NEW UPDATES

Tas and Harriet have been working hard on theirs.. link to see latest pix. Jemima & Peony still working on it! We're in Puerto Viejo still, surf too good to leave and the campsite too mellow.

End of the McCoy! Update on Matts Surf Report 

Surf Camp, Costa Rica. 

Surf Camp, Costa Rica. Yipee. 

El Salvador. As we have moved deeper into countries where people have little but their freindship to give, their capacity for giving seems to have increased correspondingly. Jemima took this- Harriet, Tas & Peony, enveloped by the warmth of this welcome. 

Dave and Rosie... this one is for you! NOW we understand.  

Nicaragua. Lots of animal traction in use here still, and one thing you can't see in this pic is that it's about 1 in 3. They're working hard those cows. 

We thought we'd set ourselves a task, but this Guy is hard core. Czech Republic to Cape Horn via Alaska... with a trailer for the dog. Salutations Peiter.  

Volcanoes and mangrove swamps: traditional cast-netting from dugout canoes. Images from Coastal Guatemala. 

We are working on a new sport to be known, we hope, as Extreme RVing. To get the ball rolling we put the bus on this tea tray of a barge for a half hour trip through the mangroves to Monterrico Guatemala. It made it. 

From Mexico to Costa Rica

With our year rapidly slipping by, Christmas suddenly became a memory rather than an eagerly anticipated deadline. An expedition inland to explore a little of the Michoacan hinterland took us well into January and it was with a jolt that we realised the shortest day was long past, the spring equinox a mere couple of months away.

This was significant for a number of reasons: the sun returns to the Northern hemisphere on March 21st, bringing increased temperatures and, within a few weeks of it's arrival overhead, a wet season which lasts from May until September. In Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, all countries we wish to explore a little this year, this leads to many dirt roads becoming impassable to any but the nimblest of vehicles. Even now in midwinter, the dry season (paradoxically known here as “summer”), the midday temperatures are at the upper tolerance limit of our cool zone constitutions- by the end of April we had to be heading back into the highlands of Mexico to stand any chance of surviving this inevitable climatic assault.

It was clear that we had to press on south fast: to reach the southern limit of our geographical goal for this journey and still have any time to explore in the dry season, we would have to start at the bottom and work up, away from the sun and rain as it spread northwards.

Suzanne spent a couple of days poring over the maps and our guidebooks. The ease of travelling in Mexico: well researched camping and driving guides, good maps and an established tourist industry throughout much of the country, was to be replaced in Central America with a relative dearth of practical information. The Lonely Planet guides are aimed primarily at backpackers: useful for finding out a little about some of the places we would be going but virtually devoid of camping and driving information. Footprint guides offer a little more in practical terms but are thin on detail for anywhere outside the main tourist destinations. We were anxious about the state of the roads, the size of our vehicle in the smaller villages and cluttered, bustling towns.

No-one of our generation or older, of course, was able to come through the late 1970s and the early eighties, without absorbing some of the imagery played out on TV screens and in newspapers; portraying Central America as a hellish battlefield, another Vietnam, a region of violence, corruption and desperate poverty; and was it not also now a region dominated by the drug barons and arms dealers? Oh the things we think of when contemplating the maps: a long stretch of winding road through difficult terrain- was this to be a hideout for bandidos, arms smugglers?.

We know this is all crazy stuff, partly the product of the propaganda fed to us by the establishment- but it's hard to put aside the lurking doubts and concentrate on the reality: people live in these places- people like us! They need shelter, food and water- like us. Their cares and concerns mirror our own: they want the best for their children, they want life to be free of anxiety and stress. There is no greater proportion of "bad" people in Central America than in North America, or England.

A little planning goes a long way: alleviating these gnawing symptoms of our first world paranoia. Putting a realistic number of kilometers on a planned route for a day and looking at where we would be, gave names to previously unknown places, gave a structure to a previously chaotic impression of the journey ahead.

What pathetic creatures we are to set such store by these small comforts: order, naming things! In this respect we're no different from our Colonial forebears who so decimated the indigenous societies they discovered here: carving up the territory into parcels, drawing lines on maps to suit their administrative needs; although we find it harder, and are ashamed, to understand their motivation in destroying magnificent buildings, burying artistic and cultural history, dismantling ancient institutions; because these represented the unknown- and therefore threatening- independence of the people they found here.


The Border crossings: six countries in three weeks.
Partly a legacy of the Colonial (and especially Spanish) subdivision of Central America, and one of the nagging anxieties about planning this stage of our journey was the prospect of driving through so many (potentially difficult) borders. Central America has a very high concentration of nation states in a relatively tight geographical area. Decades of political turmoil, the flow of migrants towards the US, smuggling of drugs one way and weapons the other; all these factors would inevitably lead us into a morass of paperwork and intense scrutiny, as we passed through.

Overland border crossings in any case act like funnels: from all points of the compass travelers converge to process their way through: some on long journeys, hauling cargo or migrants, others simply popping to the next village to sell some oranges, visit a sick relative. Few smart business travelers, or wealthy tourists, are seen at these overland borders compared to airports or ferry terminals. There are no air conditioned enclaves within which they could escape the hoi-polloi, no fast-track here. This is seething, Hogarthian humanity, laid bare: at the mercy of the security forces of the governments which try to keep all these people under control. Everyone must present themselves at immigration, no-one escapes the scrutiny of customs. You join the queue: and if the family in front of you have a document out of place, if the guy at the desk needs to knock off for breakfast, if the officer at the vehicle inspection point is chasing up someones licence.... then you wait. Till tomorrow if need be.

This concentration of people on the move, spawns an entire, and chaotic community on each side of the borders , dedicated to servicing the needs of those caught up in the daily drama. Money changers strut around shuffling thick wads of cash, offering terrible exchange rates to the vulnerable or unwary. “Dollars? Quetzellas? Lempiras?Cordobas? Collones? You want them? Good rate!” Self proclaimed “official guides” besiege arriving vehicles offering to help with paperwork- for a fee. Everywhere people on the move, and everywhere others simply watching, propping up street corners and lampposts, sitting in groups on the dusty pavements, watching and waiting.

Photocopy shops do a roaring trade! Each department: immigration, customs, vehicle inspection, temporary importation, police; requires at least two copies of passports, driving licences, ownership title, temporary insurance (has to be bought on the street outside). Copies of previous import and export documents from other countries visited add to the paper pile. Street vendors and restaurants keep everyone fed and watered. Guest houses provide the beds for those too exhausted, or late, to make it through the border that day. And all the time there are fees to pay here, propinas (tips) to hand out there; and to smooth the passage through the roughest channels, small bribes that are an almost institutional part of the whole process.

And woe betide you if you have lost a crucial document- we met travellers who missed a critical stamp on a crucial page, leaving Honduras, ended up having to go through the entire process twice, taking a twenty four hour delay and hefty “fines” into the bargain. As for the poor American chap who was trying to do Indiana to Costa Rica in a week with a DOG in tow... you could almost see the customs and agricultural inspectors faces light up with glee as he walked into their offices! Six borders and hundreds of dollars in “animal transit fees” down the line when we met him, his final humiliating, ignominous crossing into Costa Rica was marked by a loud crash as he scraped the ramp of the vehicle sanitation gate, his exhaust pipe left lying in the road behind his dusty vehicle. We had to laugh, but the dark rings under his eyes gave us some sense of how exhausted he was by the stress of the whole business.

For us it has got easier as we have gone along. Three weeks was actually plenty of time to make this journey, from Chiapas, allowing a few days between border crossings for recovery time and some R&R along the way in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador (The small, westernmost finger of Honduras we crossed in a day). We got pretty used to the routine by the end, learning some basic rules along the way:

Rule one is don't stop for anyone in the ten miles before the border unless they are in uniform and carrying a gun.
Rule two is to pick the “guide” with the nicest smile/ kindest eyes as soon as you get to the border itself and agree a small fee ( usually a couple of bucks). This sorts out the rest of the hustlers who give up as soon as they realise you're sorted. Your guide actually turns out to be quite useful too! Usually knows the best place to get a juicy mango while waiting for a stamp or document to be issued.
Rule three is to allow all day and keep very calm- we arrived before 8am at nearly all the crossings. That way when you make it through after only two or three hours you are delighted to have had such an easy time of it.
Rule four, if you can, is to let people know you are from Europe (not the US. To put it kindly, the Americans have a chequered past in this region and you never know the history of the individual you are dealing with). Do this at every opportunity.
Rule five is to present as many blonde children as possible at all stages of the beaurocratic process. Instantaneous softening of atmosphere, marked increase in speed of typing, immediate reduction in fees, etc.

It would be unappreciative not to end this rather negative blog without properly noting the positive aspects of this experience. First, in El Salvador, where there is a concerted effort being made to clean up the entire, shabby, border crossing system. The hustlers at the El Sal. Border with Guatemala were muted- clearly the result of a clampdown by the authorities. Inside the El Salvador border station large notices in three languages announced that the Customs and immigration system was a free service, that there was no need to pay anyone either inside or outside the system. Furthermore we were guided through the entire system by an individual officer who walked with us from department to department explaining what was required along the way. It was a refreshing and uplifting experience.

The second, more general positive aspect of all of this, was how vibrant, cheerful and polite everyone was in the face of this overwhelmingly frustrating, slightly intimidating system. It gives us a little insight, opens a small window, marks Central America out as a region where decades of turmoil, corruption and violence; crimes of occupation and suppression perpetrated by few, suffered by many; these many trials have not been able to suppress the basic good nature and good will of the people. We were to find this again on our brief stops along the way- it gives us confidence that our fears were unfounded and we will find our way here, these next few months.

Julie, we are waiting for you!

Oh Nicaragua, we love you! We'll be heading back here soon... This pic taken from the Costa Rican side as we head south to Nicoya for an eagerly anticipated rendevous with Julie. 

Peony's cracked it! The little blue board is called the Liquid Shredder! Clever girl. Oh, and thats Tas flying along the wall in the background. Nicaraguan waves. More pix of the kids getting the hang of things in Matt's Surf report.