King GDI

Our next leg of the journey was another surf binge. The northern coast of Peru is known for its long left-hand point breaks in desolate locations. We went to several throughout the next couple of weeks...Mancora, Lobitos, Huanchaco, and Chicama. Great surf at every location...unforgetable times. Mancora was like another Montanita...lots of tourists and crowded lineup. Taylor and I got real cheap and stayed in crappy living quarters for our time there. The mattresses were nothing more than flimsy foam pads, and the walls were just cheap plywood panels. We were bitten by bugs all night and sleeping in a tinderbox...luckily no one dropped a match. By now we are champions of cheapness. Our next stop was Lobitos...a town in the middle of the Peruvian desert. Nothing exists but dirt and really good surf. Oh...and really ... read more

Next stop Ecuador. We were in Quito for a couple of days, staying at a place on ´Rob Alley´. Pretty much every day people came back with stories of getting robbed, mugged, or pickpocketed in the streets nearby. The most interesting story was from an old lady about 70 years old who was approached by three guys in the evening. They tried to get her bag but she kicked one in the balls and they scrambled away. Way to put up a fight! TBagz and I now being familiar to the ways of hardened criminals put on our toughest faces that no one dare mess wit. Quito was an interesting city...lots of old colonial buildings and interesting locals. The highlight of the city time was a sunday afternoon at the midget bull fight. Until we got ... read more

Our desires to see Natural Wonders of the World and spending humanitarian time in quaint little villages helping the indigineous people learn the ways of the modern world have been thwarted by the dancers insistance that we stick to the bigger cities. Thus, over the next couple of weeks we found ourselves in Medellin and Bogota. Pablo Escobar, the leader of the biggest Colombian drug cartel, called Medellin his home and dealin cocaine was his game. Luckily, the violence surrounding such business ventures has calmed down a bit in the last couple of years and as a result I was only tear-gassed on one occasion. I was just sitting down to a big slice of pizza when a large crowd of people came running past...yelling and throwing rocks and other small scale riot antics. Soon, the ... read more

After Colie left, T-Bag and I lurked around Panama City for a couple of days until we could figure out transportation into Colombia. Unlike the rest of our journey, a dirty bus ride was out of the question. There is no road between the two countries because the Darien National Park. Very near the border, there is a region called the ´Darien Gap´ where drug runners and kidnappers like to hang out. While it would have been cool to pay them a visit and maybe drink a beer or two with them over a round of poker, we chose a different option. The most popular mode of transport is to hire a sailboat to take you from Panama City to the Colombian port town of Cartagena. After days of searching, we finally made contact with a ... read more

After several days in Leon restocking our gear, going to see a cockfight, and touring the city; we decided it was time to leave Nicaragua. Our plan was to head straight into Panama, but once we looked at the bus schedule we saw that we could tag on a couple days in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica without much trouble. Its a Caribbean town several miles north of the Panamanian border and we had heard good things about it. We arrived in the afternoon, and quickly found ourselves going to get Margaritas with two girls we met at the bus station. We soon found out that they are 'dancers' from New Zealand and sisters as well. Their company proved fairly entertaining. We rented some bicycles for the next couple of days, and made our way to a ... read more