Home Sweet Home

I was woken up wiht a shake from the flight attendant telling me that we were about to land at JFK international airport. The flight was compleatly full exept for row 38DEF, which happened to be my row. During the flight I was free to switch seats at will, checking out the view from behind the left wing, and laying down accoss all three to watch the in-glight movies and catch some shut-eye. We landed and before I knew it I was outside in the freezing cold in flip-flops and a tshirt trying to find my way north. All of the buses had left heading to boston so I decided to rent a car and drive up to Surry Maine, some 480 and 9 hours north. After paying an extra $70 because I am under 25 I took off in my brand spanking new Volvo S80 into the night through New York, Coneticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire finally arriving in Surry, Maine at 9:30am. After arriving and greeting my mother we jumped back in the car and drove to Ellsworth, MDI, and then back to Ellsworth for Brunch. In the evening we found ourselves contra dancing at College of the Atlantic late into the night. It was a full day, and though I am back home I still fell as though I am traveling. Maybe traveling is not about the destinations we make our way towards but the mentality of experience.

Day ?

So I must have become obvious that the blog has been falling behind ever since we went surfing in Playa Maderas, Nicaragua. I blam not only myself but also the great waves and wonderful friends on the beach. It is really hard to sit down and write when the water is calling you and at night all you can really do is make dinner and go to sleep because of a full day of surfing.

I have lost track of the day of the trip, I will do some investigation work into this at home so that I can figure out exactly how long this trip was.

After San Juan Del Sur I headed to Tamarindo, Costa Rica to meet up with Bonnie Todd, Frauke Meyn, Simon and Eva Baudenbacher to rent a car and surf the Nicoya Coast. We ended up not renting the car because the guy would not let me read the insurance agreement. That night I made the decision to see the Panama Canal and in two days made it down to Panama City via the Pan American Highway. Crossing the boarder to Panama was very simple and quite cheap.

A really great moment was crossing the Panama Canal and arriving in Panama City. Finding the backpackers took me a few hours of getting lost in the city along with the fact that the backpackers moved and its only sign on a side street is a hand written sign in sharpy on the wall next to the doorbell. The backpackers was filled with travelers coming to and from Colombia via water and air. It was a great mixture of peaple just starting out their travels and people who have been traveling for 12 years.

Being a tourist I went to see the Panama Canal locks for the one day I was in Panama City. Looking quite simple the locks are just about 100 years old and are an amazing engineering feat. I can't Imagen what it looked like during World War II. It is a very simple design that utilizes the gravity of water filling up the locks one by one from the source lake.

The next day I booked it back to Tamarindo, a 16 hour trip that I did in two days on the way down. Back in Tamarindo I sold my amazing surfboard and tried to sell my bike with no luck. I recieved an email from a craigslist.org post of a guy in San Jose who wanted to buy it. To my luck I meet up with Frauke and Bonnie at Tranquilo Backpackers in San Jose and said my goodbyes.

I am selling my motorcycle to Tony from California who has been here in San Jose for 25 years. If it works our I will be flying back to the states tonight, back to Maine to regroup and then possibly off to Reno, NV for a RopeWorks Course for Wind Turbines.

Colin - Day 82-87: Playa Madera, Nicaragua to Antigua Guatemala

From our roadside parting I headed north paralleling the coast, avoiding the capital city of Managua, and twisting down roads that, despite the pockmarked surface, were quite the roller coaster ride. All along my route I had a string of towering volcanoes on my right and the pacific ocean on my left, although not always within view. Just before sunset I found my way to a backpackers I had heard about located in the little coastal town of Jiquilillo called Rancho Tranquilo.


A corridor of palm trees led me into the rancho, a large palapa with rooms on either side of an open common area. At the far end of the property was a little gate leading out to a flat beach with gray sand and waves curling in toward land stretching as far as I could see. What was missing from the picture was people; the beach was completely deserted. I think I can deal with that. I decided to stay for a day and took a stroll down the beach and into the estuary that makes the town of Jiquilillo just a finger of land surrounded on three sides by water. Take a place like this and add great people and great food and it's easy to imagine finding oneself lost here for many days.



With Rancho Tranquilo behind me a pushed north and inland to make my way to the western most border crossing with Honduras, once again in the shadow of the towering volcanoes which dominate the prarie landscape here.



I arrived at the fronterra around mid day and began the paperwork needed to exit Nicaragua and enter Honduras only to find mid way through the process that it was now lunch time and I would have to wait an hour. That's fine and dandy except that the official that I needed to submit my paperwork to simply came out of the office and stood by chatting with the money changers and border agents who had been "helping" me with the process. Hmm. With my wallet greatly lightened, I headed off across the short section of green Honduras I had to cross to find my way to the border with El Salvador. Another 30 minutes of racket and a handful more money set me free from Honduras and off I went across the bridge into El Salvador as the sun ducked below the horizon and dark rainclouds drizzled down a cooling mist.

I get the feeling that Honduras is on a whole different page than the rest of the central american countries when it comes to visitors or tourists or whatever you want to call them. It seems that they want to take as much money and time from you when you enter or exit the country. In contrast, El Salvador simply required filling out a form, making some photocopies and then I was free to ride on. I found an cheap hotel with secure parking in the town of San Carlos just ten or so miles from the border and was happy to lay down to rest after such a long day.

With sunlight creeping through the interlocking terracotta tiles of the roof, I emerged into bright sunshine and set out to make tracks as I had planned to end up further north yesterday (no thanks to Honduras border crossings). Heavy traffic, at least the heaviest I've experienced in a while, accompanied my morning travel as I made my way south towards San Salvador before I turned south to head for the coast. I stopped for breakfast at the parquero centro in the little mountain town of Santiago de Maria and had a wonderful plate of eggs, rice, beans and tortillas with coffee and freshed squeezed orange juice. mmm mmm good. With a full belly (well full enough) I headed onward finding my way onto El Salvador highway 2 which parallels the coast line several miles inland for the southern half of the country. The northern half of highway 2 is a true coastal highway that seemed to me to be someones attempt at copying California Coastal Highway1. The road twists, turns, rises and drops, following the following the contour of the coastline affording grand views of the ocean crashing onto the cliffs below. Definitely one of the best sections of road on the trip encouraging the use of 3rd gear to launch oneself out of hairpin turns and around the slow traffic. Yeehaw!

Not being able to take pictures of the sights while riding a decided to take a lunch break at a beautiful overlook. Wanting to take full advantage of my seaside comedor, I ordered up the first fish item on the menu with no idea what I was going to arrive in front of me. A large grilled fish stuffed with lots of shrimp in a cream sauce was the result of my food adventure and all I could think of was how this was something you would only find at a Legal Seafood back home. Looks like I'm all set with food for the rest of the day.


to be continued....

-Colin

James - Day 85: San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

It was almost to perfect the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. On the side of the road just after paying off the police again on the pan-american we sat knowing that we would transision from riding shoulder to shoulder to one riding north while the other riding south. The umbilical cord between us would be the double yellows that we got to know so well on our trip of over 7,000 miles together from Boston through the blue ridge parkway to new orleans to austin and then on to the carribean mexico crossing the river to Guatemala and into Honduras with the immigration officer and then the beautiful dirt twisty through the mountains to Nicaragua. We visited many islands, been on volcanos, went diving on the second largest correl reef in northern
hemoshere. Stopped by military, met amazing people from around the world, talked with locals and found roads that didn't exist. we slept on the side of a highway and on a carribean cay. Drove through snow storms and on beaches. We ate beans and rice cooked in the bathroom in a nasty little motel and we ate like kings in the most beautiful swamp hostel in Guatemala. We surfed and hiked, we got sick in buisy hostels and on the side of volcanos. This is a trip of a lifetime and would not have been possible without Colin and I getting together and buying the bikes last minute.

It's kind of funny, being here in Nicaragua writing the blog in a hammoc on the beach watching the waves and listening to music from friends I feel at home many many miles from what i call home. But, at this age I am not sure if I have a single place I call home, I feel like a rambling man or that I have many places where I feel at home. The question arises, is my house my home or is it a place i feel at home. The same question arises for a church or temple or a monistary. For me this is an enlightening realization as I sit here. My home is where I am right now right this moment wether I like it or not. I am just getting to know this world I live on and understanding that this is my home, every inch of this planet and all of the people are my brothers and sisters.

I have been losing track of the days, and the date and the day of the week and the month. Time has become a thing of unimportance, it is made up. My plan from here is to travel south with Eva, Simon, Bonny, and Frauke to Costa Rica, surf the coast for a week and then head south to Panama, maybe for some diving and find the end of the pan american highway, then back to panama city and find a flight back "home" to Boston, or should I fly somewhere else...