Reflections on Traveling Central America

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I wake up in the mountain town of Tilaran, Costa Rica. Forty kilometers south, via a dirt road, is the eco-paradise once featured by National Geographic, Monteverde. It has butterfly, frog, and snake gardens, suspension bridges, and canopy tours. But I’m not going there. No, I’ve had enough of Costa Rica and its high prices; paying $10 for a breakfast that would cost $7 in LA. In Monteverde I could spend as much walking across one bridge as I would for three days of adventure in Nicaragua. And so, I’m heading north, back to Nicaragua. My destination: a beach city named San Juan del Sur just 25km north of the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border. Here I should be able to get a hotel for $5 and breakfast for $2.

I’m happy to be on the road again and to be alone. I spent the last five days in Costa Rica traveling with a friend and now the open road and the solitude are freeing. I realize that I have finished my exploration south and am now starting my journey back home. I drive the now-familiar Pan-American highway north; it was just five days ago that I entered Costa Rica and first traveled this road. Now there is something inviting about this stretch of highway as if I am returning to visit an old friend. And this time, without the dark clouds and intermittent showers, it is as if the bad times are gone and my old friend and I can sit and reminisce about the struggles we had endured together in the past.

I arrive in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua and I have mixed feelings about what I see. The sailboats moored in the water are pleasant, and the hill rising up from the north edge of the crescent beach is very beautiful. But the southern side of the beach is a fishing port tastelessly made of concrete. I look around town, eat some lunch, check out some hotels, and chat with a cynical old Swiss man who is stuck here until he finishes fixing his sailboat.

I decide to head north 12km on a small road to a little surf beach called “Madera Beach.” The small brick road quickly becomes a dirt path after just 2km. Little wooden signs nailed to trees help lead me to Madera.

I arrive at the beach, and the water is full of surfers. Perfect waves continue to roll in as surfer after surfer show off their skills. On my right is one small shack of a restaurant where people sit outside, eat, and watch the waves and riders. On my left is a larger building, but “shack” still seems like the correct word to describe it. It has a concrete foundation set right at the water’s edge. The bottom floor is a restaurant (without walls of course) and the second floor is a mess of nailed together boards, painted in bright colors, serving as a hotel. Behind the restaurant on the first floor is a small room out of which surfboards are rented.

I am nervous about being here; it seems so far away from any rule-of-law. The governance of this beach is clearly based upon the good (or bad) will of those who visit it. But in reflection, the “rule-of-law” and those corrupt officials who enforce and distort it are really one of the things that make me nervous in Central America so the lack of officials really should not be alarming. But I nevertheless wonder, what keeps my motorcycle and belongings safe here? Despite my misgivings, I am guided to checking into a room and it is done. I am staying here for the night.

The afternoon is getting late, and so it is time to surf. Inside the surf rental shop, an old man with weathered skin lies in a hammock smoking cigarettes. The shop is dirty and is littered with boards in various stages of repair. The man charges me $5 dollars for a half-day rental, and I talk him into letting me keep the board until the morning instead of returning it when he closes at 5:00.

The waves are great, but I realize that I am not good enough to catch a wave before someone else does. I swim in closer to shore and play on an inside break. The waves are not quite as big here, but they are still bigger, cleaner, and more consistent than anything I usually get in Los Angeles.

In the evening, after they turn off the generator, there is no electricity in the hotel. By 7:00pm the beach is dark and almost completely empty. I retire to my room, trying to sleep with the door open, hoping that some small breeze will rescue me from the insufferable heat. Through the open door I can see the waves, illuminated slightly by the stars, crashing in one after another. I am comforted by the fact that I am on the second floor; one slightly larger wave would be big enough to rush in and fill the restaurant below. If fact, the restaurant, made completely of concrete and block, is designed to accommodate this. But then I wonder, how big of a wave could this shack really withstand. The night is long and hot, and I enjoy only intermittent sleep.

I wake up at 5:00 in the morning and rush out to see if anyone is in the water yet. There is not a soul in sight, except another groggy hotel inhabitant heading for the bathroom. I waste no time; I don’t brush my teeth, I don’t eat any breakfast (not that there is anyone selling breakfast yet). I put on my board shorts, grab my surf board and run to the water. Now, I know my parents are nervous about me traveling alone on motorcycle throughout Central America, but I will tell you, this is the scariest thing I have done. These waves are big, I don’t know the beach well, rocks hide on both sides of the beach, and there is no one out there with me.

I fight the waves to get past the break, but they are strong and keep holding me in. As there is no one else in the water to use as a reference point, I keep looking back at the shore, making sure the currents don’t pull me north or south towards the rocks. A large wave comes at me and I see a fish, just barely below the surface, dart across its crest.

Shortly after I make it out past the break, I see a pickup truck arrive filled with surfers. The thought of having company in the water is a relief, but I have still not caught a wave and I am determined that the first wave of the day will be mine. The waves are tricky and I keep missing them. The other surfers are now heading towards the water, and my personal glory is soon to be stolen. And then, I catch a wave. Now I am not a great surfer, but this wave is clean and I ride it cutting up and down the face and satisfying my need to catch the first wave.

Let’s put this in perspective. This beach is touted as the most consistent beach to surf in all of Nicaragua. These waves crash every day, 365 days a year. And from my understanding, people surf these warm waters every day. Now for some reason, I feel like this beach has been being surfed since the early 80’s—maybe someone told me this. If that is true, these waters have been being surfed for about 30 years. 30 multiplied by 365 is over 10,000. So there have been maybe 10,000 first waves of the day on this beach. In the grand scheme of things, I accomplished almost nothing. But for me, I know, on this one day, I caught the first wave. The surfers walking out to the water will not remember me. The ocean will certainly not remember me. But, I will remember the day that I caught the first wave of the day on Madera Beach.

Later in the day I return to the small surf rental shop to rent a board for another day. This time I chat with the old man more. I look at the boards he has repaired and ask him if he used to fix boats. He says he did. He gives me a board, but when I look at it, I see the rope to hold on the leash is tied wrong. I point it out to him and ask him for a short piece of cord. Instead he carefully ties a new cord on himself. I watch as he doubles over the cord and meticulously chooses a knot. I then ask if he also used to be a fisherman. He looks up at me and grins. He doesn’t have to say anything, but there is a mutual respect exchanged. This man, who spends most of his days in a little shop handing out surfboards to surfers oblivious to his work, has skill sets that have long gone unnoticed. I appreciate the history of his craft, and he appreciates acknowledgment of his skills. The afternoon is young, but he still only charges me for a half day and lets me keep the board until the next morning.

The next morning I am again the first in the water, but the waves are abusive, I have more trouble getting to the break, and I go back in without catching a wave. I ask someone at the hotel to return the board when the man arrives, and I take off for my next destination by 7:30. On my way back to San Juan del Sur, I stop at a crossroads and try and remember the way. I circle back 50 feet to ask someone on the side of the road; it turns out to be the man from the surf rental shop. He points me in the right direction and I tell him where his board is. He smiles and nods; he already knew his board was safe and would be returned to him. I knew I needed to leave the surf beach. I am traveling, and that means not staying in one place too long. My arms and chest are also tired and I know I need to rest them for a day or two. But as I drive away down the dirt path, I am sad, not to leave the beach, but sad that I didn’t get to know this man better. This man who seemed so gruff and uninviting now seems to be biding me farewell; seems to be saying goodbye to me as a friend.

It is good to be on the road again. San Jorge is just 30km up the road. From San Jorge I can take a ferry to the island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. I had heard wonderful things about the island. I stop at the ferry terminal and look across the lake to the two volcanoes that jut out of the lake and make up the island of Ometepe. But I don’t buy a ferry ticket. Instead, I continue driving north to Granada, Nicaragua. I loved the beach hut hotel in Playa Madaras, but now I want some comforts, comforts found in a tourist center like Granada, and I also want to go somewhere familiar (I had spent two days in Granada on my way down to Costa Rica). But I think the truth is that I want to keep driving. I have been on the road less than an hour and it feels good to be riding again.

I wish I could capture for you what I see as I drive; capture the experience so that you understand. But I can’t. A photograph can’t capture the immensity of endless landscape. And even if I shot a video as I drive, the picture would still have a frame; you wouldn’t be able to turn your head and see the mountains in the distance on the left, the trees whizzing by on the right, or look down and see the occasional stream I pass over. I have spent the majority of my travels, driving on the Pan-American Highway. This is the major highway that connects all of Central America. But in many places, it is just two lanes. Sometimes it has no lines painted down the center or marking the sides. It seems like little more than a small country road. I wish this road, this landscape, this place could remain frozen in time. But I know development and progress bring bigger and wider roads and more and more buildings cluttering the landscape. Twenty years ago, I’m sure this highway wasn’t paved the whole way and I couldn’t have done this trip with the same ease. The thought of freezing this landscape at any point in time truly would be arbitrary.

But if you could see it now, if you could see it the way I am seeing it. In some places coconut or banana trees close in on the road making it seem almost like a tunnel. Other places, twisting switchbacks lead down a mountain offering a vista of the green valley below, the valley frequently scarred with a muddy river flowing through it. At other times in other places, clouds intermittently let streams of light through casting rays onto mountains in the distance.

Maybe if you could sit on the back as I drive you could see this all. In fact, you would see it better than I, as you would not have to focus on the road too. Maybe I should sit on the back as you drive, and I could look around taking it all in.

But I guess, if I were sitting on the back, I would lose the thrill of navigating these roads. And being on the back sometimes makes me nervous. It is funny, you can pick up small children and put them on your shoulders or throw them into the air, and they are not afraid. But as we get older, we become more independent and I think we forget how to trust. In Costa Rica, I told you I traveled with a friend, Annie, for five days. We were leaving Samara Beach and decided to take some back roads to make the drive shorter, and we had heard that the road was very beautiful. The road was windy and curvy. It went up and down mountains. But it was newly paved and was a very smooth ride. So newly paved in fact, that my map still indicated that it was dirt. But the last 11km were not paved. They were steep and rocky and muddy and rutted with erosion. To make it worse, there were two of us on the bike, all my stuff in my 3 travel boxes, Annie’s stuff bungee corded on top of the boxes, and an extra backpack strapped above the gas tank. The bike was overloaded and wanted to bottom out on every bump. It took all my concentration to navigate this road. Keeping my speed up as I climbed hills and going slowly enough to navigate the corners, turns, rocks, and ruts.

At one point, I was balancing on a narrow strip of road about a foot wide. On the right the road dropped off the edge of the mountain. On the left, I would fall into a rut. The road was plenty wider on the left, but I chose this narrow strip because it was smooth and without rocks or ruts. Annie must have looked down and saw how close we were to falling off the right edge of the road and shifted all her weight left throwing us towards the rut. I don’t want to brag (but I really kind of do actually want to brag) but it took all my skill and ability to keep the bike upright.

Annie, who loves riding on the back, was nervous the rest of the day, and I no longer trusted her as a passenger. Every time I had to navigate an obstacle, I tensed up and braced in case she tried to counter my actions.

Anyway, out of my reflections and back to my story. I continue my drive to Granada enjoying the landscape and solitude. A dog wanders onto the highway in front of my motorcycle. I honk so that it will hurry across before I am near. (Central American dogs frequently don’t look before crossing the road. It is always wise to honk at them if they are near the road. If you get too close to them before they see you, they become indecisive and double back in front of your motorcycle.) But this dog does not hurry at the sound of my horn. She simply looks up at my bike and very slowly continues to meander across the road. I can see her ribs, her skin just a thin layer barely covering them. Her teats hang low; she must clearly be nursing some pups. It occurs to me that she does not hurry at the sound of my honk because she does not fear death. Her life has been a constant struggle against starvation, and now a set of young pups are taking from her what little nourishment she has. She is not the first dog I have seen like this, and she won’t be the last. I want to help them, to feed them. A sense of helplessness and disgust come over me as I realize that this country is not only full of starving dog, but also starving people.

I pull into Granada and find a hotel in which to stay. I ask if there is a place to park my motorcycle and am told that I can park it right in the lobby. “Dude, you are the guy I want to talk to,” someone tells me. “I want to get a motorcycle and travel Central America on it, but I haven’t found anyone to talk with about it.” The guy (whose name I never ask, I have met too many people on my trip to remember names anyway, but let’s call him Josh) and I chat for the rest of the morning and early afternoon. At least we try and chat; we are interrupted frequently by long boring stories told by an old woman teacher who has been living on disability in Central America for five years. I have found that teachers have a remarkable ability to, in their personal lives, talk incessantly without any awareness of whether their (frequently captive) audience is at all interested. As a teacher myself, I have to myself sometimes fight against this impulse.

Josh and I go to lunch together. He is in his mid-forties, and he has been traveling the world for years. Apparently the US government pays him disability money because as a child he was diagnosed with ADD. This money, plus one rental property he owns in the US provide him enough to travel with and not work. But Josh is depressed. He dreams of going back to South-east Asia, but there he will miss Latin America. He may be living the dream of traveling constantly and not having to work, but he is not complete. People who travel too much loose themselves. Their lives become completely voyeuristic. They interact with people in the places they visit, but they don’t really participate in anyone’s life. It is as if each time they move to a new place, they are simply flipping the channel on the television hoping that on some station they will find what they are looking for. In my travels, I have seen these people too many times. When I am away too long, I feel it happening to myself, and I think this is why I always return home. And like I said, we are calling him “Josh” because I didn’t bother to learn his name. I think I too, 10 days before the end of my trip, am starting to get tired of just passing through lives.

That afternoon I do a couple of things. (1) I impulsively change my flight. I had 10 days left of my trip; I change it to 5. When I had arrived in Granada only a few hours earlier I had assumed I would stay two nights. Now I will be leaving early tomorrow morning. (2) I call Tino. If you don’t know who Tino is, read my blog entitled “Tino”. But in case you don’t have time, Tino is a mechanic in San Pedro Sula, Honduras who specializes in old motorcycles like my own. He fixed my bike two weeks earlier so I could continue on my trip, and he had become my friend. I needed to visit him again. I talk on the phone with Tino and tell him that I will see him in a few days, probably on Monday. (3) I email Mary, a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras who I met at the D&D Brewery near Lake Yojoa (read my blog entitled “I’m stuck at the Brewery and Can’t Leave) and tell her that I will be passing through Comayagua, Honduras (the city she lives near) in the next day or two. It is clear that I am doing everything I can to be near people I already know instead of meeting new friends for a day.

The next morning, I wake up early and am on the road by 6:00am. I have gotten in the habit of going to bed early and rising early. Partly I sleep and wake with the sun. And this, after all, is the rainy season; afternoon showers are common, so I always try to ride in the morning.

I’m not sure where I will stop, but I decide that I will try and make it to Comayagua, Honduras to visit Mary. But getting to Comayagua means traveling about 500km, plus crossing a border, which can sometimes be very time-consuming. As I am driving, I wonder if by changing my flight, I have cheated myself out of my vacation. I’m now rushing rather than relaxing. I’m not exploring new cities. But, I made it to Costa Rica, and while I am still less than half of the way back, I get the feeling that I have made it. Something feels like it has changed. I’m not nervous anymore. During most of the days of travel on my trip, I feared something.

Things I feared:

On my first day of travel from Xela, Guatemala to Guatemala City, just a 3-hour journey which I knew very well, I fell on my motorcycle for the first time. The curvy mountain road I had traveled so many times before was washed out with mud, it was raining, and while I was only going 5 miles an hour, my motorcycle had absolutely no traction and slid out from under me. That night I contemplated my trip. I wanted to go to Roatan the next day on the northern coast of Honduras, but that was very far away and I was now terrified of rain and mud. I considered looking for the shortest routes and easiest places to get to. I had fallen on my first day of travel, on a road I had traveled many times. I wondered what the unknown roads would bring. At last I decided I would still try to get to Roatan. The trip there should have taken two days, but encouraged by good weather and the lack of rain, I drove until sunset and made it there in one day.

While learning to Scuba dive on the island of Roatan, people told me horror stories about the roads to Tegucigalpa. Tegucigalpa is set in the mountains and I heard that sometimes the roads would wash out so bad that the busses couldn’t even get through. I also heard that Tegucigalpa was so dangerous and confusing that I should just hire a taxi and follow it to get through town. But I made it through Tegucigalpa without a taxi. Yes it did rain while I was in the city; I really hate riding in the rain. But I learned something about riding in the rain in Central America: you can’t stop for the rain. In the plains of the US, you can travel for hundreds of miles in a complete downpour. But in Central America, if it is raining where you are, it is probably not raining 10 miles down the road. If you get wet riding, you will probably be dry again before you get wherever you are going.

I had heard stories of horrible thieves and kidnappers in Nicaragua, stories of terrible cops in Costa Rica.

But now driving back, driving roads I now know, it doesn't seem scary at all. I don't want it to rain, but let the rain come; I can deal with it. I had made it to Costa Rica. My bike had broken down many times, and I had fixed it. It had rained, and I still managed to keep my tires on the pavement. Cops had pulled me over numerous times in every country, and I had kept my cool. I had navigated all the big cities on my own. My trip no longer seems exotic or scary or brave. I had simply driven a motorcycle on a highway across four countries the size of which put together are still much smaller than California.

I know people back home think what I was doing is dangerous. And I won’t tell you that it isn't. But I now know I will make it back safely. I know this is as much due to luck as it is due to my exceptional motorcycle abilities, good judgment, impeccable sense of direction, and all my skills that helped me on my way.



I cross back into Honduras and make it to Tegucigalpa; I now know the city. I am still over 100km from Comayagua. Now that I am in Honduras, I find a pay phone and call Mary. I tell her I am in Tegucigalpa and ask her if I can visit today. She gives me directions to her small village of Ajuterique 12km outside of Comayagua. I make it to Ajuterique sometime before 5:00pm. I’ve been on the road 10 or 11 hours.

It is good to see Mary. I had met her only two weeks earlier and we only knew each other for one evening. But with some people, you just connect. I share a cultural similarity with Mary that I don’t share with the locals I meet. And Mary, unlike the foreigners I meet, is not wandering lost from city to city. No she has a purpose here. She is a Peace Corps volunteer working on integrating herself into the community. We don’t sit and superficially talk about the places we have visited as tourists and therefore pretend to know well, touting the tourist centers we know as our merit-badges of cultural understanding and worldliness. No, instead, we talk about real things. What exactly do we talk about? Some of it I can’t remember, some of it is too long for me to share with you, and some of it is private—just between us. At night we sit on her balcony drinking beer and watching the sun fade on the mountains in the distance.

The next day I am calm and at peace. I eat three home cook meals with Mary—that is three more than I have eaten in a very long time. We hike a mountain, walk to a neighboring village, and just relax. I realize that I could spend a lot more time here. And Mary would definitely appreciate having a man around for a longer while. With me, she can walk the streets and not endure catcalls from the men at every corner. I do not want to judge all the men of Central America, but it seems that they have no respect for women. Now, to be fair, I have never talked with Central American women about how they feel when they receive harassment on the street. Maybe this is so ingrained into their culture that they don’t mind it or even like it. But I have never met a woman from outside of Central America who says she likes it, in fact they mostly all express distain and disgust for it. But with me, Mary can explore the streets of her city without deciding whether or not to lash-out at the men who heckle her. I think it is some extreme form of bro-code. Central American men do not respect women, but they respect me as a man. Heckling Mary while she is with me would be disrespecting me.

Tomorrow morning I will leave. I will be sad to go. I will be sad to leave the clam of this small village. And I will be sad to say goodbye to Mary; I could definitely develop a crush on her if I stay any longer, maybe I already have.

Tomorrow will be a short two-hour drive to San Perdo Sula to visit Tino. There I will do a little maintenance on my bike and spend the evening with Tino. Then from there, I will head to Guatemala City where I will leave my bike with a friend and fly back to Los Angeles.

I won’t do this trip ever again, at least not the same way. Maybe I will drive this highway again, but not alone, and not with an old bike. No, next time I want company, and I want I bike that won’t break down. And better rain gear. But I’m glad I did it. I think of other people spending their vacation drinking margaritas and beer on the beach. My vacation has not been nearly this relaxing, and I had points of near exhaustion. But I don’t think I could drink margaritas and beer for five weeks. I need an adventure, a challenge, a goal to accomplish.

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Photos

Bella Esperanza near a wind farm, Nicaragua
This is a wind farm along the highway. Bella and I passed it as we were traveling from Tilaran, Costa Rica to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.

View of Road and Landscape
As I said, I can't capture the landscape in a photo, so I didn't try much. Here is one of the only pictures I have of landscape.

Comments

[Staci]

Wow
I've really enjoyed your reflections, Phil. Your writing is inspiring (and will be, I'm sure, for your students too).