RVing thru Central America - San Jose to San Jose y Beyond

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Tuesday, April 13th, Furgie’s 18th Birthday

We left Belen Trailer Park on Saturday morning. As I mentioned in my last blog, John and Johnette sold their trailer to the campground owners and loaded all of their belongings into the back of their truck.

We crossed into Nicaragua at mid day. I had really dreaded returning to this border because on our way south we had noticed dozens of trucks parked on the northbound lane out of Costa Rica leaving only one lane for north and southbound traffic. On our way south we had had priority as our lane was the open one. It was here that we had taken a previously posted picture of a bus taking to the ditch on our right. Coming north we would be the ones to give way. As it happened, there were over one hundred trucks blocking the northbound lane. We did have some really tight squeezes. John and Johnette, watching from behind, were very impressed with Ray’s maneuvering Rambo thru the narrow gap sometimes with just a fraction of an inch between the parked trucks, us, and the edge of the road.

Otherwise exiting Costa Rica was painless and cost nothing except the worthy $6.00 tip we paid an expediter to help us pass the trucks. Several times he had to locate the drivers and get them to move their rigs over a few inches and pull in their mirrors. Otherwise, we’d have been stuck there for God knows how long.

Reentering Nicaragua was the usual nightmare. Stupidly, we had thot it best to leave Rambo’s title at home in a safe deposit box and brought along a pile of colored copies but these guys demanded to see the original. Eventually, they settled for our original registration and a copy of the title. Total time here was the typical two and a half hours and cost $45.00.

We had decided to put Furgie in her bag so she’d be inconspicuous at all of the northbound border crossings. We had already proved that people can travel in Central America with a pet without too much difficulty. Southbound we had been requested to complete customs forms by most countries. The forms specifically ask if immigrants are transporting plants or animals. Northbound, only Nicaragua produced the form but the official completed it himself using Ray’s passport info and marked no plants or pets. Ray simply didn’t correct him. Actually, Nicaragua had been one of the most lenient countries as far a Furgie was concerned. Only Honduras and Panama gave us any real hassle. Nicaragua and Costa Rica both charged us a few bucks for her. We had had to visit the Guatemalan embassy in San Francisco before we left to get her USDA paperwork stamped. They charged us ten bucks for the service. El Salvador stamped Furgie’s USDA form and made a photocopy for their files but didn’t charge us anything.

Getting back to our trip home, from the Nicaraguan border we drove to the beautiful city of Granada on Lake Nicaragua hoping to find a hotel for John and Johnette with a camping spot nearby. Sadly we found nothing suitable. As this was Saturday night, there were scads of people in the zocolo (central park) and lots of activity.

Granada is considered by some to be the most beautiful city in Central America. We only had a chance to glimpse a few of the wonderfully restored buildings but it is the prettiest town we’ve seen on this trip. I hope to revisit the city someday. We have pretty well covered all of the other Central American countries but we did not spend enough time in Nicaragua.

I did try to find web photos of the city of Granada but few are available. This is the best we could do: http://www.aurorabeachfront.com/nicaragua-tourism/granada.php

We spent that first homebound night on the grounds of a restaurant in Masaya that John and Johnette had frequented while cooling their heals waiting for Ray and I to explore Honduras’s Caribbean coast. Our hosts were very accommodating and allowed us free parking with all night security. Our evening guard is studying English so we had a funny conversation, him speaking English and me responding in Spanish.

That night I had the best dinner of my entire trip. It was something like seafood Newburg topped with loads of cheese served in a pineapple bowl. There must have been at least three cups of creamed seafood in that pineapple. I was so stuffed. Although my dinner only cost $17.50, there was no way I could leave any of that marvelous mixture on my plate.

John and Johnette had a heck of a time finding a hotel. The first two at which they stopped were already closed for the night before 9:00 p.m. They finally settled for a real dump and were assigned the “honeymoon suite” It was so nasty Johnette slept in her clothes on and couldn’t use the shower.

Sunday, we crossed into Honduras. Exiting Nicaragua and entering Honduras was one of the most pleasant border crossings of the entire trip. Here, both countries have their offices in the same building so instead of being bounced around like a ping pong ball, we were in and out in less than half and hour. It only cost $7.00 to leave Nicaragua and $35.00 to reenter Honduras.

We spent that night at a balneario (swimming spa). The staff must have had a rough weekend because they were winding down by getting uproarishly drunk. John and Johnette checked into a lovely $55.00 room with one of those multi spray showers and we were welcomed to spend the night in the parking lot for free.

Our landlord was Asian and his staff was a mix of Asians and Latinos. We gave the owner a tour of our camper which he much praised - in Spanish. In fact, he had quite a lot to tell us in his Asian accented Spanish - none of which we understood. Having worked with Asians from many countries, I can usually understand heavily Asian accented English and I comprehend quite a bit of Spanish but I didn’t understand anything this guy was saying!

They handed us menus. Ray and I ordered curry chicken and Kung Pau chicken. John and Johnette each ordered off the menu too. What we were served bore no resemblance to anything any of us had ordered but we did receive two very large platters of chicken with vegetables and plenty of rice. Our favorite had a darker sauce and contained cashews. Guess this was all they had left over from the weekend.

While we ate, our five hosts polished their fourth bottle of Chivas Regal.

The next morning John attempted to use that fabulous shower. At first, he had difficulty turning the thing on. When he finally figured it out he got blasted with ice cold water from every direction. John is a pretty brave guy but both he and Johnette skipped the polar experience.

On our next day’s travel we passed thru La Esperanza, the highest town in Honduras. It is so cold up there that even peaches and apples are grown. This is one of the poorest regions in Central America and attracts large numbers of medical teams and other groups who come here to help build latrines, etc.

Lonely Planet lists La Esperanza’s population at 5480. It seems like almost everybody must have been hanging out on the streets quietly watching passing traffic. Unlike other villagers, these people stared at us but did not respond to our waving. Also, the lack of activity seemed strange. In all of the other Latin American villages we’ve passed thru, there were many small shops and food vendors with everybody moving around like ants on an ant hill but not here.

As I said in my previous blogs, with the exception of Costa Rica, roads in Central America are paved and in pretty good condition. However, the road between La Esperanza and Gracias was the exception. Construction of a paved highway seems to be underway but we were forced to travel about thirty miles over horrible ruts and dust to reach Gracias.

We checked into a hotel in Gracias as there was no way we could camp on a street near John and Johnette’s lodging. Lonely Planet lists Gracias’ population at 8600 but it seemed much smaller. As I am not able to find any information on this historic city I have no choice but regurgitate information gleaned by Jolyon Attwooll, writer of the Lonely Planet’s Honduras section: Gracias was founded in 1526 by the Spaniards. The governing council for all of Central America was established here on April 16, 1544.

The city’s original name was Gracias a Dios (Thanks to God). Jolyon says that many of the 500 year old buildings that the Spanish governing council occupied are still standing. Because we arrived late, the tourist office was already closed so we were unable to get a map consequently we failed to appreciate the significance of the buildings which we walked by.

While John was hanging out in an internet café catching up on the news and Ray and I were out exploring the village, Johnette broke her right ankle and sprained her left. She missed a step down from the bathroom into their bedroom.

Somehow they met a young Peace Corp volunteer who offered to accompany them to the local hospital and to interpret for them. This Peace Corp volunteer and her husband, both engineers from South Carolina, are in Honduras on, I believe, a three year stint developing a water system.

John took Johnette to the local emergency room but Gracias’s small hospital was swamped with a gunshot patient, a guy with a machete wound, another with a broken leg sticking out of his skin, a young woman in labor, and a bunch of sick children. Somehow, Johnette, although her wound was not serious, was seen right away but they only wrapped her feet and advised her to stop in our next town, Santa Rosa de Copan in the morning. We did.

The total cost for Johnette’s care and crutches was a whopping $32.00. She is now sporting a pretty bright green cast up to her knee. We have tried to make her as comfortable as possible but she will be spending her return trip all the way to Wisconsin in the backseat of their truck with her feet propped up. We loaned her our camper cushions but will have to reclaim them when we part ways in Texas.

The Peace Corp volunteer told Johnette that most expectant mothers here receive no prenatal care and traditionally eat nothing but tortillas and beans during their pregnancy. Consequently their babies are born small and malnourished.

Much of the drive was quite scenic with flowering coffee plants and blooming trees along the road. We could smell the sweet faint coffee odor from the plants.

On Wednesday, April 14th, we crossed from Honduras into Guatemala. Here, Ray again had a terrible hassle because, like in Nicaragua, the Guatemalan authorities demanded to see Rambo’s original title. After examining every document in his file that pertained to the truck, they finally gave in and let us enter the country. This took about two hours.

We again checked into a hotel in the town of Esquipulas. During the night we had an awful thunderstorm.

Basilica de Esquipulas is located here. The church contains the statue of the El Cristo Negro (the “Black Christ”) carved from black wood in 1595.

Pilgrims have been flocking here in droves since an archbishop was supposedly cured of a chronic disease on this site in 1737. Consequently, there are scads of hotels in the city. We did not choose well. Our hotel was immaculate, so immaculate that our hosts had covered all guest’s mattresses with noisy and unbreathable plastic. There was no air conditioner in the room, just a ceiling fan, so we passed a very muggy night.

The church was quiet on the evening we visited but the maze thru which we walked to come within photographical distance of the “Black Christ” resembled a Disneyland queue. This queue is set up to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims who visit the statue on church holy days.

While we were having dinner at a little neighborhood restaurant a couple of Mormon missionaries walked in. We visited with Elder Shaw from Ogden, Utah and his sidekick from El Salvador.

Elder Shaw told us that the city had been jam packed during Semana Santa (Easter week). Although Elder Shaw has only been here for eight months, he already speaks excellent Spanish. We think he is pretty home sick because he mentioned several times that he only has fourteen months to go.

The next day we were on absolutely the best highway in all of Central America. The Pan-American Highway thru the Guatemalan highlands was a marvelous new divided road reaching nearly 10,000 feet. It was incredibly scenic with farms planted all the way up the mountain slopes. We wonder how the heck do these people plant, irrigate and harvest in such an inhospitable environment. We observed women and children in traditional dress herding small flocks of wooly black sheep. One lady was sitting on a rock embroidering while tending her flock.

As we passed thru one village a huge downpour occurred and all hail broke out. We pulled over to the roadside. By the time the storm had subsided, the hail beside us looked like a dry winter in Montana. It seems we’ve overstayed - rainy season is upon us.

Thursday, April 15th, Tax Day,

We rolled back into Mexico at La Masilla. We still had a small amount of meat in the freezer. It was confiscated because we could not prove that it wasn’t beef.

Much as I’d loved visiting the countries in Central America, I got all choked up when we drove back in Mexico. I was almost home. Dozens of people had set up shop on the main drag leaving just enough room for motorists to squeeze past. The people, the music, the food smells - I love it.

John’s truck had been giving him trouble for quite a few miles. It finally broke down just inside the border at our first large Mexican city, Comitan. Fortunately, this could not have happened in a better place.

The truck crapped out on the grounds of the hotel Villalba Suites. John checked into a very nice modern room with an excellent internet connection. Johnette can keep in touch with her family via Facebook.

There are three nice restaurants on the premises and there is a Wal-Mart shopping center just across the street. Villalba has generously allowed us to park Rambo and LunaSea in their lot and run a power cable from John’s room. We gave hotel employees the usual camper tours and everybody has been very nice to us. If any of our readers are ever in the area you may find this friendly hotel on the web at http://www.suitesvillalba.com/

We visited with Darvi, one of the hotel’s employees quite a bit. Darvi had lived and worked in the U.S. for about five years. Most of the time he lived in Phoenix but he also spent some time in Palm Beach, Florida, Dallas and the Pacific Northwest. He showed us the cassette set that he used to learn his near perfect English. He said he likes the U.S. for its cleanliness and good paying jobs but prefers living in Mexico because his wife, son and parents are here plus people here have more freedom. If, say, you want to build a house, you buy the land, you build your home the way you want it. When it is done, you move in. No inspectors, no permits, nada. John could really relate to that as he has recently gone thru the bureaucratic boondoggles of building their home in Wisconsin.

Saturday, we drove up to San Cristobal de las Casas primarily to dump our holding tanks at Bonampak Express Hotel and Trailer Park. We had hoped to enjoy a chicken mole dinner at a great downtown restaurant we found last year but as the hotel was closed for renovation and there were no were no other rigs in the park, we decided against leaving Furgie and our rig out there alone.

While I caught up my blog Ray baked the canned ham we’d been carrying around for the whole trip. That ham really came in handy a few days later. The next morning I had an interesting conversation with the Bonampak manager. He told me that his RV business had been off this year. The Canadians came but the Americans did not. The Canadians had not been discouraged by the reported violence in Mexico but by the H1N1 flu virus. Most came anyway.

The good news is Bonampak has renovated their RV restrooms.

Around San Cristobal de Las Cases we passed many indigenous farming communities. Local women wore two distinct styles of dress. Some wore intricately embroidered peasant blouses with flouncy gathered skirts while others were dressed in the somber Chiapian styles similar to those of the Guatemalan women whose photos I’ve previously posted.

Tuesday, April 20

Basically, the reason John’s truck, a 2008 Dodge Ram, choked up is that newer Dodges are not manufactured to run on the high sulfur diesel sold in Latin America. His catalytic converters clogged and stopped the engine. The truck was towed to the local Dodge dealer where mechanics spent two full days cleaning the filters. As Sunday was a day off, they were unable test drive the truck until Monday. Fortunately, everything worked out and we were on the road about three p.m. We stopped for the night at a very noisy toll plaza with trucks coming and going all night.

We had a nice picnic and that canned ham sure came in handy. Before we left Comitan had we had picked up some very tasty buns and lettuce at the Wal-Mart Supercenter and John had bought a bunch of beer and chips. That night Ray and I were quite comfortable in our camper. John and Johnette slept in their truck.

Tonite, we are parked at Mar Esmeralda Hotel and RV Park on Mexico’s Costa Esmeralda (Emerald Coast) on the shores of Golfo de Mexico. We came thru here in January. It is a lot prettier now.

Southern Mexico has been very pretty. We began at about 7000 feet where farming was on steep slopes. Later, the topography gave way to pine forests and Alpine like peaks. As the elevation lowered we passed palms and tropical forests, then lush pasture land with more grass than cows, banana plantations, pineapple fields, tobacco and ordinary vegetables. We crossed a lovely lake and two beautiful bridges that any state in the U.S. would be proud of.

Unintentionally, the four of us boondocked again on our last night in Mexico. While we had planned to park behind the Country Express Hotel just north of Tampico as we had on the way south, John and Johnette had planned to check into a room. However, although the hotel lobby door was open there was nobody around and the on-site restaurant was chained. John considered grabbing a key and using a room but did the honest thing and they again slept in their truck.

While passing thru one village, we had picked up one of those spicy grilled chickens that I just love. This, along with more of John’s beer was dinner.

We rolled back into the estados unidos de america at about 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 22nd.

We had been worried about those last couple hundred miles but we saw nothing except many army patrols and went thru several check points. Clearly, the Mexican government is trying to control border violence.

We were detained inside the American border until authorities could schedule the “mandatory” x-ray of our RV. Mouthy as I am, I asked our inspector just how many senior citizens RVers had been caught with contraband.

We said our good-bys to John and Johnette at Kingsville, Texas on Friday, April 23rd.

Even bucking a headwind across Texas, we made it home in three days. We would never have considered Phoenix to San Jose a one day drive in an RV but we were home by 8:00 p.m.

Some conclusions:

Winters South of the Border are much more pleasant. People in Mexico and Central America are very friendly, helpful and patient. And, even though our Spanish is pitiful, we got by very well.

Now the statistics:

We drove a total of 12,370 miles from San Jose, Ca. back to San Jose, Ca. and drove 8,368 miles from the US/Mexican border back to the Mexican/US border.

We spent $2000 on diesel and averaged 12.4 MPG or 23.9 cents per mile. Fuel price averaged $2.97 per gallon.

Our lodging (RV parking and hotel rooms) totaled $2140, of which over $1000 was spent on fifteen nights in hotels.

Tolls were another $128.00.

Border crossings, including pet costs totaled about $475.00

Adventure Caravans claims that this trip is entails 6000 miles - Brownsville, TX and back. Surely they are more efficient, i.e. they don’t get lost and they do use buses some of the time. Also, they do not go everywhere we went.

Which brings me to my conclusion: What did I like best? The Caribbean coast.

Hopefully, our next winter trip will be around the Yucatan peninsula to Belize and Honduras’s Caribbean coast. We met many people coming and going from South America. Hopefully, someday we may go there too.

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Photos

Basilica de Esquipulas in Esquipulas, Guatemala.
Pilgrims have been flocking here since an archbishop was cured of a chronic ailment on this site in 1737.

El Cristo Negro
The "Black Christ" was carved from black wood in 1595.

We were unable to get a good picture of the statue but the coloring was more bronze as is this photo.
We visited several religious gift shops hoping to buy a postcard of the statue but none were available. Planned to cheat on our blog photo as we did with blue Costa Rican butterfly!

Our hosts Rodolfo, Sayami and Darvi at Villalba Suites Hotel in Comitan, Mexico.
They have a huge parking lot and three on-site restaurants. I'm sure they would welcome other RVers.

Banana Plantation
We almost forgot to post a picture. After having lived in Hawaii, bananas are no big deal to us but guess not everybody has grown them in their back yard.

What a view overlooking Lake Masaya!
Out of order but this is the Nicaraguan restaurant where I had the delicious seafood dinner.

Estados Unidos de America
Four months, 10,000 miles and a lifetime of memories!

Comments

[anonymous]

VERY INTERESTING.mOM