic didn’t move an inch. The rain, our hungry stomachs and the mosquitoes got me up and moving again. I had enough of waiting so there was only one more trick to do. I mounted the blue flashing police light on the bike, turned on the alarm siren and radio in hand, shouted at the cars and trucks to make room for the SRzero and the bike to pass. Truck after truck moved to the side to make a narrow passage for the SRzero and we reached the actual border before the sun went down.

We were regaled by tales of theft, murder and other sundry crimes by the locals who told us that Panama would send their vagrant drug and alcohol users over their border into the no-man’s zone between Panama and Costa Rica so the area we were waiting around in wasn’t particularly a savory one to be in. But we made it out without any incident. We ended up staying in David, Panama about 50 km from the border and promptly hit the hay as the next day was another early start.

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AVOIDING THE DARIEN GAP

If entering Panama was hard, leaving the country proved to be much harder. Panama was the last Central American country, and only 90 miles from the coast was our new destination: the infamous Columbia. What separates the two countries is one of the most dense and impassable jungles and swamps on earth, called the Darien Gap. Walking the Darien is almost suicide let alone taking a vehicle through it. A group of British guys tried to cross the Darien gap in the 70’s and their average progress was 300 feet a day! In the end they had to be airlifted out.

Needless to say, we had to ship the bike to other side either on an airplane or cargo ship. Since we were sending the SRzero electric car and the support van to the other side as well, we decided to load everything on one container and load it on an ocean freighter. The paperwork for the shipping process started before we even arrived in Panama and lasted five days into our stay. Office to office, we chased our tail with the Panamanian bureaucracy, corruption and laziness on every level. At one office, there was a 10x10 room filled by eight female workers shoulder to shoulder with no air conditioning. Inside of that room was another door and this was the door to the director’s office, and as we entered it, we were shocked. His room was four times bigger than everyone else’s and two air-conditioning units were on full blasts aiming at his desk. Gold chains hanging from his neck and iphone in his hand, he was a fat cat and a rude one at that too.

We also had to get the vehicles inspected at the police station. The police station was in a very dodgy part of town and the police warned us several times not to go across the parking lot to the little store as we might get caught in the middle of a shoot-out. One of the local guys packing some heat, came over from an apartment across the street and cheerily reassured us, “Don’t worry. I have a gun. You’ll be safe!”

After all the paperwork was done, we had to take the vehicles to Colon, a major port on the Caribbean side about 100 miles away, and load everything up into the container. The paperwork went on until the last minute and it took from 6 am to 6 pm to load one container. The three vehicles barely fit into the 40 foot container with bike going in last and sitting sideways. About 8 port-workers strapped everything down and finally sealed the container. Photography and recording videos were strictly prohibited, but we managed to smuggle my small camcorder in to get some shots. All said and done, the only thing left to do was to take a short flight from Panama City to Cartagena, Colombia and wait for the container to arrive.


Panama City is a very diverse city with almost every ethnic background from all over the world. From Chinese to Arabs to Germans and Africans, every part of the town is occupied with a distinctive race. It owes its diversity to the famous canal built by the United States army corp of engineers at the instigation and behest of Teddy Roosevelt in early 1900. Roosevelt, despite all protests and oppositions from Latin America, (Panama was part of Colombia at that time) pushed on through with the construction of the canal, and 10 years after its initial start, almost every ship that crossed between the Pacific and Atlantic went through this narrow canal. It changed the map of Central America and created a new country: Panama. Sailors and workers from literally everywhere settled in Panama City and made a one giant international community. Colorful and beautiful, Panama is the most important port in the western hemisphere and a significantly large portion of the country’s income comes from the canal and the shipping industry.

We had the privilege of getting a private tour of the impressive Panama Canal and even walking across the locks. The ships are guided in, strapped on both sides to small trains to keep them from side-to-side movement due to the narrow water way, and in three steps, they cross the canal. In the first lock, they raise the water to float the ship higher, then they open the second lock and so on until the ship floats on the other side. The width of the canal is still the same as what it was when built in 1914 but there are plans to widen the canal in 2012 to ease the passage for more vessels at a time.

We were warned and warned again about Colombia, on the drug cartels, the FARC, and the kidnappings and almost everyone was apprehensive to some extent about Colombia. Let see if it lives up to its myths.

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Life in Cartagena, Colombia

First I would like to thank James South, Lynn Minthorne, Gregory Quinn, Rich Jordan and Ahti Peura for their support and generous donations. You guys are part of this expedition as much as I am, and to this day I’ve been amazed by your support and generosity and humbled by your selflessness. Big corporations have not shown us much love, as apparently feeding little kids is not their business idea, so we’ve relied on public support to carry on our mission.

I’ve personally invested everything I had in this non-profit organization, and if I find a penny on side of the road I still put it towards the cause. But one man’s wallet is not big enough to take on a project like this effectively (Bill Gates is a rare breed). Thanksgiving is in a few days and while the times are still tough for many back in United States, you’d be amazed what your spare change could buy for the kids down here. I’m not asking for anything for myself, I’m just asking you to consider making another family in need happy with a spare dollar bill that won’t buy you anything in US. Enough begging now, let’s get to the story.

Tuesday morning found us aboard a short and uneventful flight on the COPA Airlines, from Panama City to Cartagena, Colombia. You can either take a boat or fly from Central America to South America. The boat ride is around $250 depends on the captain, and the airfare is somewhere around the neighborhood of $300. Since we were told that the container will get to Cartagena in 3 days, we took the short 40 minutes flight rather than going on a 5 day long ocean journey (big mistake). From the second we came out of the airport, I was relieved to see countless motorcycles, all in the 125cc range whizzing around, because at least I could find bike parts in this town. We settled just across the peninsula from El Centro in the Manga district in an apartment that Claudio rented and were glued to the balcony every night watching the spectacular sunsets across the water.
It soon hit us that our stay in Cartagena wasn’t going to be as short as we thought, as the container never made it on the ship in Panama as scheduled. Cynthia and I had taken just our laptops and one change of clothing each as we had anticipated arriving in Cartagena and getting our things from the boat in a few days. As Claudio likes to say, we were living in hope, and that lasted for 17 days. We were stuck in Cartagena.

Even though we had more time in beautiful Cartagena, we didn’t go around as much as one would think. This is in large part because we aren’t on vacation, but are on a volunteer mission which involves endless hours of work between the two of us, and also, because we simply don’t have the money. We did enjoy walking around the Centro (the historical walled old city) at night a few times, and had a chance to explore the Spanish Castle, the largest standing Spanish fort in South America after asking for a reduced rate to get in. Best of all, I got to do my favorite activity in the world, going all over the city hunting for bike parts.

Since I broke the turn signal switch in Nicaragua, I set out to find another and I lucked out. I bought a new signal-light-horn combo switch from another bike for $12 USD. It has an on/off for the headlight, and it’s built like a tank. The downside was that it had 16 wires coming out of it with no instruction, and it took 2 hours with a multimeter to figure out what was what. I also bought two new marker lights $1.50 each, two spare relays, spare clutch cable (just the cable), two new tubes for the tires and a new H4 lamp for the headlight as the Chinese lamp I bought in Panama was absolute crap. I could do nothing with all this stuff since the bike was still missing somewhere on the Pacific Ocean. So we waited and waited and waited some more.

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Life in Cartagena, Colombia

Day after day we waited for the bike to arrive, but it never did. And to irritate me more, our website disappeared from the worldwide web because apparently it was causing problems on our sponsored server. When I started this journey, Montana Internet Corporation sponsored the hosting of our website for 5 years which was very generous, but MIC wasn’t really set up to be a host. They provide wireless internet, and they are great at that. However hosting is not their real business so everything was pretty much outdated and couldn’t handle the load of our site. So they shut down our website, and it was time to move servers. Nevertheless, many thanks goes to MIC for putting up with us and giving us a helping hand when it was most needed.

I spent days trying to back-up our stuff with the horrible internet connections and started a quest to find the best host in the world and narrowed it down to one: Inmotion Hosting. My expectation from a good host was to be fast, reliable and up-to-date, and Inmotion fit the bill on every level. To make it even better, it’s a solid American company. They provide 24/7 customer service which is top-notch with no Indian accent like other hosts.
Inmotion hosting joined our sponsor team and now the website is faster, better and never down again. Many thanks to Alyssah Hastings for making this happen despite the difficulty communicating back and forth from Colombia. Inmotion is a great host, and I don’t just say that because they sponsored our hosting; every review on the internet is better than the other when it comes to this company. I like good businesses, and if you have a blog or website that needs a reliable and affordable host, give them a try. They won’t disappoint.

As I was busy with the website ordeal, days went by, and there was no sign of the container anywhere. I got an email from a fellow rider who had a bad experience with shipping his bike on boats, and he said that his bike was missing for 4 months at one time which didn’t make me feel any better. After 15 days we finally got the news that the container was at the port and it was time to pick it up. The paperwork took 2 full days and when we arrived at the port in the morning, it took us another 16 hours to get the container out. But the GS was safe. No scratch, no water damage, and she started right up.
The SRzero electric car had a little misfortune at the port and caught on fire all by itself. Toby put the fire out quickly and there was no visible damage, but it wouldn’t run. The RGE guys started troubleshooting and it turned out that we were staying in Cartagena for another 5 days so they can fix the car. Now that I had the bike in hand, I could start my routine maintenance before heading out on the road again.

I needed to solder the connections on the signal switch but my butane soldering iron was out of gas. We searched the whole city (I’m not exaggerating) for butane gas and didn’t find any. Either butane is not known to Colombians, or every store we went to was out of stock!!! I ended up buying an electric soldering iron and getting the job done. The electric iron is probably a better choice anyway since I have an inverter on the bike that will run it, but I just don’t like being out of options. The bike being ready and the website done, we used our time to visit clinics, orphanages and poor sections of Cartagena. Stay tuned.

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Hi Chris
Glad to see you got your bike back, like the videos, its nice to put a voice to the face.
Julian