Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama

22/1 – 25/2/2001

Because it took us three hours to negotiate our way through Honduran immigration, we arrived at the cigar factory in Santa Rosa de Copán just before it closed. It was dark by the time we reached Copán. Next morning, we engaged a guide to visit the ruined Mayan city,

and the museum; with its wonderful sculptures.

After a few days on the Caribbean coast at Tela, we headed south to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to visit the American embassy.  There we handed in our USA departure cards that guards at the Mexican border had not taken from us.

From there, we drove south to the border with Nicaragua.  After completing the lengthy formalities, we continued south to Leon.  The road bridges had been destroyed in the recent civil war and replaced with temporary pontoons.

We spent a day in Leon, with its beautiful, but run-down, colonial-era adobe buildings, and then moved on to the Parque Nacional del Volcan; where we walked up to the rim of the active Volcan Masaya.

After a night camped in the Park, we spent the following morning at the craft market in Masaya; finishing with lunch.

We drove on to Granada,

and camped that night on the shore of Lake Nicaragua – alongside a convoy of 15 RVs, most  of which were American (applying the principle of safety in numbers!).

The following day, we went back to Granada and met a New Yorker (Larry Weissman) who had retired to Nicaragua.  We visited his wonderful old townhouse and joined him at his club – complete with polo field and race track.

We camped that night on the beach at San Juan del Sur.

Next day, we crossed into Costa Rica.

After getting lost in the hills near Volcan Arenal, we finally rejoined the tarmac road to San José, the capital;

where we stopped for four days to have the Landrover serviced and to undertake minor repairs.

Back on the road, we took the track  up Volcán Poás.  When we reached the top it was raining heavily and there was dense cloud.  We decided that it was not worth the cost of visiting the crater in zero visibility and so continued east on the inter-American highway, over a 3,400 metre-high pass and down into the lush, tropical, Carribean coastal  plain.

After a night on the beach at Pavones, a world-famous surfing location, we crossed into Panama and headed to Playa el Rompio south of Chitré on the Península de Azuero; where we spent two more nights on a beach.

Next day, we completed the drive to Panama City; crossing the Puente de las Americas over the Panama Canal.  We stopped at the Marina and had dinner at the end of the causeway; with views across the bay to the city skyscrapers.

South of Panama City, there is a 106 km long gap in the pan-American highway – the swampy, mountainous and heavily forested Darien region between Panama and Colombia.  The only route into south America is by sea.  We therefore checked into an apparthotel for the 11 days it took us to arrange to ship our vehicle south to Ecuador.

With the extensive papework in hand, we drove the Landrover across the isthmus to Colon at the other end of the Canal, and then to the port at Manzanillo where, after clearing customs, we loaded it into a container.

After catching the bus back to Panama City, we spent a couple of days as tourists; taking trips to the tip of Casco Viejo, the old port of Panama City.

Only one room was open at the Anthropological Museum, and that had nothing but statues of kings sitting on other men’s shoulders.

The following day, we visited the huge Miraflores lock;

where a container ship was making its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

We spent a day on Kobbe Beach, and experienced the first day of Carnival.  This was no Rio-style parade; just a lot of people getting drunk and throwing water around, and the overpowering smell of grilled hot-dogs and chorizo.

On 25 February, we took the evening flight to Guayaquil in Ecuador to rejoin our Landrover.