Thanks for the Birthday greeting Russ!
Ok, just a quick update. I took a flight up to Guatemala to pick up my ol 99 Blazer and some of my gear that has been in storage for the last year. I put the truck in the shop for a week, and then loaded up my stuff and started the drive from Guatemala City down here to Panama Pacifico (formally Howard Air Force Base). The trip took about four and a half days. The first day I decided to take a slightly longer route to avoid El Salvador and that took me past the Ruins of Copan in western Honduras.
After visiting the Copan Ruins, I got back on the road and headed to Florida Copan, near one of the homes of the Valle Valle brothers. This family is mostly all dead or in prison for trafficking in narcotics, cattle and people, but there are stories that when they had their homes built they also constructed a hidden underground tunnel that they have hidden hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and other valuables.
Next stop was Camayagua Honduras, where I spent the night at the hotel Coxal Real. This is my favorite hotel in Comayagua. The owner is a good guy, and most of the ancient artifacts that adorn the hotel were found on site during the hotels remodel and expansion.
The next day I crossed over into Nicaragua and spent the night at a friends house in Managua. He is a Guatemalan who is working for a Canadian mining company, exploring for natural resources.
Here is a shot of my Blazer at the boarder of Honduras and Nicaragua. I had problems crossing both in and out of Nicaragua. I got the impression they don't care much for Gringos. Especially a gringo with title to a truck with a Guatemalan registration and a Florida drivers license. That and they looked very hard at my passport and took a very keen interest in all my stamps and visas from my travels throughout the middle east and Afghanistan. In any case I was stuck at both of these boarders for an average of about three and a half hours, mostly on the Nicaraguan side.
The next day I was off to Costa Rica. This is one beautiful country, especially along the coastal stretch of the PanAmerican highway. Unfortunately, their had been an avalanche that had taken out part of the highway, so I had to divert my route and ended up camping out for the night at the Marriott in San Jose.
The next morning I was back on the road once again. I had planned a new route of travel that took me through some very beautiful mountain villages and passes to get around the avalanche, and eventually made it back down onto the Pan-American highway.
That night, I made it over the boarder into Panama in just over an hour. This boarder was a little crazy but it only took about an hour and a half. The number one boarder crossing was Guatemala to Honduras that I got across in less than 30 minutes.
That night I spent the night in the David District just across the boarder on the Panama side. The next day I arrived to my temporary home in Panama Pacifico, just across the Panama Canal from Panama City.
I only expect to be in Panama until the end of January, and now that I signed what I like to refer to as a Letter of Marque, I should be back in Honduras and able to settle down sometime in February. At least that's the Plan right now.
