Day 14 Friday, July 29, 2005
We made it! We made it! We made it!
Here we are in Costa Rica! We arrived last night after a 3 day marathon of border crossings. Before we left San Diego, we had an inkling of the complexities and frustrations, but reality was even more of a Dickensian runaround than we’d guessed.
Since the last posting, we’ve crossed Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and entered Costa Rica. Our passports are bloodied with fuzzy impressions of entry and exit stamps. We have a file of paperwork about 3/8’s of an inch thick. If we stacked all the pages generated and left in the file baskets of the various countries, the debris of our transit visits is probably a full inch high.
Each country has both entry and exit procedures – similar amongst them all, but each with its own peculiar twists and sequences. Each border is a few kilometers along the highway. You know you are there only by the swarms of “helpers” that you can hire to walk you and your paperwork through. The helpers provide some assistance, but the government-issued passes that they wear are really hunting licenses, or rather fishing licenses … and we were the fish.
The offices are camoflaged in buildings with no identification on them, or even better, with identification that’s completely wrong. My favorite example is the immigration exit office of Honduras, housed in a building labeled as a duty free shop. Nearly all the forms are typed on manual – not even electric – typewriters, vintage 1940’s or so. The makers of carbon paper still have a market here, where all forms are typed in triplicate or quadruplicate.
I suspect if you are in transit by bus, it’s a very easy process – show a valid passport and that’s it. But we were travelling with a car and a dog, and each one required permissions, fees, and inspections. Oh, and the pesticide car wash in most countries – and the accompanying fee.
We’ve now imported the Landcruiser into four countries. Bentley has had his pink “passport” stamped officiously in each country. we’ve paid “fines” – one of which was legitimate, all the others bogus. We got a traffic ticket in Nicaragua for driving the wrong way on a one way street. The $11 fine was well worth the escort we got which got us on the correct road south to the Costa Rican border. We were excused from the restrictions on importing watermelons into Costa Rica, as long as we promised to eat it north of Liberia. (It was delicious!)
The handsome young crook in the photo is Alex; he’s a smart kid, totally fluent in English and Spanish. He was quite helpful in getting us the appropriate stamps, signatures and getting past our problem of entering Honduras without the appropriate stamps in our passports. But we also suspect that he inflated the fees and set us up for a similar problem at the El Salvador exit. When we paid him, he insisted that he get most of the money out of sight of his partner, so that he only had to split a smaller amount. 
You can see that this process is beginning to wear on us!
I’ll elaborate later, but to summarize, I can’t recommend that anyone make this trek without a very good command of Spanish and some guidance from those who have navigated the borders.
Our one night in Honduras was most magical. Stay tuned for the full story.
We’re now in the area of Canos Dulces, about 2 hours south of the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border. Spent two nights here getting some R&R after twelve days in the car. My spine has probably compacted a few inches and we were both pretty stiff. This resort, Hotel Borinquen, has natural hot springs, bubbling volcanic mud, a great swimming pool. This morning, we took Bentley and hiked up to a waterfall on the property. (The hotel has horseback and ATV tours, but a walk sounded a whole lot better to us!) Yesterday, we took the mud treatment. We look like different creatures when coated with gray mud. After rinsing off and a great massage, I felt cleaner than any day in the last 2 weeks.
Next, we’ll be moving on to the area of Los Inocentes, a national park known for its wonderful wildlife.
As of Weds, July 20.
Four Days Into Mexico and all’s well… we are 1547 miles into the trip - out of 3700 planned.
It didn’t take long to settle into a pretty smooth rhythm of driving, PEMEX stops, autopista (pay road) tollbooths and finding lodging or camps. Saturday, we left home around 1600 (4PM), meaning to hit the Arizona desert after the heat of the day faded. Yuma was still about 114 when we got there near 7PM. Farther east, we camped in the desert – a memorable night, but not a comfortable one. By the time we hit our bedroll near 2300, it was probably only 100 degrees and humidity zilch. Every breath of moving air was welcome.
If you’ve never seen the desert sky, you have missed a cosmic and humbling experience. Without polluting lights from cities, the stars are visible almost like a soup – denser than you can imagine - brilliant spots of light on deep, deep black. Sleeping out on Saturday, we saw this awesome display, and with that’s, some clouds gathered and spread, some meteorites burned into the atmosphere. And for ten minutes, big splats of warm rain landed on us and the air filled with this thick aroma of grain, smoke and wetness. Really awesome.
Growing up in the desert, Fred learned a great respect for summer heat. We were up and on the road by 0530, before the sun turned on the oven and even the least effort was too much. 
Crossed the border at Nogales. No hassles, just the annoyances that guidebooks euphemistically call “border formalities”. Mexico is much improved in this department, and has a well-oiled process for issuing tourist cards and automobile carnet. While you can get your “cartes turisticas” issued at the border, the only place to register your car is about 20 km south. At this checkpoint, there’s the feel of a highway rest stop, with booths for copying the necessary papers, and buying snacks and postcards, and the 10 or so bureaucrats in their windows, where they examine your papers and issue you your permit to import your car for up to 6 months. 
It’s been a couple of years since we’ve spent much time in Mexico. So the contrast is all the more obvious; Mexico is cleaner, more prosperous, and more attractive than ever before. It’s nice to see this kind of progress. And our first two days
Our second night was in San Carlos, a beautiful harbor town outside of Guaymas. It’s harbor is surrounded by burgundy-brown desert rocks where it opens up to the Sea of Cortez. We found a nice hotel (nice means really good air conditioning and a pool.) Up again early, heading for Mazatlan. Bentley liked having his own bed. (PIC) We liked dinner and good margaritas at Blackie’s. (PIC) And a good night’s sleep.
We couldn’t resist a stop in the old city in Mazatlan. It’s beautiful and very Old World in architecture, pace and style. We had a great latte and pastries across from the Teatro. Didn’t hit the road until about 9AM.
The scenery on this day was not so interesting – mostly farmland. Roads continued to be excellent until we neared Pto. Vallarta. Once we passed Vallarta and branched onto the coastal road (Ruta 200) progress was slower on curving, hilly, two lane roads. Even early in the day, my butt was becoming one with the car seat.
The area south of Vallarta is striking. Many luxurious hotels and homes are built onto the hillside, much more to our liking for their architecture and connection to the natural location than the majority of town. We’d been to Vallarta and nearby Yelapa about 6 years ago, but never saw this section. Next time, we’ll be staying in this area.
We had to drive at night (not recommended by anyone, including me!) to have any hope of reaching Barra de Navidad, our planned destination that day. Our first wrong turn of the trip cost us about 30 minutes, and we didn’t reach town until 9PM.
The extra hours were worth the effort. Barra (Sandbar) is a lovely resort town on the Pacific. The Malecon (seawalk) is along the sandbar, where you can rent a table with umbrella on the sand for the day. Fruit vendors sell their pineapple/ orange/ lime edibles and you can watch everyone boogie boarding and splashing in the surf. 
Gas is $2.29/gallon, a treat for those of us in San Diego where gasoline prices are brushing up against $3.00. Pesos are a dime, so conversions are simple. Tolls as far as Mazatlan added up to $45. or so. After Mazatlan, tolls inexplicably get to be more expensive – just the short distance to Pto. Vallarta cost another $32.
Suhprise, suhprise. Since leaving 30+ years of high tech follies, one of Carolyn’s activities is a foray back into vocal and instrumental music. Her most recent performance was in the recital capping a 9-week course in Musical Theatre Performance. All students performed solos and duets of their choice, along with the ensemble piece, “Seasons of Love” from Rent. Playing “Fantine” from Les Miserables, Carolyn sang “I Dreamed a Dream” as her solo. In a duet, she and Mai-Lon sang “I Know Him So Well”, from the musical “Chess.” Our accompanist had to learn 20 songs!