September 27, 1997 Esteli, Nicaragua R80G/S 29023 R100GS 20261 We were driving behind a truck, and a car, when we come upon two police officers and their dirt bike parked under a tree on the side of the road. The truck and car drive on by, and then he waves us down. His waves get more and more frantic as it looks like we're going to blow on by him. I slam on my breaks, and skid to a stop. Sharon brakes, and stops about 40 feet up ahead. I do a tight U-turn pulling up to the police. I hop off my bike, pull off my helmet, and say "good morning, How are you?". He looks serious, nods his head, and asks me for my license. I pull off my gloves, rip open the velcro on my pants, and fiddle for a moment in my pocket until at last I find my license. I hand him my Honduran vehicle papers, and my license. He briefly looks at them, and then asks me "How many gallons of gasoline does this gas tank hold?". His eyes widen when I tell him 10.5 gallons. He asks about the GPS, "What is this?". I tell him it's a map, and show him our route from Comayagua. The other police officer who doesn't look nearly as serious, and has a bit of a silly grin. shows me his radar gun that is twist wired to their dirt bike wire harness for power. It makes a wavering noise. I smile, and say "Oh, wow, very nice". The smiling one points to the push to talk button of my communicator which is clipped to my jacket and asked "what is this?". I tell him it's for talking with my wife. They seem surprised that the person on the big red bike 40 feet further up is a woman, and ask "That's your wife?" The serious one hands me back my license and vehicle papers, and asks how big the engine is. I tell him, he tells me their dirt bike has 325cc. I say goodbye, and take off pulling up to Sharon. Sharon says, "What was that all about?" We passed through Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Even though it was a large city, traffic was light given that it was early Saturday morning. The city is inset in the mountains with corrugated tin roofs covering almost all the homes I could see on the mountain sides. Consistent with every day we have done a border crossing since we left the states, it began to rain. We stopped in Choluteca for some lunch and to let the rain dissipate a little. As we were leaving Choluteca, I radioed Sharon asking her to pull over so that I could check to see if I remembered my sunglasses. We pulled over to the side, I found them in my jacket, and when I looked up, there was a policeman standing next to Sharon and I. Groan... Not knowing it, we had pulled over on the road with a police check point on the opposite side. The visors on our helmets were covered with mist reducing visibility. They asked us for our passports, checked our Honduran entry stamp, and sent us on. We decided to follow on the Pan American highway and cross at the El Espino crossing, since that would leave us up in the cool mountains for the night rather than the hot coast which we like to avoid as much as possible. As we we passed through a little town called Comali, I could see signs that a great heard of cows had crossed the road here recently. As I drove through this vast cow dung road obstacle, an approaching car at high velocity passed going the opposite direction. It had recently been raining making the waste less viscous and easy for splatter. As I drove through, the approaching car's wheel went through a great pile spraying my left side with cow shit. My leg, jacket, helmet, hands, gas tank, panniers, top box, and boots were covered in green stuff. Of course, now that I would prefer a good drenching rain, the sky was clearing and turning blue. At the border crossing, as usual, we were approached by energetic boys and men wanting to take care of our paper work or change money. First things first, I got out our drinking water, and Sharon poured it on me as I attempted to wash off some of the green fiber filled splatter that seemed to be everywhere. The sight of me doing this sure did get people smiling. Like entering the Honduran border, I needed several stamps, and several check offs. It wasn't clear who to go to, or to which of the many offices, since of course they are not labeled and spread out over 100 meters. There is no one to greet us, or hand out instruction cards. Having a red tape guide was useful. Our red tape guy energetically sped us through in no time. When we were done, and walking towards the bike, he asked for 220 Lempiras, 110 for each bike. I let my shock show, and gently but firmly communicated "absolutely No Way". He got a bit agitated, raised his voice a little and said, "Ok, let's go to the police". "Fine", I said. As we walked to the police, I told him that at previous borders I had offered $2, which is actually pretty generous. I offered him 20 lempiras. As we approached the police, his price instantly dropped to 20 lempiras ($1.54) to which he indicated he would accept without even haggling. His bluff called in front of the police, He showed the policeman the two stamped pieces of paper that I needed to show to leave. The cop nodded his head looked at the two pieces of paper, and accepted the 20 lempiras. I got the feeling this has happened before, and the cop would accept what ever was offered to him. Thinking that I was done, and got away with a final bribe to the cops for less than Honduran cop at entry demanded, I soon realized, that it wasn't over and that I still needed the exit stamp papers... Due to the confusion in language, my guide's story changing as his bluff dissipated, I realized I have no idea what I just paid this copy a $1.50 for.... I suppose just to nod his head, and not get involved in this stupid payment dispute. I ended up paying my guide $2 for his help. After it was all over, he smiled, and I said goodbye. Some where he got it in head that if he puts up a stink, he can get 220 lempira ($17) for two motorcycle from some foreigners. Someone in the past must have paid him. The money changers offered a rate of .7 cordobas for 1 lempiras. I had no idea what the exchange rate was. Few locals know unless one is near the border. The guide books are often off by sometimes as much as 200%. According to the guide book, these infrequently traded banana republic currencies are hard to get rid of except near the border. I argued .8, just to get a feel for what I might try for on the Nicaraguan side. The guide book had said that we would get a better exchange over there. It turned out there were no money changers on the Nicaraguan side. Given that it was Saturday afternoon, and banks of course are closed now and Sunday and I still had Lempiras which are difficult to get rid of away from the border, we were now stuck. The Nicaraguan guards let me cross back into the no man's land to exchange with the money changer when I discovered there were no changers on the Nicaraguan side. However, when I had left, the two money changers had agreed to .8. Now that they knew I was screwed, they wouldn't budge past .7. Trading 477 Lempiras, the bad info from the guide book cost us 5 bucks. On the Nicaraguan, side, we were again greeted by energetic red tape helpers. I managed the immigration work myself, but as usual, the vehicle stuff gets a little more chaotic with multiple offices giving there check off, and multiple forms being typed up. I soon found the clerks handing my papers off to the red tape boys when my back was turned, as they ran off to get the next step taken care of. I don't like to let my passport or title out of my sight, however this rapidly became difficult to track. The help and speed is certainly appreciated, and the threat of these things disappearing I think is pretty low. We paid $9 each for immigration, $20 for each vehicle. All payment is done in the police office. When a second police officer stepped out, the one remaining police officer quietly told the red tape boy that he needed an additional $10 for something, A few times, I feigned like I didn't understand. And then said I didn't have any cordobas or US change, and then said "later. (when I get some change)" I had already explained to my red tape boy that I would have to go back up to the crossing to the money changer, and he explained this to the cop. The cop was obviously new and had no idea how to ask for a bribe, nor how much to ask for. When we were done, I walked back over to Sharon who was watching the bikes and handed her back her passport, title, license, vehicle permit and receipt. The cop followed us out and hung out behind Sharon looking obviously inconspicuous. In English, I told Sharon the situation, that we were done, and that the cop behind her is looking for a $10 hand out of which I haven't yet figured out how to ditch yet. I walked up to the Honduran border to the money changer. As I was talking with the money changer, I saw the Nicaraguan cop come up from behind and walk into the comedor in the no man's land. Going to the comedor was his excuse to his co-workers for following me. I quickly wrapped up my business with the money changer, briskly walked back down the hill to the Nicaraguan side indicating to Sharon from a distance to get ready to leave quick. I paid the red tape boys, and we were out of there before the cop could collect. Nicaragua, is clearly the poorest of all Central American countries. Just driving down the road we could see the farms look poorer and the crops are in worse shape. We saw more people than usual just hanging around in town doing nothing. I took this as an indication of unemployment, and or lack of ability to afford more interesting forms of entertainment than sitting around a dusty side road watching traffic go by. In the towns we passed by, all eyes were on us. We usually attract attentions, but this was more than unusual... Sharon had read in the guide book that 74% of the population is under the age of 30. 46% under the age of 15. Just driving through the country side, there seemed a much larger proportion of younger people to old. I suspect this in large part has to do with the civil war. Reading about the history of Nicaragua, it's embarrassing how much the US has controlled, and manipulated this country. Starting back in 1856 giving support to the American, William Walker who privately took over the country. In 1909 US Marines assisted in a coup. In 1912, the US sent marines that were stationed here until 1933. The US supported the Somosa dictatorship regime from 1933 until 1979. During the 80's Reagan funnelled billions of dollars in various forms into the region supporting the contra rebels supporting a civil war that would have otherwise easily fizzled out. Through US pressure, Honduras and Costa Rica based the US financed contra rebels. Through the US trade embargo, the economy virtually collapsed during the mid 80's. US economic pressure continued up until 1990. September 28, 1997 Esteli, Nicaragua We were both tired from the past two days of driving. By the time we finished breakfast, it was 11:30am. Even though there doesn't seem to be any reason in Esteli to keep someone here, we decided to stay and rest. For breakfast, we went down to the grocery store, picked up a box of apple cinnamon cheerios, and a bag of milk. Since Guatemala, we've been seeing whole milk sold in sealed, labelled, pint size plastic bags. General Mills sells all of their cereals down here under the Nestle label. In town (Esteli), there's a lot of graffiti, however it's all political in nature most of it favoring the Sandinistas. This apparently was FSLN territory during the civil war. There's a nice silhouette graffiti painting of Daniel Ortego, so good that it was easily identifiable. The people here that I've seen are all mestizo, or at least appear to be. The guide books say that 7% of the population are indigenous, but they are likely all around the miskito coast and apparently not around here. People that I've seen seem to have more caucasian blood than those of Honduras. or Mexico. A few people seem to be mostly caucasian with only a hint of native blood. People seem bigger here too. I wonder if that has to do with the higher meat consumption. The food of central america is fried chicken, french fries, hamburgers, with a side of rice, beans, and tortillas served with beer or pop (Coke or Pepsi products). Around the sea, fried or grilled fish, shrimp and sometimes conch are available. We've eaten so much fried chicken and french fries that vegetable oil is seeping out of my pores. The grocery store we visited today had two whole isles (10% of it's shelves) just for vegetable oil. I asked the hotel owner what time it was today to confirm that we didn't cross a time zone. She covered her watch so as not to let me see it as she read it. as if I were a thief and really only wanted to see her watch. She probably has that habit for a good reason. Later I noticed from a distance it was a nice watch. Our guide books seem to be always off on the time zones, as well as the world time software application on my computer. The locals obviously don't pay any attention to my guide books. When we left, we were on central daylight savings time (5-GMT). We changed our watches in Belize to mountain daylight savings time (6-GMT), and have been on this time ever since even though we are moving South East. I know that back home, they have switched off of daylight savings to central standard time (6-GMT), so my watch says the same as the clocks do back home right now. September 29, 1997 Granada, Nicaragua R80G/S 29274 R100GS 20500 We drove three hours to Granada. It was a nice cool overcast morning which was pleasant as we descended the mountains into the usually hot low lands. Often we had to stop and navigate ourselves around the occasional cow or horse that would decide to cross the highway as we drove by. Granada suffers from a serious shortage of hotels. There are a few high end hotels, and several cheap hospedajes. We found a cheap hopedaje for $8 per night. For less, there are several places that will rent out closets with a bed for $3.50 per person. Our hospedaje has excellent secure parking, which is required for us. It's built out of a several hundred year old Spanish colonial building, with ~2 foot thick walls. The annex courtyard where the rooms are, isn't so nice. Our cement box room has a bathroom that was a later addition. For the shower, a cement wall was built up around the corner of the room to about shoulder level. Seven feet up the wall, A galvanized pipe pokes out perpendicular to the wall about 3 feet, and turns into the shower head. Fortunately, we don't have hot water, which saves me the anxieties of worrying about being electrocuted. Our toilet doesn't flush, as it has no water in the tank. Somehow the rear of the toilet water tank was smashed in the past. The proprietors didn't lament, The porcelain tank could be repaired using cement, the duct tape of central america. However this repair job leaks with a rapid trickle, so the toilet water valve is always turned off. In order to flush our toilet, we need to turn on the water valve for a minute or so to fill the tank, turn it off again and then flush. The plastic bucket underneath the toilet catches most of the drips in the mean time. Forgetting to turn off the toilet water valve results in a floor full of water in no time. Of course, they don't hand out instruction cards on how to use the toilets at Hospedaje Esfinge, this is all learned by trial and error. I suppose at one time, the room had a ventilation problem, so someone cut a hole in the ceiling, and installed a metal rotating chef hat ventilation duct cover. While we were out to dinner, it had rained, leaving our mattress which sits under this hole, wet. The hotel clerk came with dry sheets, and flipped the mattress over. Problem solved... Moldy mattresses, are not a concern here. We walked down to the lake Nicaragua, which is a huge lake that is home of the only fresh water sharks in the world. This lake use to be part of the sea before it was cut off and slowly turned to fresh water, of which the trapped sharks adapted. Off in the distance is Moyagalpa island with twin volcanoes. Along the shore line I could see floating rocks in the waves which turned out to be chunks of pumice. Water flows out of this lake through Rio San Juan into the Caribbean sea. French and English pirates use to sail up the river into the lake, and loot Granada a couple hundred years ago. This route was considered second choice to Panama for building of the canal, and since the Panamanian canal is now reverting to a Chinese protectorate, there is renewed talk of a second canal here. We walked from Granada to the lake front. The lake front has recently been built up as a nice 1 km promenade with relatively nice looking restaurants and bars all along the way. While most of the restaurants and bars have not yet folded, they look like they're about to. Of the 20+ restaurants, they appeared all to be open, however not one had a single customer. It's sort of eerie... kind of like being in a theme park with no customers. Dance music is blaring from the various bars enticing people in, however there is no one on the walk to entice. This strip looks like it's designed to feed and entertain several thousand at a time, however there is no parking, and Granada doesn't have the hotel infrastructure. It appears to be a still born attempt to stimulate the economy of Granada. Poor kids run around here now eating the fruit from the trees and playing along the beach. We didn't see any local or foreign tourists along this stretch. Much of Granada's colonial beauty was destroyed from pirate attacks, and then most recently from when William Walker an American who privately attempted and succeeded in taking over the country in the mid 19th century, and burned Granada down. The town square is still pretty, and retains a lot of the colonial feel. Skinny sickly horses pull carriages that are used for taxis. On the square is a nice hotel with restaurant on the front balcony which is where we had a lunch snack, and dinner. I find that I have a difficult time communicating with people here. I was feeling very comfortable when I left Mexico, Guatemala had a slight accent but wasn't too bad. However since El Salvador, the Spanish accent has changed to the point where both Sharon and I find it difficult to understand people. People drop their trailing 's's, and often slur their words as they speak rapidly. In El Salvador, we saw a sign saying "Bueno Dia", rather than "Buenos Dias". The greeting around here is "Bueno", or when passing someone, it's often "adios" (adio?). Further more, people seem to have a difficult time understanding me since I learned to speak Spanish with a Mexican accent, and likely have a heavy gringo accent on top. October 1, 1997 San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua R80G/S 29387 R100GS 20608 Sharon says she has the blahs... While not as strong, I do too. Ever since after Copan, we've been travelling through depressing areas. Poor, uneducated people in dumpy, dirty towns with little hope of improvement in sight for the foreseeable future. Art is a luxury rarely found. The food has little variety. Music is almost entirely imported and for the most part Western. Subsistence living is virtually all that we've seen on the streets of Granada, and Esteli. Of course, there are rare exceptions. Failed, not well thought out government projects designed to stimulate the economy like the boardwalk on lake Nicaragua only add to the despair. Yesterday, we had planned to make a day trip to the market town of Masaya. However, it rained most of the morning, and so we put it off until today hanging out in Granada as the blahs quietly grew. With the enthusiasm to visit the market gone, we were considering going to Omn___ the twin volcanic island on the South side of Lake Nicaragua. We had heard nice things from other travellers about this island, however dealing with the security of the bikes while we visited the island is an unknown hindrance, and we were no longer keen on spending much more time in Nicaragua. After a breakfast of Quaker Cinnamon Oatmeal squares, with a quart bag of skim milk that I later suspected contained a smidgen of salmonella, we went over the guide books, considering just going on to Costa Rica. We found a write up on a town called San Juan del Sur which is a small fishing village on the South Pacific side of Nicaragua, and supposedly has several nice beaches in a quiet laid back surroundings. We decided to give that a try. A half hour later, we were on the road heading for the beaches. It was a nice day for a ride. The sky was blue pocked with cumulus clouds, For most of the distance, we could see the twin volcanoes off the island of O____ in lake Nicaragua. Volcano ____ on the West side is almost a perfect cone with a bit of cloud cover around the top. We drove through banana plantations, and green open fields along the nicely paved pan american road. Coming to San Juan del Sur was a good move. It's a beautiful little beach town inset in a cove with about seven other quiet uninhabited beaches near by. While it really is small, it has an inflow of Nicaraguan tourists and foreign traveller money. We pull up to a hotel called Elizabeth's Guest House with a comfortable looking porch out front. I got off my motorcycle, and was greeted by Elizabeth, the hotel owner. She asks with disbelief, "Is that a woman on that motorcycle? "Yes, my wife. Strong woman eh?", I said. After checking into our hotel run by a friendly enthusiastic owner, we walked down two blocks to the beach which has several open air covered restaurants on stilts along the sand. We chose one with a beautiful view, good music, and lobster. For $7.50 we ordered two plates of three small lobster tails grilled and then drizzled with a garlic butter sauce and or lime. For a while we drank our Victoria beers eating lobster as the waves would crash in front of us, and then the water would surge under our restaurant which was on short stilts. As we got buzzed off our beers, the restaurant played Regae music, sometimes with a nice upbeat rastafarian rap. Occasionally, I miss hearing grunge music such as Counting Crows, or Sheryl Crow, Dave Mathews, Hootie and the Blowfish which is the only style of current Western music that I notice is missing around here. Today, I was in the mood for a nice grunge ballad about a podunk town in North Dakota. I don't think Central Americans relate to baggy plaid flannel music of the rural midwest. The owners of the hotel have a small white faced monkey which they keep as a pet called "Tuti". Tuti, is deathly afraid of power ranger dressed people wearing motorcycle helmets. However, from people who aren't wearing a helmet, he loves attention, and will gladly climb on anyone who gets near enough. Tuti quickly climbed my arm, up on top of my head, and pulled gently at my hair as Sharon snickered. While attempting to pull him off, he feigned biting in protest. When left alone, he loves to swing through the air tied to his collar which is around his waist. October 2, 1997 San Pedro del Sur, Nicaragua Just South of San Pedro del Sur, there's about a dozen beaches most all of them underpopulated by people. We drove the R80G/S South 18km to Playa del Coco (Coco beach), through the back country with dirt rutted roads and several stream crossings. It was well worth it. Playa del Coco was a beautiful cove with about 1km of clean sandy, undeveloped, secluded beach. We swam for a while, walked along the beautiful beach, ate our picnic lunch, and swam for a little while longer. The entire time we were there, we saw only two small groups of people off in the distance. Supposedly, the following URL has info on this area called Parque Maritimo El Coco. http://nicarao.apc.org.ni/~kripp We went down to the beach to one of the restaurants with a beautiful ocean beach/cove view again that during high tide was over the water, otherwise over the sandy beach. I had a wonderfully grilled sea bass with a garlic onion sauce. It must have been a 3 lbs fish which we paid 40 cordobas ($4) for. For 75 cordobas ($7.50), Sharon ate a dozen fresh breaded good size shrimps. We drank Victoria beer which we prefer over the other local beer called Tona. The guide books had said the sun sets had to be seen to be believed. While eating our dinner we faced West, and could see various sailing boats anchored off in the distance in the cove. There were some great cumulus clouds scattered throughout the sky. The sun descended, until it was obscured behind distant clouds on the horizon. It wasn't very impressive. Then the sun dipped below the clouds off on the horizon and created an intense Neon pink slit turning to a plasma red as it passed between the distant cloud and the event horizon. What made this interesting was the intensity and color of the distant slit. The sun disappeared, and we thought it was all over. This colored plasma plane now out of our sight rose to light up the large columns of cumulus around the cove instantly turning them from a dim blue hue to a bright cotton candy pink. The color rose up the column for the next two minutes, and then was gone returning everything back to a twilight dim blue hue. Very cool sunset| While we were away at the beach, a new traveler arrived by motorcycle. He was a Swiss guy who had started at Buenos Aires, and travelled North through South America on his Yamaha 750cc Tenerre. We conversed in Spanish, as he didn't speak much English. We told him about Central America, and he told us about South America. His plans were to drive up to Alaska, however his timing is about 6-7 months off weather wise. He was then asking about crossing the bearing straight from Alaska to Russia. He told us he had crossed the Darien gap via a passenger boat from Venezuela to Panama which cost $200 and included food and lodging over the three day journey. His accommodations sounded rough and tight, and somehow his luggage with his riding gear and boots were lost. He reconfirmed what we had heard elsewhere that everywhere in South America Carnet de Passages are no longer required. We had heard this from other sources. This is so new that only one guide book mentions this as a possibility. The Carnet de Passage is such a pain to acquire, and is what caused us to delay beginning our trip for two weeks as I dedicated myself solely to working on this, and without success. For some countries in South America, this would have amounted to posting a bond of 300% of the value vehicle returned back to us up to 2 years after returning. Fortunately this is a thing of the past... However it's still a problem we'll have to deal with when we go to Africa. Our room was hot in the evening, so we sat outside and cooled off with the door open until it started raining, when we finally moved in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large dark thing scuttle under where our luggage was perched. I grabbed a flashlight, and took a look. It was a 2 inch cockroach. Sharon made me promise to tell her about any creepy crawlies that crawled into our bedroom. Because of the anxieties involved, usually I prefer to terminate silently. One quick squish, and I thought it was dead. Other than the scorpions, I've never had to terminate a bug quite this big. It took surprisingly long for this sucker to stop twitching... meanwhile Sharon is disgusted by the whole process, but can't seem to stop herself from glancing over. I gave this grand insect a burial at sea via the San Juan del Sur septic system. October 3rd, 1997 Playa del Floro, Nicaragua We met a well seasoned British traveler who stayed at the same guest house we were at. She had travelled and lived in Africa over a couple years. She reconfirmed that supplies could only be gotten in Kenya, Botswana, and South Africa. Of the four possible routes through North Africa, two are through Algeria, of which she reconfirmed are still off limits still due to continuing tourist executions, leaving the Mauritania/Morocco route, or Egypt route. From her I heard that Sudan borders are closed. People doing the East Africa route will take a boat around Sudan landing a day in Saudi Arabia. Landing in Saudi Arabia might be a problem, since strict muslim rules apply, and Sharon, being a woman, wouldn't be allowed to drive. This woman told us that Angola was opening up which was a surprise. With the cold war over, I guess they finally wrapped up their civil war. She told us about driving through Zaire. As everyone else who has done so describes, she said they have the worst roads in the world. She described being stuck in a pot hole over night that was three times the height of her jeep. Fortunately, she said, a beer truck was stuck in the same pot hole with her. Nicaragua is a funnel for travelers through Central America. There is only one road passing South of Lake Nicaragua, the Pan American highway, which all people travelling between Costa Rica and Nicaragua must drive over. We've met more interesting hard core travellers just in Granada and San Juan del Sur, than in the rest of Central America. About 21km South of San Juan del Sur or 4km further South of Playa del Coco, is Playa del Floro. Playa del Floro (Floro beach) is a turtle reserve where one can camp out and see the sea turtles at night. That was our destination for evening. We picked up some food supplies, and then drove out to Playa del Floro. We set up our tent about thirty feet from the beach under some trees, made some dinner, and watched the beautiful sun set. We were alone camping on the beach in Nicaragua waiting for the sea turtles... very cool. There was only a sliver of a moon, however the shadowed whole could still be faintly seen. Two very bright planets first appeared through twilight. Later, more and more stars appeared until we could see the Milky Way galaxy. Walking along the beach without flashlights, Sharon discovered that our footsteps lit up, like stars in the sand. For about a second after each step, little specs the size of a grain of sand would light up. I have heard of bio-phosphor luminescent algae, but only suspended in the water. I wonder if this is the same stuff washed ashore into the damp sand. Dry sand didn't light up. The Sun set around 5:30. It was as dark as it was going to get by 7:00pm. We built a camp fire and waited for the turtles. Since light attracts the baby turtles, the fire has to be out of sight of the beach, which is what we did. Just pointing a flash light will redirect their path away from the ocean. Around 8:00m, the baby turtles started to appear. They would crawl up out of their dry buried sand nest, and slowly make their way to the waves. Since it was low tide, they had a long way to go. They were easy prey for primarily sand crabs and birds. There were several small stork like birds that even though it was dark, were walking the beach looking for the easy food. With our flashlights, we would spot several baby turtles in a scattered line slowly scampering off towards the water in between frequent rest breaks. Between 7:30pm and 12:30am, I probably saw approximately 400 baby turtles. All the while, though we were looking for a big mama laying the eggs. No luck though, I think we were late in the season for that. Also, we were told that it's much more likely during a full moon. The next morning, the vultures were out. They had found a nest laid that night, and were digging out and fighting over the ping pong ball shaped eggs. The particular nest they were after was buried too close to the water such that during high tide the eggs would likely drown. The local researchers in the area put screens over the hatching nests so that they can collect all of the turtles, and count them before they escape. We watched a batch of 118 be counted and released in the morning. It seems to me however that delaying them until a daylight departure makes them easier prey for fish, since they are then much more visible. However not being a turtle scientist, what would I know? We saw a party of hermit crabs. They all had various styles of fashionable shells, fitting their bodies which clacked as they walked in every which way over a pebbly area on the beach. October 4, 1997 Left Nicaragua... carried my own documents through, however used the red tape guides to guide me where to go. Paid a total of US$4 each to leave all accounted for by receipts. It was necessary to show vehicle papers, and entry payment receipt. Exchanged the last 470 Nicaraguan cordobas for 11300 Costa Rican Colones (US$47.20) Costa Rica, sprayed vehicle. red tape guide is paid by the state. We needed passport and title, no drivers license. Paid a one time fee for everything at the posted price of 4,400 colons each. no problems Exchanged USD money at 239 colons for US$1 African bees were swarming the border point. Everyone was dodging and swatting. Local woman were spraying themselves with perfume as if that were a repellent. I went over to tell Sharon about the African bees in the area only to find that she had already been stung on the forehead. started to rain as we were turning around to go back to Liberia. First impressions of Costa Rica... worse roads than Central America however safer drivers that seem to follow the speed limit. friendly and more educated people. Stores in Liberia are very well stocked. ----- Dave Thompson thompson@pdnt.com Net-Tamer V 1.09 Palm Top - Registered