Namballe - Chachapoyas [1 day, 210 miles]

  The dirt roads on which we left Namballe proved representative of the roads on which we'd be riding for the rest of the day..dusty red dirt roads with a gravel surface layer, interspersed with about 50km of decent fast black-top.  Also making an appearace in the varied selection on today's Road Menu was the worst dish yet...an ostensibly paved road where extended potholes have combined to expose swathes of the hardcore base layer resulting in a stuttering tarmac surface interspersed with teeth-loosening hard gravel sections.  Not amusing at all, and harder to ride (both for the bikes and for us) than a pure gravel or dirt road, as the concentration required to stay upright and not pile headlong into another crater is immense.  On the tarmac parts, the temptation is to gun the bike to make faster progress...inevitably leading to panic-braking and a crunching, wince-inducing  encounter with the next pothole or gravel section.  Thankfully we're much more familiar with the vagaries of the bike on sand and gravel after the 'get lost in the Andes' session a few days ago - but we've found that riding the bikes on the edge of the road leads to smoother and faster progress as the margins are (normally!) avoided by the thundering lorries and trucks.  All in all, the dirt roads are mentally and physically exhausting...and 70% of today's ride was on these tracks.    Enough moaning.   Despite the effort required...the roads are amazing. Our tyres kick out billowing clouds of dust as we pick our way along the margins of the gravel roads, avoiding lorries and buses slewing sideways out of corners on the loose surface . Lunch is a set menu at a local's cafe at one of the many small towns en route...the zoo feeling is back again as the whole place stares whilst we divest ourselves of dusty, sweaty riding gear...a very strange feeling.  We discover Inca Kola - a Peruvian soft drink tinted (or should that be tainted) a lurid yellowy-green colour, ingredients being colouring (doh), sugar (yippee!) and tartrazine...bring on the hyperactivity!    Fuelled by rice, beans and Inca Kola, we're back on the road, gravel temporarily giving way to tarmac - albeit of dubious quality at first - signs warning that the road surface is 'irregular' are, in fact, not lying...whole sections of the road have buckled under pressure from landslides, hastily-patched cracks in the surface forming a rollercoaster ride that strains the suspension and stretches the chain.  Back to gravel before bouncing onto a superb tarmac section leading towards Chachapoyas - speeds increase as we wind through canyons alongside a river, the soaring contorted sedimentary cliffs accompanying the road evidence of the region's volcanic past...the patterns formed as the sedimentary rocks were heaved upwards are incredible and most distracting.  Thanks to a near-horizontal lean angle, Matt narrowly avoided his own personal shrine at the side of the road as a particularly rapid bus caused a high-clench-factor moment.     Thoroughly exhausted, both mentally and physically, we weather a synchronized 'oops...I've just hit reserve' moment, both bikes choking within yards of each other on the climb up the twisting mountain hairpins, pile the standard 'just two gallons to get me to the nearest hotel please' into the tanks and chug into Chachapoyas at about 2500m.  Local hotel owners fight over the privilege of our custom for the night and we wheel our bikes into the courtyard of a picturesque hotel on the old colonial town's square...a random meeting with Elianna and Alfonso (Peruvian and Ecuadorian respectively) on the way back from dinner results in a night of bad spanish (very tolerant on their part!) and a couple of jugs of sangria...and thence to bed. 

Loja - Peru border - Namballe [1 day, 137 miles]

 Packed and out of the hotel by 7.30am - after a continental breakfast including 'devious eggs' - lost in translation I feel - we head for the Ecuador-Peru border.  Peru-sing (geddit?) the map gives us three border options...the main border in the far west near Hermanquilla (?), a smaller one near Maraca and probably the remotest border crossing yet near Zumba (cool name!) a little futher east, slap in the middle of the Andes.  We wanted to ride some seriously remote roads so the decision was obvious...go east, as the song (almost) said.    Leaving Loja, we had great plans for making Jaen in Peru that day...oh how wrong we were.  About 20km outside Loja the roads turned into gravel tracks...and then into real dirt roads...fantastic riding (although not conducive to high average speeds!), winding and climbing up through dense forest around the butressed sides of the Andes, bikes skidding on fist-sized chunks of rock and spitting out clouds of dust inches from a 600m vertical fall to the frothing river below.  There appear to be two ways to approach the blind bends on these wide, remote roads - either tentatively tiptoeing around, hoping the bike doesn't skip or jump on the loose surface - or motocross-styleee, bike leant over, weight above the front wheel to bite through the loose top layer, throttle abuse prominent, back tyre spinning and clawing at the dirt despite the 40kg of weight in the panniers...after a half an hour the latter method proved much more entertaining and so we arrived in Zumba in style...much later than planned as the average speeds had dropped right off.  Maybe we wouldn't make Jaen tonight after all...even the border was looking marginal!  The Pirelli tyres came into their own on the dirt - superly progressive and controllable.    After a rapid lunch of the ubiquitous meat and rice (preceded by chicken-foot soup - errr - yum?) in Zumba we headed on towards the border.  The road degenerated into little more than a gravel lane...  Matt discovered a hitherto-undiscovered penchant for geometry as he departed a slightly overenthusiastic right-hand corner on a perfect tangent courtesy of a sliding front wheel - Will's compassion knew no bounds as he carefully photographed the moment before helping to remove the bike from the Ecuadorean undergrowth.  Eventually, scraping down a vertiginous descent out of the high scrubland, the border was in sight, straddling a river on the valley floor..a welcome sight, as, despite the inevitable tedious beauracracies, we'd begun to doubt that it existed as we were so far from anywhere.      Will threw our customs papers at the border guard, told him the procedure we'd followed in Colombia and confused the poor guy into letting us across to the Peruvian side complete with exit stamps.  Peruvian immigration was easy, although the usual temporary bike import process proved otherwise, the guards delaying for nearly four hours whilst arguing - with each other! - over a minor technicality...the engine capacity on the registration document says 599cc but the stamp on the engine block saying 595cc...we began to regret pointing out the engine block markings at all.  However, bad spanish, a lot of poor jokes and continuously smiling worked wonders as we eventually departed with import douments for nearby Namballe - expecting to find a grubby one-horse hole of a place, instead we found a really friendly community- locals laughing, waving and keen to talk about anything and everything...just goes to prove how wrong you can be! In short order we located a hotel, dinner and a couple of cold beers in a bar overlooking the tiny town...WE'RE IN PERU!     Next stop - Chachapoyas.

Quito - Latacunga - Loja [2 days, 355 miles]

 A quick 40-mile blast down the PanAmerican highway to Latacunga saw us checking into a hotel in the centre of the small colonial town just before lunch...the earliest yet!!  Our trusty bible, the Footprint Guide to South America, thoroughly recommended a picturesque ride/drive near Latacunga, so (sans panniers - faster bikes - woohoo!!) we set off.  Fifteen minutes and 3500m up into the spectacular scenery we were rapidly boring of the tarmac roads - we've got enduro bikes, dammit! - and diverted from the 'recommended' route onto a dirt track winding off round the side of the mountain.  The route apparently took offence to Will's initial complaint that 'it's not challenging enough' and we were soon scrabbling for grip along little more than a farm track clinging to the side of massive valleys, fissured by weathering and covered in gravel and sand and clawing it's way through some of the most rural and remote parts of the Andes we've yet seen.  Families living in adobe huts and farming dusty squares of 45-degree hillside pause and stare as we thump past, trailing a roiling cloud of dust from the rear wheels.  It seems like the entire family is involved in the farming...as we approach one of the tiny villages, a brown and wizened woman creaks up the slope and moves two tethered llamas from the road...children drop tools and bound across from one side of the straggling crops to the other to watch us creep tentatively around a dodgy downhill hairpin.  Contrasted against the somewhat bleak hillside, the ponchos worn by the local women are incredibly striking - llama wool dyed a bright pink creates bright dots of colour in a mostly beige landscape.    Confidence growing, we push the bikes harder, back tyres spinning, front tyres sliding out in the sandy tracks as we make slow and dusty progress, seeing some incredible views out across the colossal valleys and gradually getting more and more lost.  A dead end in a remote village, locals arguing amongst themselves and offering twenty conflicting opinions on which road was right thoroughly confused us and we head off in what we think is kinda the correct direction, now running out of daylight, still lost in the Andes and beginning to wish for our luggage complete with tent and cooking gear...  GPS maps are pretty much useless, only showing an approximation of the route that doesn't really appear on our small scale paper map, and we resort to asking locals for a route.  The road widens and occasional trucks, one spectating as Matt wearily drags his bike out of a ditch on the inside of a hairpin, give us an indication that we might be close to the main road.  Dogs harry and...well...'dog' us as we pass remote farms, disaster striking as one runs parallel to Will's front wheel before suicidally throwing itself in front of it...Will goes down on the right hand side in a cloud of gravel, dust and windscreen shrapnel - thankfully the only damage was a few bruises and battle scars for the bike (they're incredible machines) - even the damn dog was apparently ok.   Eventually the gravelly track grows cobbles, and we figure we're on the right track...two hours later we claw our way out of the mountains and down towards the PanAmerican highway - we know the way from here and eventually pull into the hotel carpark, dehydrated and shattered from the tough roads...120 miles, seven hours with no stops - ouch.    Next day and we're up early, muscles aching from the day before.  Today is a long one...nearly 500km (apologies for changing units, blame the metric map!) to Loja in the south of Ecuador, ready for the border run to Peru. The usual stunning scenery accompanies us along smooth tarmac road.  We discover that locals believe that all destinations are either one, three or twelve hours away...although it's hard to estimate times when the roads are perfect tarmac one minute and then a potholed nightmare the next.  We've learnt to take 'poor road surface' signs very seriously...it's not unknown for a beautiful tarmac road to turn into a gravel surface around a blind corner...a bit of a nightmare when you're approaching at crusing speed, bike leaning over as you anticipate another sweeping curve only to have to cram on the brakes, stand the bike up and desperately avoid a weaving front-end slide before hitting the gravel patch.  The scenery is incredible, roads zigzagging up and down mountainside patchworked with fields - in Ecuador they seem to (over) farm EVERY available square inch of land, even when it's bordering on the vertical.    Matt's bike drinking fuel at an alarming rate thanks to the altitude led to a 'i've just hit reserve' moment at about sixty miles short of our normal range and thus in the middle of the Andes...not a great place to try and find petrol.  Thankfully we coughed and spluttered into a tiny mountain hamlet where an ancient chap, muffled by a star-wars-esque gasmask, sold us four gallons of fuel - enough to get us into Loja...or so we thought.  The interminable roads wound on and on through mountains turning purple with dusk...Matt's bike coughed to a standstill having gulped through nearly eight more litres...thankfully Will's bike, running a little leaner thanks to his Cunning Fuel Tap Plan (tm), had just enough spare to scrape both bikes into the first fuel station available on pretty much nothing but fumes.  Luck held once more as we stopped to consider accomodation options outside a very nice hotel - the manager noticed the bikes, came out and offered Matt preferencial rates based on the fact we knew (of) a famous trans-america biker - Ricardo Rocca - $20 for the night including hot water and soft beds...deal!

Cali - Pasto - Quito [2 days, 476 miles]

 Suffering slightly from the local ...food, we initially planned to limp to Popayan, 150km down the road, but superb weather and better roads cleared the 'food'-poisoning and we decided we could make Pasto, our last stop before the Ecuador border, in one go.  According to the lyrics of barely-recollectable pop doggerel, heaven is apparently a halfpipe.  This is patently rubbish, as the last few days have proved that heaven is in fact South America (leaving aside the stratospherically high murder rate and drug trafficking), two bikes and no job.  Roads down to Pasto led us through stupendous scenery in t-shirts, balmy 35 degree temperatures and blue skies overhead, desert scrub hills opening out to the left whilst on the right cotton-wool cloud tendrils leak through gaps in the crests of blue saw-toothed mountains marching alongside us as we head south - a truly incredible experience.  Our first military and police stops - more through curiosity - preceded our arrival in Pasto, which compared to Cali and Medellin is tiny, only 250,000 people against several million.  Needless to say, the GPS (ahem) failed again and we got temporarily lost before our personal motorcycle police escort turned up and guided us at ridiculously high speeds through to crowded streets to the hostel door.  A nice cathedral and a pretty cool town square notwithstanding, Pasto lacks restaurants and internet cafes (we've been spoilt recently) but did contain a high percentage of threatening youths glowering at us - presumably (it being the Colombian equivalent of Valentine's Day) fearing the competition from two stunning chaps such as ourselves - cue a Hasty Retreat (tm) to the hostel.    7.41am and we were ready for another game of Border-Dash - 88km to Ecuador - which went without a hitch, Matt's Spanish effortlessly shepherding the bikes through customs after a most entertaing race with a local taxi through the spectacular canyon roads amidst herds of cyclists (who'd want to cycle up 40km of twisting roads at 3000m?!) to the border.  Once through (and back to US$ currency - NICE!) we headed for Quito, roads dropping slightly from the 3500m plateau into dusty desert scrubland.   The riding here is incredible...roads twist and zigzag along canyon ledges and across dried rivers, the route blasted out of sheer rockfaces exposing the seamed sedimentary layers beneath, constantly changing altitude as we descend into one gully, scrape around a billiard-smooth surfaced hairpin and bore up the far face of the valley, XT engines thumping away as they gulp down the thin air and drive us along through the jaw-dropping scenery.  It's hard to describe how good it actually is to ride here...parts of the route remind us of the A537 in Derbyshire...although if this road had a pub at the top it'd be called the Tiger and Cello, it's that much better.     The remaining kilometers to Quito wound down rapidly until the city's outskirts envoloped us.  Looking a bit lost - although we weren't, actually - a lovely women by the name of Mercedes helped us out, putting us to shame with her fluent english - with her help we located the hostel area where our standard luck for finding a hostel held - once again plucked off the  street by a hostel owner with (hooray!) bike parking, approximately three hours ago.  Local beer comes personally recommended - Pilsener, apparently - next stop Latacunga. 

Bogota - Medellin - Cali [3 days, 617 miles, 1 shooting, 1 hijack, 1 bombing]

 An early start to cure the girls' altitude sickness (moved the alarm box from where it was blocking the air intake) and we were on (what we thought was) the road to Medellin, home of the most beautiful women in Colombia or so we'd been told.  An hour later and we were still in Bogota - we blame the GPS - one deluge of bad Spanish later and we finally left the city limits - 25 miles to get out of Bogota!    Initally rubbish roads and weather metamorphosed into bright blue skies and some of the best roads we've seen so far.  We climbed up into the Cordillera Central on smooth, winding tarmac, dodging snarling lorries and the occasional (!) pothole as we gained height.  The weather was scorching...t-shirts, suncream and Oakleys being the order of the day - which in retrospect wasn't the cleverest move as the superb road quality nudged the speeds up and up.  A sedate ride across to Medellin degenerated (evolved??) into a competition to wrestle the heavily-laden XT's through the twisting S-bends on the hot, dusty descent into Rio Honda for lunch - Will earning a gold star for achievement, aluminium showers cascading from the right-hand luggage as the Pirellis permitted a glorious pannier grounding on a particularly fast bend - b*****d!    One local lunch later, curious kids inspecting our bikes whilst we ate, we headed off north along the valley floor before cutting west towards Medellin.  The stunning weather continued, although time was becoming a mild issue thanks our morning Bogota Unplanned tour - 180km in three hours before it got dark and the Bad People came out to play...hmmm...  Bravely eschewing GPS and map in favour of local directions - neither of which showed our 'new' road on them - we angled northwest into the hills, mildly concerned about the drop into Medellin, as a fair few people had given us the standard teeth-sucking warnings of guerrilla activity earlier in the day.  The roads proved to be superb - a complete contrast to the dusty, open climb of the morning.  The superb tarmac, thankfully almost devoid of traffic, wound endlessly through dense dark jungle hills with an occasional break from the humid tunnels as we shot out onto bridges crossing tumbling cascades and gloomy ravines to a view of damp rainforest climbing away from the river below us in all directions.  Most interesting were the prominent signs of the guerrilla conflict as we sped along - all the yellow-painted bridges (thankfully they've stopped naming them!) had sandbagged outposts at each end, orange cones down the centre and a heavy-armed military guard to prevent the FARC separatists from severing main routes, whilst columns of camouflaged troops clutching assault rifles and heavy machine guns, festooned with grenades climbed silently out of the jungle on remote patches of road, looking massively intimidating until they responded to our waves with a grin and a wave back.    Dusk approached as the sun fell off the edge of the horizon, whilst we wound higher and higher, clearing the jungle and now into open farmland.  Here, the military presence was even more prominent...the heavily-armed troops bolstered by armoured vehicles with BIG guns - EE-9s with 90mm cannon if you're interested - guarding buildings pockmarked and burnt from guerrilla skirmishes.  Thankfully, waves were still cheerfully reciprocated and we began the descent into Medellin.  A brief period of lost-ness in the dark - the Colombian road numbering system was invented by a complete sadist - preceded our arrival at Casa Kiwi, a hostel (with garage parking - hooray!) run by a great guy called Paul who furnished us with two cold beers and a nice room for the night...recommended.    The following day consisted of boring stuff (a long-overdue haircut for 'Mop' Matt, more slime in the bike tyres, chatting to Paul) and a trip up to the Cristo Rey monument that stands high above Cali on a mountain top, guarded by ten soldiers looking very forbidding as they cart round the obligatory assault rifles.  Turns out they've really friendly and quite young - that's national service for you -  fascinated by our trip and fluent grasp of the Spanish language, we "chatted" for a while, examined their weaponry (not like that) and finally got the taxi back to the hostel.  That evening we felt obliged to research and deliver a professional opinion on Medellin's reputation (for beautiful women, not drugs).  Result - everything you hear about Medellin is true - the streets are indeed paved, or rather lined, with fantastically gorgeous girls in colossal quantities - a number of which are doubtless surgically enhanced thanks to the ridiculously low cost of plastic surgery in Colombia.  Dinner at a disgustingly good restaurant in the Medellin "Zona Rosa" was followed by a random trip to a karaoke bar - what a superb way to learn spanish - no we can't/didn't sing - and some marginally unhealthy fast food on the way home.    We set off for Cali the next day, riding straight into mist, rain, wet roads crammed nose-to-tail with howling lorries and slick with lethal diesel rainbows - oh joy.  Stopping at a cafe whilst the rain cleared and the sun came out, we ate everything the owner brought us (which turned out to be most of the menu - ah well, only $7 for both of us) and set off down into the valley between the Cordillera Central mountain ranges towards the second major ex-drugs cartel city in Colombia.  Once again the weather turned sweet (sounds wrong!) and we blasted along smooth open tarmac, green fields flooding out towards the feet of the blue mountain ranges on both sides.  Sporadic columns of smoke rose from burning vegetation on the fields and mountain flanks - either suger cane being cleared or more evidence of the government burning cocaine crops - as the roads unreeled before us towards Cali.  Another labyrinthian road system unceremoniously dumped us at Hostel Iguana after a tour of Cali's back roads, the hostel dead bar the mandatory Israelis but home for the next two nights.  Yet again all preconceptions were dashed as Cali proved to be a vibrant, humming town, 'banging' nightlife and incredibly friendly people - an excellent meal with Kyle (the guy we met in Bogota) and his friend Kim at an excellent Brazilian restaurant, the evening fuelled with rocket-fuel-proof Capirinhias, ably mixed by Julio, topped off a blinding three days. 

South America - at last! Bogota, Colombia - [4 days, 500 miles by plane]

 Assurances that Colombia "isn't dodgy - as long as you stay out of the rough bits and don't walk around on your own at night" (well, that was the gist of what the Colombian girl was saying - I think) didn't do much to dispel a slight (but rapidly growing) niggle of apprehension as we checked into Tocumen Airport at 9am on Friday morning - thanks for the taxi ride in the Love Wagon, Nic!  Apprension mixed with excitement, really...we'd not felt this excited about a destination since we'd left for LA all those weeks ago...Central America is great, but it feels sooo good to be leaving for the REAL adventure motorcycling part of the trip.  Central America has spoilt (spoiled?) us with the good roads (doesn't include you, Costa Rica!), readily available shops and (for the most part) lovely weather - it sounds like it's going to get a lot tougher from now on - hooray!    The first thing that struck us about Bogota was the temperature - it's colder than the UK - NOT GOOD!  Thankfully it's because the capital is at about 2,700m (~8100ft for those clinging to the Imperial days) - don't worry, the rest of the country is much lower and much sunnier, so the tans won't fade that quickly. Secondly - people seem REALLY friendly, genuinely interested in where you're from, what you think of the country and are really helpful with advice about what to see and do.  Of course, this may just be delaying tactics so that their mate can steal our bags...  Thirdly - for such an apparently dodgy city, it feels genuinely safe, although that's probably something to do with the masses of troops on the street corners modelling the complete range of accessories from the military version of the Debenhams catalogue.    As the bikes weren't due to arrive for another day, we piled into a taxi (all run and controlled by the local authority - no fare negotiation - great) that conveniently dropped us about two hundred yards from the hostel - very nice.  What was slightly less impressive was our complete navigational failure when confronted with Bogota's address system - what should have been a simple five-minute walk to the hostel turned into a two-hour hike round some of the less savoury parts of Bogota centre.  Before you start ripping into us, though - let me explain... "Carretera" run north-south, whilst "calle" run east-west - sounds fine, right?  HOWEVER - addresses are specified by the carretera or calle that they're on PLUS a number indicating how far they are from the nearest carretera or calle that crosses them...in paces.  So - the hostel on Cra 7, 6-10 means it's ten paces from where calle 6 crosses carretera 7.  Rubbish.  Even asking directions from locals and policemen elicited a response along the lines of "Ummmm...." - and it wasn't our spanish that was causing the problem.  It's fine now we've got our heads round it though...!    Eventually we found the hostel - devoid of any atmosphere - avoid IYHA hostels in future!  We did run into a great chap, Alvaro - a Colombian guy from Medellin (where the prettiest women are, apparently) who kindly showed us the Bogota nightlife and filled us in on some fascinating aspects of Colombian culture whilst embarrasing us with his disgustingly good english - we struggle to order breakfast in Spanish and Alvaro was using words like "neurolinguistic" - outclassed - us? - never.  Several bars, beers and an impromtu salsa lesson later we crashed into bed - Bogota is brilliant!    Shifting hostels the next day, we got to the cargo terminal to fetch the bikes two hours after the omnipotent secretary had left, meaning we couldn't get a CRUCIAL slip of pink paper, despite our best efforts to persuade the manager to find it - "Can't YOU have a look for it?" - "She has gone home" - "Yeah, but can you find the shipping docs?" - "She went at 2pm and it's 4pm now" - "But we need our bikes!" - "We open at 8am Monday" - we'll get the bikes on Monday instead then.  Thanks.  Worth it for the taxi ride there though - the driver misinterpreted Will's "aeropuerto, por favor" as "I bet you can't get us to the airport in three minutes whilst overtaking between cars on the dual carriageway bit and tripling the speed limit wherever possible" - excellent!    A fellow bike traveller - Kyle, who's riding a BMW F650 down from Colorado (very nice to be able to swap bike-related stories with someone who's having the same kind of experience as us) joined us for a few drinks that evening in a very dead Bogota (no pun), courtesy of a Moby concert for which we couldn't get tickets (grrr) - bit of a relief to get an early night for a change...!    Sunday was offically "Do Touristy Things" day - so we wandered around looking at old buildings (presidential palace, law courts, old universites and the spectacular Place de Bolivar), nearly got arrested for taking pictures of the military barracks (well, they shouldn't have put such a cool statue in front of it), paid a pittance for fresh yoghurt smoothies and finally climbed Monserrate, the smallest of two mountains that still towers above Bogota.  Actually - I say "climbed" - being in peak physical condition, we took a taxi to the bottom and the funicular up to the top (that's a railway that goes straight up the side of the mountain, in case you were wondering) -  it was still a very strenuous walk from the taxi to the station though.  Views were predictably stunning and drilled home how colossal Bogota actually is...5 million people makes for a sprawling metropolis - it's weird how everything happens in a tiny central section yet the city goes on for miles.    Nursing a debilitating hangover, thanks to a 'quiet' night on Sunday, we grabbed another taxi to the airport the following day - we're getting good at taxis - and plunged into the bottomless mire of Colombian customs.  The process was actually pretty smooth - to be fair - but took HOURS, thanks to the endless photocopying of this form and that form - and the passport - and the other form - and the bike reg doc...etc.  And where I come from, saying "finished" means "finished", not "finished apart from some more photocopies AND another trek across to the other side of the airport AND some more rubber stamping".  Grr.  FOUR GODDAMN HOURS later we had an emotional reunion with the bikes, which survived the flight completely intact, and rode them through the shipping office (I'm not joking), out the front door, down the front stairs and back to the hostel in the hectic lottery of Colombian traffic.  We're most relieved to have them back in one piece, complete with luggage and ready to head south!    Next stop - Medellin - spectacular scenery apparently - and Cali, both of which have (apparently) rid themselves of the drug cartels that ran the area until recently and are now nice places...hmmm....

Well, it's been nice knowing you all...

 ...we leave for Colombia at 12.45pm tomorrow, flight CM303, with CokeAir, sorry, CopaAir.  Bikes might be there now, actually...we pick them up on from Bogota Customs on Saturday. Hopefully still in one piece.   Pictures from the last couple of weeks are now (belatedly) up at <a href="http://www.pbase.com/willsolomon/wrongwayround">http://www.pbase.com/willsolomon/wrongwayround</a> and if the technology permits, the link should now be on the front page along with the weblog link. 

San Jose - Panama City [3 days, 560 miles]

 Goodbye Costa Rica...we're finally escaping, having become regulars at Tranquilo Backpackers - and boy does it feel good to be biking properly again!  The two week break was most welcome...but I think part of the fun is riding through places that you're probably never going to see again - and leaving them behind..!    Out of San Jose after a complicated morning fixing punctures and we're on a twisty, climbing section of the CA1 heading south from the capital.  Increasing altitude (and misplaced alarm boxes) not only played havoc with the air intakes on the bikes, leaving them wheezing and struggling up the grinding hills - but meant zipping our inners back into the bike jackets in an attempt to keep warm as we chugged up the mist-wreathed pass over the mountains at about 2000m.  Waterproofs were broken out as the tropical rain started falling...and kept falling...and falling...although after the initial drenching, it's not possible to get any wetter!  Ploughing into Golfito in the dark, totally soaked, we found a hotel, did our usual job of turning the room into a gas chamber and prepared for a border bid the next day.    Delightful weather saw us to the Panamanian border, where $10 guides towed us from booth to window and back again in a blizzard of paperwork and official stamps.  The border offices had just moved to a purpose-built facility - which sounds great but in reality meant that everything was written on old-school typewriters.  Great.  The border was pretty straightforward - although we were stopped by the customs guys three miles down the road because the cretin in the vehicle import office had managed to mis-spell Will's numberplate - as soon as we started with Spanish I knew having a V that sounded like a B would cause problems!    Documents straightened out (suprisingly quickly - must have been Matt's fluent Spanish) we carried on through Panama, greeted by a couple of brief showers along the way, and stopped at a beachside hotel in Santa Clara, about 100km short of Panama City, for the night...$40 for a cabana 10 metres from the surf...lovely :-)  Plans for the following day were cobbled together over dinner and beer - local beer is Atlas and Balboa (both pretty good) - we decided to head straight to the airport to arrange bike shipping to Bogota when we arrived in Panama City. This meant re-packing the gear the next morning, as the panniers ship with the bikes, to make sure we had the essentials with us until we saw the bikes in Bogota.    Waking to some truly, truly abominable Spanish pop wailing from the nearby restaurant the next day, we re-packed our gear and rode off towards Panama City, busy with rule-of-thumb petrol calculations to make sure we had just enough to get us to the shipping company - we knew we'd have to drain the tanks before the bikes could be flown out.  The GPS got us a little lost on the way in, but we soon sorted that out and arrived at the shipping terminal after an educational ride through dodgy slum areas around the airport.      Shipping the bikes proved remarkably easy -  “We have two bikes to ship to Bogota please “ -  “Ok - disconnect the battery, drain the fuel tank, pay us $400 and you'll see the bikes in Quito “ -  “QUITO!? “ -  “Sorry, Bogota “ -  “Err...cool...gracias..! “ - hard to imagine it being that simple in the UK!    Blagging a lift back to a taxi terminal with 'the boss' proved entertaining - we hadn't imagined that being chased down by Panamanian Customs was part of the deal - as we ended up in the worst taxi ever.  It's hard to describe how bad this taxi actually was...the main issue (here comes the science bit) was the fact that the rear left shock absorber and spring were conspicuous by their absence - rather they were present but doing slightly less than a Spaniard at midday in terms of controlling the car.  The upside of this slight deficiency was the fact that the front right tyre was relieved of duty about 50% of the time as the car crunched and rocked diagonally across every lump and pothole (and there were many) on the way to Panama City centre.  Neither of us had been in a car where the predominant sense of motion was more akin to a corkscrewing dinghy than a road-going vehicle.      Covered in cold sweat we eventually clambered out of the taxi, having discovered religion several times along the way, found a net cafe, booked passenger flights out to Bogota, found a hostel and then got towed around Panama City until 4am by the owner of the hostel - excellent! 

Costa Rica [~15 days, no idea how many miles - not that many]

Well...contrary to popular belief, we haven't fallen off the planet, been kidnapped or indeed eaten by turtles.  The last couple of weeks (has it really been that long?  Oops...) has seen us thoroughly researching Costa Rica - working hard to bring you a concise and informative report on the country.  Ahem.  So...Costa Rica.  Seems to have everything...rainforest (they insist on calling it 'cloud' forest - bit like 'Greenland' if you ask me), superb surfing beaches (we participated, in a spectatory kinda way), massive cities (San Jose, complete with a contingent of backpackers, prostitutes and ladyboys), corrupt police ("How much for this not to be a problem?" - "Five dollars" - "Bueno!") and (sadly) higher prices than everywhere else we've been so far.  Oh yeah, and for an expensive, westernised country - the roads are absolutely diabolical.  How a country that charges over a dollar for a beer (you get REALLY stingy when away from the UK!) can justify not spending pennies (or rather cents) on not filling potholes...Grrrr! They haven't even got an army to run, which must save them $$. It doesn't seem consistent either.  One minute you're riding along on nice smooth tarmac - suddenly the tarmac stops and the 200ft descent into the beach town is a wet. rocky, muddy nightmare of slick gravel, the problem compounded by snarling buses blocking the road and gouting diesel as they haul themselves back to the sanctuary of the tarmac.  Mad.  Apart from the roads and prices, the place is great.  Sweeping past on bikes, locals stare in a mildly hostile way - and then as you wave, faces crack into a massive grin and they return the greeting so enthusiastically that they're in danger of losing an arm.  Ticos &amp; Ticas in bars and clubs (for research purposes only, of course) are incredibly friendly, speak disgustingly good english and can dance - Not Fair! - and are adept at teaching incompetent fools like ourselves the more intricate vulgarities of the Spanish language.  Spectacular scenery - after the initial gobsmacking impact of a mist-wreathed cloud forest or a sweeping white-sand beach - is so common that after two weeks we hardly notice it, and when you catch yourself shouting at monkeys and racoony-type things to GET OUT OF THE DAMN ROAD rather than being amazed at the proliferation of wildlife, you know you're being spoilt.  Costa Rica apparently has the highest biodiversity of any blah blah blah - it's true though - there's so much nature-related stuff to do that one is spoilt for choice.  Despite failing to be convinced that the "eco-tourism" is "eco-friendly" - what a load of crap - how can building a massive zipline and hurling screaming tourists along it through virgin "cloud" forest be "eco-friendly"? (although a sociology student in Monteverde did partially convert me to the idea) - tourism, on the whole, is pretty tastefully done - well, apart from the Yank surf microcosms along the coast, that is.  Enough jabbering.  What did we do?  Well, we arrived in San Jose, polluted one hostel whilst staying in another - which is where we stayed for about four days, "soaking up" the local culture and (amazingly) not losing money occasionally playing blackjack.  New boots for the bikes (Pirelli MT90 &amp; MT60 - good tyres, $100 for four, if you're interested) and a ludicrously cheap oil change at the Yamaha bike shop kept the girls happy, and we explored the university area (again in a highly scientific manner) late at night.  Paths diverged on the 20th when Will, clinging desperately to Matt's bike as he weaved heroically through rush hour traffic to the airport, was delivered in the nick of time (two hours early) to meet Claire's flight from the UK via Atlanta, Geeeooorgia.  More "soaking up" the local culture for Matt, who stayed in San Jose for four more days with Rob, Jacqui and Dominic (cheers for making it highly memorable!) whilst Will &amp; Claire headed off on a lightning tour of Arenal and Monteverde.  Paths converged at Montezuma, Matt heading over from Santa Teresa to join the Will And Claire Tour Itinerary to Tamarindo for a couple of days.  Paths split again as Matt headed for the obligatory Monteverde cloud forest for a couple of days (thanks to Katie, Jay, Alex, Ali, and Shaunna for company and entertainment!) whilst the WACTI took them to Puerto Viejo before reconvening in San Jose for Claire's departure on the 4th (doesn't sound like two weeks, does it?) - can't believe we're into September ALREADY!  Highlights...right then. Yes, you'll probably need the map.  Probably best to look at the photos of these places whilst reading.   - Arenal (volcano and lake)Massive, spectacular lake, with an active volcano at one end (hooray!) - you can't get closer than 6km tho (boo hiss).  Glows red at night, if the clouds clear enough. - Monteverde (cloud forest)Amusingly inaccessible but stunningly beautiful forest draped over the central mountain range.  Roads kept deliberately (yeah right) rubbish to help limit tourism.  Zip-line companies EVERYWHERE, stunning views of the Pacific coast from the top!  For cloud, read rain.  Every damn day, at 3pm.  Regular as a high-fibre diet.  - Tamarindo (surf town)Touristy and expensive beach town, supposedly amazing for surfing, with a fantastic, sweeping beach, probably about 4km long.  Gorgeous.  There's something weird and ironic about sitting in a swimming pool 20m from the beach looking at the sea.  - Montezuma (surf town)Tiny surf town, at the end of The Worst Road Ever In Costa Rica. 200ft climb out of the town on slippery, muddy, rocky, unsurfaced, twisty roads.  Good fun on a bike, unless you stick it in a ditch (Will).  - Puerto Viejo (Caribbean coast)Tries too hard to be cool but still a nice change - an island of Bob Marley, weed, dreadlocks and grubby backpackers in a sea of synthesised reggaeton music (think Gasolina...). - Volcan Poas (volcano - doh)Another live volcano and this time you can climb (well, drive) to the top and check out the crater.  Makes some funny noises and the crater is deceptively big - or deceptively small - or - umm - look, what I mean is that it LOOKS small but is actually MASSIVE - 1.5km across.  Blimey. - San Jose (capital city - we know the way there now)Hard to find a capital with less cultural attractions (casinos rammed with hookers and street corners crowded with ladyboys don't count as 'cultural', before you start).  The 150yr-old central market is brilliant - tiny twisting alleys crammed counters selling fish and meat (some of it unrecognisable), souvenirs, small sodas (cafes) selling massive vats of 'meat' soup for pennies.  Worth visiting.