Costa Rica or Bust: Tamarindo At Last!

Sunset at Playa San Juan, Nicaragua

I am here at Jogi and Verena's beautiful home in Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Stayed at the Hotel Casablanca last night in San Juan, Nicaragua and celebrated our last night on the road with some bar-hopping. Hooeeeeeeeee!

Great fun at La Iguana, shooting the breeze with the bartenders, laughing my head off at one guy's impersonation of Harley-Davidson riders, general good time, but I'm not in shape for a night of continuous imbibing, so I bought a t-shirt, and called it a night around midnight while Jogi soldiered on. Only a bit of a headache next morning.

Back over that perfectly horrible road, made worse by a water truck which created mud for my street-oriented tires to slip over. Costa Rica border we hired another tramadore who actually turned out to be honest. We were able to pay the import tax on the bikes (needed if you want permanent registration in Cost Rica) at the customs station altho this involved 2 extra hours and some very unorthodox procedure which worried me considerably as two guys take off with my title and passport and I imagine the worst. They made us remove our US plates, so we will have none for about a month when the temporary cardboard plates come. As long as you carry the paperwork with you, you should be OK if the policia transito stop you. They kept the titles since we will have new ones reissued here. Cost me $1600 import duty which is still cheaper than buying the same bike here. Nearly 4 1/2 hours total at the border.

FINALLY left the border around 4 PM and had to beat cheeks the nearly 80 miles to Tamarindo, arriving just as it got dark.