Had McPinto, will travel

We just went to McDonalds for breakfast. In keeping with my "McDonalds round the world" quest, I just had the local speciality---the McPinto breakfast. It is actually pretty much like I described the "desayuno tipico" or typical breakfast of this whole area--scrambled eggs, two small tortillas, rice and beans and fried plantain with a mayonaisy cream. It was not bad for Mc Donalds but not great in the scheme of desayunos tipicos...I would say it was middle of the pack at best. I think my money is still on the Maharajah Mac.

We are ON THE ROAD AGAIN...this time what I expect will be a road trip from hell ... 12 noon from San Jose until 4 in the morning in Panama City. What the f@#$ are we supposed to do at 4 in the morning...It will be hours before we can get a hotel...needless to say we are planning on breaking the journey on the way home. Our travel portion is almost done. This will be the only travel we will do before we come home. We are probably going to Panama for a few days and then may stop overnight twice on the way back. We fly from here (San Jose) a week from Tuesday. It has been a really interesting trip. I have really enjoyed myself for the most part and I think I will have had my travel fix for a year or two.

Hasta Manana

Gotta get right back to where we started from

We are back in San Jose for the weekend. Charles needed a TV sports fix. He is watching Man U play Everton in the tv room of the hostel. We decided to come back to the same hostel even though it is no great shakes. We went to 3 full ones before we found this one last time so we figured "better the devil you know" (as Uncle John once said about his old tractor).

We were trying to head for another beach resort yesterday but we realized looking in the book that there was only one bus about every 2 hours passing the crossroads we would be let off at. We weren't even sure they would stop for us. We have not seen hardly any of the old school buses here in Costa Rica so we thought local transport might not be nearly as reliable here. Charles basically wanted somewhere with a pub that showed sports and he figured a big city was as likely as anything. It just meant staying on the bus we were on and it seemed like the better part of valour. As I may have suggested before, I am no beach bunny so the big city with the museums and galleries was more appealing to me anyway.

I went to the Jade Museum this morning. All I can say is the chinese had it all over the pre-columbians when it comes to jade carving. It was interesting, as all museums are in their own ways, but nothing on that jade exhibit at the musuem in Hong Kong. In fairness, this jade may be harder to carve, who knows, but the carving was way more simplistic and repetative. I may wander out and take a boo at the National Theatre this afternoon if it doesn't rain. When I was coming back from the museum, it was threatening. I don't feel that I have to run around because we are coming back again to fly home after we go to Panama.

It's a good thing we are taking that malaria medication....

Because I actually got bitten by two mosquitos last week in Belize and I am sure they are the two that were carrying malaria! I actually feel a bit like a dork carrying around a premethyrin impregnated mosquito net in my pack AND taking the medication. I guess somewhere in Central America there are a lot of mosquitoes but we haven't come across them yet. I also haven´t had much use for the three rain ponchos I ended up bringing. I bought two (the heir and a spare we will call them) the day before we came away. I also bought a small flashlight. I have this MEC fanny pack that I took when we went on the big trip 3 years ago and I grabbed it to use again as my day pack. In a pocket of the fanny pack I hadn´t checked before we came away, I found 2 little flashlights and another rain poncho. I did manage to give the turtle light to the toddler on the bus the other day but I don´t know who I would give the other ponchos to so I will just hang on to them. I think I will be able to give the mosquito net to the people who we are giving school supplies to in the Dominican Republic when we go over new years. If not, I guess Nicky and Surya can give it away in India again next time they go....

For those who care about these kinds of things, Nestle is indeed still running reprehensible ads down here. I can´t speak for the rest of Central America because my spanish is not good enought to follow the ads on the bus radios, but when we were in Belize I heard and add for Nestle infant formula (aka ¨your childs best choice¨--aarrgh). At least at home they make them start the ads with ´breast milk is best but....´.

I finally saw school buses that were past working even in this part of the world when we were in Belize. One day I saw two that were growing into the ground and the top of another that was being used as a roof with a house built underneath it. I wonder every day how long the school buses were being used originally and how long they have been kept going here. Some of them still have the school bus rules in them (especially in Belize where they speak English). I noticed they had a definitely 70's feel to the school rules (trying to use ¨cool¨ language). They must be ancient by now.

Honk, honk, rattle, rattle, rattle, crash, beep beep

I have (as I mentioned before) been sitting near the front of the buses most of the time. I can stave off motion sickness that way. I have been observing the usage of the (air) horns on the buses and tried to decipher the meanings. I have put them in order from a friendly little beep to a loud sustained roar:

I am available to transport you - wanna ride? (to people standing on the side of the road)
(after dropping off stuff at what was obviously home) -- See you later
Hi fellow bus driver (going in the opposite direction)
In case you didn't notice me, I am here
I am making a new lane of traffic between you (what do those silly line painters know anyway)
I am about to do a u-turn in front of you
You might want to get back in line (that oncoming traffic looks awfully close)
I am passing you (on a blind curve while talking on my cellphone)
I am passing you on the inside -- did you notice? (and by the way, I am talking on my cellphone)
WATCH OUT (the front wheel of your bicycle seems to be in my path)
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING (starting to back out in front of me)
GET OUT OF MY WAY YOU STUPID LOOSE HORSE -- quit trotting in front of me
(on entering a village) WE ARE COMING IN -- SCATTER (or come and get on if you want)
LETS GO ALREADY (when traffic is stopped)
and (just like at home) --- YOU DRIVE LIKE A DICKHEAD (only I am allowed to do that)

Oh I do love to be beside the seaside

We are in San Juan del Sur near the NIcaragua/Costa Rican border. It is a beach resort type place. It is like Flores in Guatemala where every house was either a hotel, a restaurant, a laundry, an internet or a shop. I think a lot of people that still live here rent rooms in their homes. We are staying in a place like this. There are two little girls and a puppy playing in the courtyard. I think it is going to be stinking hot. We may cough up the extra $12 for the air con before the night is through....

When you are travelling around here, you get used to the parade of sellers on the buses. I think I mentioned them before. I decided today it might be fun to catelogue them as they came on the bus. Each one stays on the bus for just long enough to make sure every potential customer is served. Often they are on and off before the bus leaves the stop, other times they go a few km down the road to the next stop and presumably catch a bus in the opposite direction home. The other day I said we should get off early in the morning and eat from the bus sellers but, as Charles pointed out, the food is a real crapshoot because you have no idea what is going to turn up.

Here is a list of sellers on the first bus ride this morning (about 3 hours)

tortillas (twice)
bags red and green peppers (three different sellers)
bags of tomatoes (twice)
chicken tacos
soft drinks (twice)
oranges
slices of banana bread
pastries (dry as dust -- I tried them yesterday) ...twice
flat round cakes (looked like ginger bread?)
tamales
snacks with tacos, cheese and tomato sauce
candy (pink coconut and some really sticky stuff)
candy (five varieties including above plus peanut brittle and two big question marks)

The second bus we took today was the first we have seen that didn´t allow outside sellers and had people on staff which sold cakes and pastries as well as a variety of soft drinks, juice and water.

Just can't wait to get on that road again...ha ha

Well, we are enjoying a day off travelling today...much needed after spending 20 of the previous 48 hours either on buses or waiting for the next one. We are in Matagalpa, Nicaragua today. We got up early and took a walk to the town square. We have found that it is much faster to get around in the early morning before the cities here really get going. What with all the vendors on the sidewalk and the traffic in the streets, it makes for some slow going in the middle of the day...not to mention the heat...The town square turned out to be really pretty with a bandstand in the middle and a cathedral in the background. There is also a monument to the sandanistas on the side of the square.

We took a little side trip to a coffee plantation called Selva Negra (=black forest in Spanish) in the hills just above the city for a few hours today. It was founded by German immigrants in 1891 and is now a hotel/plantation that charges resort rates to eco-tourists and employs 250 coffee workers. The plantation is at 4000 ft and the wind was playing on the trees. The vegetation was very much like home. It has a lot of pines as well as deciduous trees. From a distance, it could have been summer in Algonquin in the mixed forest part.

It was nice to go for a walk in the woods and have a coffee (a really good one for a change) on the verandah of the hotel. I had ordered a coffee at breakfast and left it after a sip. It was undrinkable in my opinion. I have decided that I am not going to eat or drink stuff I don´t like, Uncle Robert be damned. Following Geoff´s advice, if I buy something and I don´t like it, I keep the untouched portion and give it to the next beggar I see. It works really well....yesterday I didn´t have to eat the pastries that looked potentially good but tasted like dust and the kids who asked me for them were thrilled at the ¨treat¨--win, win.

There was a guy from Sherbrooke, Nova Scotia in the restaurant. It has taken him two weeks to get here from San Jose also, but he has yet to go to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize not to mention back again. He was shocked at our pace (aren´t we all?).

Man, am I bushed

We have travelled half way across Central America in the last couple of days it seems. We left Copan two days ago. Yesterday we took one bus to a place called San Pedro Sula up near the Carribean coast of Honduras. It is the second largest city in Honduras. It has this strange bus station that is like a small airport. It has and arrivals area and a departures area with a huge food court and shops in between. Each of the bus companies has their own departure lounge. You have to figure out who goes where you want and find their lounge on the departure level. Apparently this bus station is several km out of town....weird...

We had breakfast in the super bus station. I had woken when the power failed and my CPAP machine stopped working at about 2.25 am. I never really got back to sleep and gave up totally by about 5ish. Charles was awake by then and we had no water for a shower (or even to flush the toilet...gross) so we just took off from Copan on 6 am bus. Of course nothing was open at that time but we were in San Pedro Sula by about 9.30. Our next bus was supposed to leave around 11, which morphed into 11.45 of course. We got a couple of km down the road when the bus broke. Everybody off and waiting by the side of the road....they had a new bus pretty quickly, probably because we hadn t gone very far. Unfortunately the new bus had about 10 seats less than our old (formerly full) bus....with what was supposed to be a 4 hour trip ahead. Charles had befriended a 15 year old boy who saved him a seat, but I didn t get one. After about 1/2 hour, the man from the boys party, whose relationship we never determined, gave me his seat. He shared with the woman in their party off and on for the rest of the trip. She was the older sister of Charles new friend and had a toddler. I played with him quite a lot. He was fascinated by the reflection of the sun off my watch face onto the seat in front of us. I could move it around and he was like a cat with a laser pointer. After the sun had moved, I remembered I had a turtle light from MEC so I gave it too him. Kids love flashing lights and buttons to push so he was amused for ages with that. Needless to say the four hour trip took more that 5 and we arrived in Tegucigalpa just after dark. Charles thinks I am silly when I believe the guidebook about unsafe areas but I made him take a taxi to the area the book suggested was safer to stay. The hotel was full so we had to walk about a mile to the next one in the book. We stopped at one in between but I refused to stay because it had the filthiest carpet I have ever seen.

This morning we got up and headed across the border into Nicaragua. We are now in Matagalpa, which is near where my friend Ruth picked coffee just after the war here. It took us a taxi and 5 buses for a total of 11 hours to get here. I am staying two nights. I won t get on a long bus for anything tomorrow. There is a coffee plantation with lots of nature trails a few km from here and I am hoping to go explore tomorrow.