This morning I left San Jose at 9am after a free breakfast of Froot Loops at Kap’s Place. It seems to me like they’re the best possible hotel you could stay at in San Jose, especially in that price range. I got on the freeway North and after a few minutes passed about a hundred bikers, most on Harleys but there were also two BMWs, a KTM, a Triumph, and a Honda that I noticed. After we all went through the toll booth they started to line up on the shoulder to regroup so they didn’t lose anyone and I stopped too near the front. Everyone nearby came up to shake my hand and ask where I was from and where I was going. I gave out a lot of business cards. I believe the group was the Costa Rica Steel Angels. I took some pictures of them that you can see below.

I also ran into to another, smaller group of Harley riders a while later. I didn’t get their name but they all had matching leather jackets and very nice bikes.

Two well-equipped motos passed me going South and I was very curious about who they were, they were a couple of hours apart so I’m guessing they were both solo travelers. Another well-equipped moto passed me going my direction; I tried to follow but lost him after a minute or two. He was passing on corners and driving fairly fast.

I got the first speeding ticket of the trip just before Liberia; I got radared just after passing a semi truck and so was going pretty fast. The officer wrote me a ticket but I said “Apagar ahorita?” (Pay now?) and he was very pleased with that arrangement and asked for 30,000 colones ($60 USD). I thought I might get out of the ticket because he motioned me off the road and the spot was fairly slippery, I fell over to the left and the moto fell over onto me downhill. The cop was nice and helped me pick it up and was generally very pleasant. He wished me good luck on my trip and I gave him a business card.

At the border to Nicaragua I met some nice guys who had been in Costa Rica mountain bike racing, the one whose name I got was Marco. I told them about my trip and gave Marco a card. I also acquired a border helper after finishing the Costa Rica side of the border. He was nice and didn’t try to scam me too badly. He tried to skim an extra $10 on the insurance portion so I didn’t tip him as much as I would have otherwise. One of the employees told me he was a bad kid but he seemed nice enough. He kept calling me “mang.” “Les’ go mang, les’ go.” At one point the employee came over to yell at him about the insurance price and he was a little bit terrified. He had to be all of 14 years old. I paid some even younger kids to watch my bike. Two of them asked me but their friend joined them later and also expected to be paid. The employee who inspected my bike was also the first border employee to ask to see inside my luggage, when he saw the effort to open the first one he was OK with me just describing what was in the rest. I think the frequency of inspections may increase because drug smuggling operations probably operate by bringing drugs North to the USA rather than South to Panama.

Just before Rivas there were thousands and thousands of tiny mosquitos in the air. They covered my newly washed suit, my mirrors, headlight, and windshield. Apparently they can be quite corrosive so I took the time to wash them off of everything painted and everything metal.

Coming into Managua I stopped at a nice Texaco store for snacks and dropped my small Canon into the restroom toilet after unzipping my suit. Oops. I think it will be fine when it dries out, I already rubbed it down with antibiotic gel (twice). After getting back on the road I saw a rider I had seen a few minutes before who had given me a thumbs-up; he motioned me to get up next to him and asked me where I was going in English. I told him Managua and also told him to pull over so we could talk. He was riding a Yamaha Virago 1100 and you can see him pictured below. His name is Carlos Portocarrero. We talked about riding and he told me about the local bike club. He’s planning on buying an F 650 GS Dakar and also has two fully restored Urals (sidecar bikes). He owns an auto shop in town and works on restoring cars and bikes. He was also a motocross champion for two consecutive years in ‘70 and ‘71. The hotel he led me to is great, it’s called Hotel El Almendro. It’s mid-range in price but it feels very fancy. I think it’s most frequented by business types. They have very secure parking for the bike.

I told Carlos about the speeding ticket and he said I did the right thing by paying the cop—if you take the legal route they hold your license until you go to the police station and go through all the formalities. It’s supposedly a very big hassle. This is also apparently why people use international drivers’ licenses—so that you can give it to the police and not worry about picking it up again.

I thought briefly about going to see Copan and avoiding the Amatillo border at El Salvador but it’s just too far out of the way and the freeway system in Honduras doesn’t have a direct route there. Live Maps tells me to enter Honduras, then enter and drive through El Salvador, and then enter Honduras again to get to Copan from here. No thanks. Tomorrow I hope to have a two border day, Nicaragua to Honduras and Honduras to El Salvador. I also still have to write up the story of Dane and I getting separated on the way back from Panama City.