Ufff… what a long day… 11pm and at a hotel close to the airport.
After about 2 hours in the Cargo Terminal we were told that there was no space for the motorcycles on today’s flight – and the next flight goes out on Tuesday or Wednesday with a slight chance of it being on Monday…
So the information we had previously was not totally incorrect – there ARE flights every day – but not flights that they allow motorcycles on.
So on Monday we’ll call the sales supervisor and try to use our charm to convince her to put the bikes on the Monday flight.
The reason for flying is that there is NO ROAD between Panama and Colombia! It’s called the Darian Gap. It’s the missing link of the Pan-American Highway – ecological, political, and probably guerilla/farc reasons have prevented this road being built.
In the meantime we will do some laundry, visit the Panama Canal and wait I guess 🙂

Another short post since we are at the airport trying to send our
bikes out tonight to Bogota. We wanted to send them and fly to
Medellin but that would only happen on Wednesday so we'll go to Bogota
and ride to Medellin.
Got a LOT of rain today. At a restaurant at the airport – still wet 🙂
Will probably stay in Panama City tonight and fly out early in the
morning to Bogota.

From Motorcycle NY to SP

Maybe the langostin's head gave me allergic. All better now.

Still no Internet so another quick post from my iPhone using the cell
phone network data roaming.
Walked around the village where Kat is stationed at in the morning.
Cool stuff. They have just signed a contract with Tabasco to supply
peppers!
We then went down the mountain to the beach. We got the last few hours
of sun and went into the ocean, played with a Labrador, adjusted some
things on my bike and had lunch.
I ate langostin al ajillo and was bitten several times by small ants.
One of them gave me a pretty good alergic reaction! Probably the
langostin. Never had an allergic reaction in my life!! My face swoll
up, I felt hot, my whole body was itching and my skin was full small
bumps…
Got my medical kit out and read about allergies and took some Ibiprofin.
Swelling and itching came down after a couple of hours… Pretty
funky!!!
Now it's raining cats and dogs.
We're going to dinner once the rain stops at an Italian couple's place
close by once the rain stops.
Tomorrow heading to Panama City hoping the flights run every day to
Medellin 🙂
Photos:

From Motorcycle NY to SP

Still no good Internet connection so photos and videos only on
Saturday of Sunday when we get to Panama City 🙂

Woke up really early to take some pictures of Manuel Antonio and take
a dip in the ocean.
During breakfast I realized that last year while I was in LA I swam in
the Pacific Ocean for the first time!
We started early and did the dirt road again (fun) back to the
Panamarican Highway (boring).
The border crossing was very smooth. Probably the easiest one so far.
We then stopped for some groceries and headed up the mountain into an
indiginous village in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle – the second largest
indiginous group in Central America after the Mayans!!
After asking for “la gringa” we met Kat – Marc’s friend who is
volunteering here with the Peace Corps.
She welcomed us into her “humble abode” where we chatted into the
night and drank two bottles of wine 🙂
Camping gear out!
Marc chose to sleep on the hammock which on the first try proved to be
loose on one of the ends. With a big thump he fell to the ground and
we all started laughing histerically.
Photos:

From Motorcycle NY to SP

 

Woke very early this morning and actually did some work… then Ivan,
the owner of the hotel we stayed in brought us breakfast in the room
since the kitchen was not ready yet 🙂
After gearing up, packing, and loading the bikes we headed out through
San Jose out to the Panamerican highway.
We took a few wrong turns but finally managed to get on to the main
road.
A stretch of the PanAmerican was closed so we ended up taking some
secondary roads which were amazing!
It had been drizzling all morning but nothing bad but once we went
over the pass the rain started to come down steadily.
My new tires felt amazing – but I am sure it was 99% psychological –
the 1% was the fact that they do vibrate less and are give me a more
rounded feel when I go from one turn to the other.
Once we got to sea level again a good stretch of 30km (20miles + or -)
of flat dirt road presented itself.
We thought it would be a nice 2 or 3 hour ride but with the detour,
fog, rain, and the dirt road it turned out to be a 6 hour ordeal.
We got to Manuel Antonio absolutely drenched, stopped for a beer and
picked a hotel mainly because I liked the slogan, "Still more monkeys
than people" – Costa Verde – quite nice hotel with an amazing view.
We just finished hanging up all of our gear to dry – quite sure it
will still all be wet by tomorrow but that's the way it goes 🙂
Heading out to dinner and some well deserved drinks soon.
No internet in the room so don't know if I'll be able to upload
yesterday's or today's videos 🙁
Writing this post offline so let's keep out fingers crossed.
Quick corrections on today's videos – I said 3000 ft but it's 3000
meters (12,000 ft)
Photos:

From Motorcycle NY to SP

Costa Rica continues to amaze me – beautiful, well organized, great roads, varied scenery and great people.
The morning was a little hazy so I ended up not taking the photos I said I would take of the spa – check it out on their site – pretty amazing – we stayed for about an hour or two in the several different pools – it even had a water slide which reminded me of Hotel Toriba in Campos de Jordao in Brazil 🙂
We took the scenic route to San Jose – an amazing ride through the central mountains of Costa Rica.
I am truly impressed, surprised really, by the infrastructure here… I knew that it was the most developed country of Central America but the difference is quite big… I looked up a little bit of the history of Costa Rica and found this good summary.
Sloppy little accidents today.
First I stopped to take some pictures and parked the bike on hill that turned out to be too steep… oops – it toppled over! Fortunately another biker was driving by and stopped to help me out – Marc was having a little snack further up the road.
Here are the photos of when I stopped… it looks so much better in person… the vegetation here is SO lush!!
The bike falling over was also recorded on tape!! Hehehehe
Then my jacket simply flew off the bike – when it’s hot I’ve only been wearing the body armor and tying the jacket down on the back… ooops again!
Once we got to the city we had to drive quite a bit to find the KTM dealer – I was in a bad mood when we arrived there and to top it off they were not expecting me even though I had been emailing the owner for about a week or so warning him I would arrive.
After talking to the mechanic and explaining our situation (traveling, schedule, emails) he told me to bring the bike around and that it would be done in a couple of hours!
Excellent!
Marc went to the BMW dealer to replace his starter.
I actually fell asleep at the dealer…
The bike was ready in what seemed to be no time and as soon as I packed it back up Marc arrived with the good news that his starter was also replaced in no time and for a reasonable amount of money. My service was half of what I paid for in LA.
So now I have new fluids on the bike, systems checked and new rear tires – these should last the whole way down to Brazil. In LA they only had more off-road tires (knobies) that last a lot less than “regular” tires.
As we were leaving we ran into Ivan – an Italian who races motorcycles and has a hotel near the dealer – Hotel Luisiana – perfect! He also convinced us to change our route from going to the Atlantic side of Costa Rica to staying on the Pacific side and go through the central mountains – 4000m high! On a good day you can see both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean!
So we followed him to the hotel and are now settled in and getting ready for dinner 🙂
The video for the day: