It was raining hard in the morning, and continued to rain hard until noon,\u00a0 so we hung around Rockin-J’s till almost noon, before heading out.\u00a0 Rode further down the road we were on, just to see what was there,\u00a0 until the wet and mud had us turn around and head back towards the ‘highway’ and the border.\u00a0 The road was terrible and got worse as we approached the border.\u00a0 Huge gaping holes completely unmarked.<\/p>\n
The exit from Costa Rica was the quickest yet.\u00a0 No muss, no fuss!\u00a0 But, then came the ‘bridge of death’!\u00a0 The only way to cross the river which forms the border between Costa Rica and Panama at Boca del Toros, is to ride across an old rail-road bridge that has been converted to automobile use.\u00a0 They converted it by spiking down some old, twisted wooden planks on either side of the old steel rails, so that a car can straddle the rails and drive straight down the center of the bridge.\u00a0 One lane, obviously.<\/p>\n
the bridge is not a problem for automobiles, as long as you can drive slow and straight;\u00a0 but, a motorcycle has to choose, either the right or left sides of the tracks, and then, must stay on the slippery, muddy, rain-soaked planks, which had\u00a0gaps, were warped, or completely missing in some places.\u00a0\u00a0If you lost balance and fell over to the outside, there was a good chance you could fall off the bridge itself, and 100′ to the river below.\u00a0 It was a nightmare ride, and I was terrified.\u00a0 We both made it safely!<\/p>\n
The paperwork to enter Panama was easy and cheap, but took a long time anyway.\u00a0 Everyone was very relaxed and casual about it all.\u00a0 Many of the officials spoke some English.<\/p>\n
Once we cleared the border, we were into the third world, for sure.\u00a0\u00a0Roads were marginal, \u00a0but completely un-marked, with no directional signage at all.\u00a0 We were never sure if we were on\u00a0the correct road, and needed lots of help finding our way.\u00a0 At one point when we were lost in a small town, and everyone kept pointing behind us as we rode along, to tell us we were going the\u00a0wrong way.\u00a0 Folks were very helpful and friendly.<\/p>\n
About\u00a012 miles into the country, we came to bridge of death #2.\u00a0 Here the highway bridge was being replaced with a new one, and to carry traffic temporarily, the railroad bridge had been converted to car use, just like the one at the border.\u00a0 Except this bridge was higher, longer (approx one kilometer!), and had no side railings left intact at all;\u00a0 nothing to catch you if you fell off to the outside, which was incredibly easy to do on a motorcycle.\u00a0 One slip could mean ‘goodbye, so long, been good to know ya’.\u00a0\u00a0 We walked out onto the bridge before attempting to cross, and I admit, I was terrified.\u00a0 We positioned ourselves as the last vehicles in our set to cross, and slowly made our way, dragging our feet and hoping to not slip.\u00a0 Again, we made it across, and pulled over for some celebrating and deep breathing.\u00a0 I was covered in sweat from crown to toe.<\/p>\n
We made it to another port city of Almirante before dark, found a really crappy place to stay near the docks,\u00a0 ate Chinese food for dinner and crashed early.\u00a0 This old man had had too much excitement for one day!\u00a0 Sheesh!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was raining hard in the morning, and continued to rain hard until noon,\u00a0 so we hung around Rockin-J’s till almost noon, before heading out.\u00a0 Rode further down the road we were on, just to see what was there,\u00a0 until the wet and mud had us turn around and head back towards the ‘highway’ and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[6,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1413,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}