Medellin, Colombia

Early Saturday morning, we made our way to the airport...Jim dropped me at the curb with my paraglider and a bag of clothes.  He was to fly out to SLC later that morning, leaving the car until he returns to Panama City Feb16th, after his reunion back home with Marcie, family, and friends...lots of work to do as well on the basement finishing project, he says to me.

The flight to Medellin, Colombia was short, sweet, and expensive.  Determined to find my way to the hotel via public transportation and avoid a $50 cab fare, I got to within a quarter mile of the destination after bus and city metro connections.  I walked aimlessly for 45 minutes through the vortex of upscale high rise condos and office buildings looking for the hotel but Medellin has no rhyme or reason to its city layout.  It's easy to notice a lost and bewildered gringo, and that's exactly what a very nice young couple did as they pulled up beside me in their Honda Accord.  They looked at my notes and offered to drive me there, going out of their way.  I must have stored up some karma sometime, but I cashed it in there and the Familia del Cielo saved the day.

I spent the day walking until I was exhausted in this beautiful and facinating city of several million people. It is relatively long and narrow, sandwiched between two mountain ranges, the northern portion of the Andes. My hotel is in a quiet and peaceful side street but there is really no convenient retail outlets or restaurants near.  Later that evening, I set out to find sustinance, and walked for an hour, only found one pizza joint.  Having eaten nothing all day, I was desperate and reluctantly settled for the Colombian equivalent of Chucky Cheese.  Picture this:  a 61 year old man, sittling alone in Chucko Cheeseo, with about 50 kids (half a dozen bithday parties) eating pizza playing on trampolines and various kiddy things, with mostly mothers and a few bored fathers...all staring at me.  I'm lucky they didn't call the vice squad or launch a preemptive asault on the old man in the corner.

This morning, I made the arduous trek to the closest paragliding site to the city, a trip of about two hours via Metro and bus.  San Felix is high above the northern end of the valley, just outside of the city limits of Medellin.  I had made contact with Marlin via the internet who works for a paragliding company and he mentioned that he would be at San Felix and would watch for me.  Luckily, he found me and dly gave me a briefing on the conditions and idiosycracies of the takeoff.  Wow, what a wonderful flight I had, about two hours in the air, with gentle and abundant thermals to keep me aloft.  I flew until I was tired and cold, and performed a less than graceful top landing at the end.  Enjoying refreshment at the outdoor cantina overlooking the takeoff, I felt a sence of total relaxation and contentment for the first time of the trip.

I think I'll hire Marlin to guide me to a few other sites within a reasonable distance from Medellin, especially to Sopetran, where I have had wonderful flying the last two trips to Colombia.

My "Chucky Cheese" Close Call

San Felix

Half Time

A full day in Panama City arranging the shipping of the truck to Colombia.  Ships leaves every Saturday or Sunday, and unfortunately, we missed the opportunity to depart this week.  Shipping the truck is a frustrating multi-level process that starts in Panama City, departs in Colon, on the Caribbean side of the country, and ends in Cartegenia,Colombia.   The process starts on a Monday, for a Thursday delivery of the truck at the dock to load into the container for a Saturday or Sunday sailing.  The boat trip takes about 3-4 days and we cannot travel on the boat with with the truck.  So, it requires a flight to Cartagena, Colombia, to meet the boat.  Two days of bureaucracy later, if all goes well, we will be on the road again...theoretically.  It's an expensive endeavor, and one can save money if another vehicle is sharing a 40 foot container.  We have no one to share the container with thus far but we are hopeful the agent can find one for us.  Nevertheless, it costs about as much to ship the vehicle as it does to buy an airline ticket to Europe.  So, we were faced with the problem of killing three days in Panama until we started the process.  After much deliberation, we came up with Plan B.  We are scheduling the transport for the following week...Jim will fly home for a week, while I hop down to Medellin, Colombia for a week or so of paragliding.  Jim will then return to Panama City to see the truck onto the ship, while I will make my way to Cartagena to meet him when it pulls up in the port.  We should be on the road on the Pan Am Highway by February 23rd...theoretically.

Banana Republic-Not Just a Place to Buy Clothes

Heading out with a feeling optimism to the border of Panama this morning, just a few miles down the road.  Viewing dozens of green parakeets in the trees just off the deck of the room as we left put me in a good mood.  As we made our way to the remote crossing, I thought of how satisfying it would be to our wives, and the entire female gender for that matter, for them to see two grown men stop numerous times to ask total strangers for driving directions.  St. Maria, our GPS, is not always trustworthy in the rural countryside, and road signs in the outback are nonexistent.  We soon found ourselves at what looked like a border...a small green building with a flag and soldier in camo standing out front.  Of course, he didn't think we could see him in that outfit, and we played along until he revealed himself.  He looked bewildered when we asked him if this was the border immigration office...where is customs?       Where do we get our passports stamped? I used my trusty iPad translator APP to spit out a couple of pertinent sentences, but he was still confused.  Just then, a taxi pulled up and luckily the driver spoke english. He invited us to follow him down a windy mountain road and around to the  right crossing about 4KM away.  

There, we found ourselves fussing about a potentially sticky situation.  We'd already crossed the border up the road, and were approaching the gate from a place Costa Rican authorities had not given us permission to be in.  At other Central American border crossings, this would have been enough to take us into custody, or at least deny us entry.  But life, and the attitude of the officials in rural parts, seems to be more casual...no problemo, they say,  just drive the 50 yards acrosss the border and get the stamp, and then come back and see us...

The whole process was unstressful, but equally lengthy as the others, as we had to wait 2 hours until the woman in the insurance sales shack returned from lunch/siesta.  After all the paperwork was done, the official inspected the vehicle and was greatly impressed by the contents of our cooler...that is, the quality of our beer and limes.

The rest of the day was spent traveling on a winding 35 mph road through the incredibly beautiful countryside toward our goal, the city of David, Panama.  

Way Down in Costa Rica

Decided to cruise through San Jose and take the Pan Am Highway through most of Costa Rica to the Panamanian border, rather than take the secondary roads along the coast.  This is an amazing road that takes one from the sea to 10,994 feet in three hours through jaw dropping scenery.  After stopping for lunch in San Ignacio el General, we decided to avoid the hectic Pan Am border crossing and try a little  used and obscure crossing to the north.  We prefer chickens to coyotes.  So we veered off the Pan Am and had a delightful ride past vast pineapple fields, back into the mountains and the sticks of the outback...we are just blown away how beautiful this country is.  As we passed one of the ubiquitous little independent auto mechanic shops, "tallers" in Spanish, Jim remembered that we had tail lights out.  Wanting to avioid any incidents with the local authorities, we decided to replace it.  The owner, Roberto was more than happy to address our problems, and was facinated by the description of our destination.  He and his crew of four quickly addressed the problem, and sent us on our way without charge.  Hold off on those drones, Barak, these people are awfully nice!  We stopped near the town of San Vito as it was getting dark and are tucked away in a clean, rustic shack for 30 bucks.  Ten miles from the border, we are now starting to be concerned about just how we are going to ship the Little Red Truck around the Darian Gap...hmmmm.

Gypsies in the Palace

To our relief, the boarder crossing from Nicaragua to Costa Rica was only two hours and devoid of any major crime or acts of human misbehavior.  Fees were paid, services rendered, and we were on our merry way south through what is arguably the most beautiful country in Centeral America...certainly the most advanced economically.

I had sent an email ahead to Fred, who owns  a paragliding B&B near Caldera to see if we could stay there for the night, but the message never got through.   We miraculously found our way to his place, where I had stayed back in 2010, and found no one there, but a non english speaking caretaker.  When it became clear that they were out of town, we made ourselves at home and had a relaxing evening and a good nights sleep at the Inn.  Leaving the money for habitacion on the table, we continued on our way

Surf City

About ready to leave the fun town of San Juan del Sur in southern Nicaragua, about 25 miles from the Costa Rican border.  This is a vacation community on the beach and draws surfers from all over...a magnet for the young packpacker set seeking the perfect wave for the least expense.  All in all, a good stop for us, and reminicent of both Jim and my visit here in 2006.  The only mishap came on our entry to the town last evening, when a big white duck flew to the middle of the road directly in front of our truck.  Just before the gruesome thump, thump, I swear I heard him say, AFLAC...Jim says it was, OH SHIT.  As the hotel room came with breakfast, we enjoyed fruit and tacos this morning...chicken, we wondered?  Likely duck.

The route down Nicaragua was long, but eventful.  Our goal was to avoid the metropolis of Managua, another town that leaves one wondering why anyone would ever put it on their travel list.  After the highway seemed to just stop with construction in progress, we spied a road on the map that took us 7 miles west to the coast on a good road.  The plan was to then head south and reconnect with the highway after looping around the construction.  Two hours later we emerged battered and sweaty from one of the worst rocky dirt roads either of us have ever been on, past disturbingand humbling scenes of rural poverty.  Missing a key turn (Nigarauguans save money by not putting up road signs), we found ourselves in the middle of you know where.  Relying on the kindness of strangers for directions...maybe 6 times, we worked our way out of the labyrinth back onto the Pan American toward our next goal of Cost Rica.

Hell Hole Honduras

Gladly into Nicaragua and tucked away in the cool town of Leon, Nicararagua's arts and education center.  We are recouperating in a great downtown hotel in a Bohemian part of the city...well deserved I might ad.  The two border crossings into and out of Honduras were tests beyond my ability to endure, putting me in such a fowl mood, I wonder how my teammate, Jim could stand me.  First, I will say we deserved everything that came  our way, because we had the nerve to drive through Central America without any real Spanish skills.  Yes, we can order a beer, say thank you and please, but to really communicate with these people is beyond our ability.  Then, when you ad the disorganization, the lack of desire to communicate from the bureaucracy,  and the pervasive and blatant corruptionof the system...you have a recipe for disaster.

As a Libra, I have a basic desire to have fairness in all dealings, and as an American, am used to working under a system that identifies a product or service, establishes a fair price for the product or service, and then upon payment, full payment according to the deal...everyone wins, right?  Well not so in border crossings in Central America.  The ingress crossing was totally chaotic, starting with a dozen guys waiving their arms and yelling as we approached the border checkpoints, as though we just entered the wrong way up a one way street (which we have consistenty accomplished :-).  Yes, these are the Coyotes previously mentioned, who are proclaimed experts at guiding you through the labarynth of  of the bureaucracy.  There are no signs or directions to indicate where to go, there are no outlines of the proceedures and fees, there is abssolutely nothing posted in either english or spanish that will guide a mototist through the system.  It's no wonder the Coyotes can thrive in this process.  

You never really hire anyone, they just latch on to you and never let go...competing with a dozen others.  We take the one who speaks the best english and is the most convincing.  Our guy sold us on his ability to get us across the border in 60 minutes...no problem.  They explain to you how much the officials need, and you give it to them.  Then the problems come...we can avoid you having to endure multiple inspections for more money for payoffs...there are unanticipate troubles that require more...you need to avoid unbearable lines we need more...I had to give my away to pay the officer...on and on, and on.  After forking out $170 and 3 hours later, we were relieved to be on our way, me seething in anger, not just for being ripped off, but for making ourselves vulnerable through our own lack of language skills.

The next day, we hoped for a smoother experience leaving Honduras into Nicauagua...but noooooo...there, things started to play out in the same fashon, with hordes of Coyotes and money changers decending upon the Little Red Truck.  We hoped to go it alone in a do-it-yourself mode, but the biggest, brightest, and smartest of the pack stuck to us and would not let go (we'll call him Eduardo) What happened next, we (I) didn't deserve.  Somehow, as we exchanged our Limperas for Cordobas, Eduardo, or someone associated with him pickerd my pocket and took my wallet containing my credit card and driver's license.  The process went forward on the Honduran side until Eduardo led us to an unmanned police kiosk near the Nicaraguan border.  As we waited a minute or two, a policeman rode up, placedn himself in the kiosk, and asked for my (not Jim's) drivers license.  In a panic at not able to produce my lisence, the cop calmly stated that it was a violation and we were not permitted to proceed.  He had no idea who the driver of our truck was...Jim produced his license, and I prduced my alternative International drivers lisence, alas, we still could not proceed.  As Mana was delivered from Heaven, Eduardo offered to ride his motorcycle the .25 miles back to the town and find the culpret who stole my walllet.  He, of course said it would require 50 bucks in payoffs to get it back...which I had no choice but to pay.  The policeman stood there stoically silent.  A few minutes later, Eduardo comes screaming back with a tale of how he found the wallet, but the bastards want another 50 bucks to relinquish it...gosh, those greedy pirates, he says.  I give him every last Coardoba in my pocket with a helpless resignation, about 30 bucks worth...I'll do what I can, he says, and off he rode to my rescue.  Five minutes later, he came rushing back with a broad grin on his face...success!  My wallet was in my hand with DL and credit card in tact...thank heaven.  Eduardo explained that he had to front me an extra 20 bucks beyond what I had given him to satisfy the pirates...what a good guy!  I borrowed the money from Jim, and were reminded that we must pay Eduardo his fee for services, which we did with the stoic and silent policeman standing guard. The Honduran transaction complete, Eduardo gone, we readied to proceed to the Nicaraguan side of the process. The stoic and silent policeman approached the drivers side to wish us well.  How about a little cash for me, he said...no, I replied, we already paid Eduardo for your share, and I sped off to the border.

When I return home, I must see a Clinical Psychologist, and a Proctologist to

assess for any permenant damage.