Bus

Miles traveled Total for day...230

Our transport north from Koh Chang along the Cambodia/Thai border turned out to be a minivan with only Sara and I occupying it, which departed from our hotel at 7:30 am. The driver, who seemed half asleep, drove as fast as he could at all times, with tires screeching on most turns. Everything went smoothly, in its manner, until we reached the border at Poipet.

Border to cambodia

Lo's favorite perfume on the wall at Poipet bus termina-

road side sites near Sisophon cambodia

roadside sights 2

Cambodia rice paddies

Scam bus plates

Cambodia rice field sunset

Sunset 2

Next episode WATS UP!

Our life as bikers in Koh Chang ………miles traveled 400.
our bus's companion on leaving Bangkok...
To take the bus or to fly? Taxi versus public transportation? Is there a train? How many places do we want to visit? These are among a few of the variables that led us to choose the biker lifestyle on Koh Chang. We had never driven bikes before, but we could rent a motor scooter for $6 a day or pay $6 for the taxi ride to our hostel on the distant “Lonely Beach.” The moto sounded more fun and we would have our independence. After signing some papers, a brief test ride (which included a refresher on the merits of front and rear brakes) we joined the scooter set. Making the first journey with our luggage wedged between my legs, our moto helmets on, navigating hairpin turns up and down mountains in the falling darkness was a less than relaxing experience. It wasn’t until the middle of the second day that the beauty of the experience began to sink in.
After eating a nice breakfast in the restaurant at the Sunflower hostel, we trekked through jungle and hostel along the waterfront to visit lonely beach. The beach was enjoyable, clean, and fairly deserted. We swam, sunbathed, and generally enjoyed ourselves when the idea occurred to Sara that we should “moto” around and check out the other beaches. Resolved to do this we returned to our bungalow and helmeted up. The moto handled beautifully without the baggage wedged on it. The cool breeze punctuated post-card views from the hilltops. Sara shot a small video, which we’ll upload when we have proper bandwith. After about twently minutes of zipping around we arrived at White Sands beach. This beach was stunning!
The white sand stretched more than a mile in a palm tree dotted strip more than 20 feet wide. The drop off into the ocean was very gradual and the water pleasantly cool. We took several refreshing dips in the azul waters. I made our first beach purchase, a fetching black and yellow turtle design. We lunched at a secluded spot called the Blue Lagoon. Where the water was blue(duh) and formed a lagoon (der), a rope tethered and hand powered ferry carried passengers to the small spit of land on the other side of the lagoon, and novice culinary students stood at attention with their teacher in a nearby open kitchen. Reenergized by this reasonable and enjoyable stop, we decided to try to reach Long Beach around the southern tip of the island.
We joyously remounted our newly dubbed “poderoso” because of the ease that it carried us over the steep hills. Midway through the trip we spotted a small group of elephants resting under their shelter. We went over to visit them and were surprised with the opportunity to feed and pet these lovely creatures. Their trunks are fascinating, their mouths a little disgusting, and they are all in all delightful. After a pleasant visit we continued southward to the vague area of our map marked “abandoned roadway” that led to Long Beach. The traffic dwindled and finally the road itself dwindled to one lane before we were brought to a dead stop.
Apparently the roadway was abandoned because a resort had bought the land and put up a gate where a five dollar toll per person was required. Since this would almost double our transportation cost we abandoned the quest and returned northward. We stopped at the Siam Hut on Lonely beach to snack again and watch the sunset. Young adults, couples, and families filled the wooden patio looking out over the sea. We were all seated at low tables on pillows, our shoes left at the entrance to the patio in Thai style. The sunset passed through stages of crimson, vermillion, and rose. It was a fantastic conclusion to our biker day. Then we got artistic.

art sara

art mike

artistic pose 2 for sara

Guatemala…miles travelled….333 but it feels a lot further...
But first, I forgot to insert these two pics from our Bluefields entry. One is of my current Goddaughter Shary mentioned in the previous blog and the second is of a student I have been visiting since I taught him in the second grade, Jordon. I did not want to leave our blogs of Central America without including their snapshots!

Thank goodness, the bus was comfortable and the food was good and we made it safely to Guatemala. We traveled through politically volatile Honduras with four check point stops (with police checking our Id’s) but no worse for the wear.


In El Salvador we had a 2 hour stopover in San Salvador. San Salvador looked like a nice city. Close to the bus stop our only dining options were sushi (which Sara can’t stomach), Wendy’s, and Pizza Hut. We chose Pizza Hut and much to our delight discovered it was the poshest Pizza Hut ever, including Pizza Hut Café with gourmet coffee. We enjoyed beautiful landscapes between sleeping spells. Guatemala City is quite a modern city, much more so than the one Mike remembers from 10 years ago. We made our way to our hotel……oh yeah, minus #2 of 3 valuable possessions (you remember the loss of our camera at the start of our trip in Peru?) …..well we have now followed it with another loss…my ipod. Take this note to self: on long bus/plane trips do not fall asleep with things you value on your lap…..you are liable to forget them when you wake up groggy from your slumber and are shuffled off the bus. By the time you realize you are missing it, someone else has picked it up! This is a lesson we hope to take now into the rest of our travels in hopes of keeping our laptop! We spent a good deal of time on the phone that first morning trying to see if the bus line could check to see if the i-pod was wedged between the seats somewhere. Alas, it was of no avail and sadly our i-pod with 80’s hits and personal favorites was lost.

The next day, we took the bus to Antigua to visit Sara’s friend Efrain that she knew from her time in Bluefields. Efrain was, then, involved in the church’s youth group and is now a religious brother of LaSalle. We had just enough time to meet his community and get a tour of the school they operate. Afterward, we drank coffee and caught up on the past several years. It was wonderful. The brothers then invited us to have dinner with them and we graciously accepted. We thanked them for their hospitality and Efrain enlisted some friends to give us a ride and he escorted us back to the capitol. So, we saw absolutely zero sights in Guatemala, however, it was well with the trip to see Efrain. He is in charge of campus ministry at his school for about 2,000 students. He regaled us with many stories regarding his creative exploits with his students.
The next morning we departed GC for NYC by way of Miami. We were actually close enough that we walked to the airport, and after paying a couple bucks each to leave a country we barely got to visit we were airborne once again. We are really sick of the restaurants in the terminal of Miami airport for American. We invariable skip Manchu Wok because we have been disappointed there too many times and head for the bar/grill near the end of the terminal. Our three hour layover passed soon enough and we were headed to fall in New York.

Bluefields, Nicaragua…..miles traveled……300.

Mission –Survive sleep deprivation to arrive in Bluefields to spend time with our friends.
For those of you who don’t know, Sara completed a couple of years of service in Bluefields with the CapCorp. It is also the capital of the South Atlantic Autonomous Region seated on the coast. There is no road that reaches Bluefields from the capital of Managua, which makes this trip interesting.
WOW. Our trip to Bluefields began with a very expensive night taxi ride to the remote bus station “El Mayoreo.” We had made this trip before two years ago, when the highway had been newly repaired in the ever present re-tooled school bus which serves as the main transportation in most of Central America. We were surprised that when we bought our tickets we had seat numbers. While we waited we were treated to watch “Ice Age” in Spanish. It helped pass the time while the toddlers and dogs ran around the bus station screaming and doing gymnastics on the chairs.
Finally we went to board, at first we were pleasantly surprised to see that the seats reclined and appeared semi-comfortable not like the usual school bus seats. We were sadly mistaken. Our seats were over the wheel and left approximately one inch for Sara’s legs after the person reclined back onto her. She first tried to sit Indian style with her legs on the seat then we only began to hope desperately that we could switch to a new seat.
Finally, after we pulled out of the station we scrambled to a different vacant area. The breeze from the window cooled us down. It was not too long however until Sara began to freeze. Then when the bus stopped we roasted, and everyone would lower their windows. Finally, we would move again and would all start to freeze, so everyone would wake up and close their windows again. We didn’t sleep much, and when we did it was interrupted alternately by bouts of sweating, freezing, loud snoring of fellow passengers, or swerving around parts of the road that in the last two years had deteriorated or disappeared completely.

Finally, after seven brutal hours (at 4am) the bus pulled into Rama where we catch the speed boats. The speed boats don’t leave until 6:30am. The bus departure times have not changed in the last four years since the highway trimmed off two hours from the journey. So we sat for two miserable hours on the cramped bus trying to catch a few pathetic winks between mosquito attacks and back cramps.
Finally, it was time to board our speed boat. We joyously put on our life vests and pulled away from the dock. The pleasant breeze on the river provided a nice change as we followed the smooth curves of the river toward the sea. At 8:30 we pulled into the dock totally exhausted. We stumbled a few hundred meters toward downtown and got a small room with a fan at a place called “the Minihotel.” We were so tired that we had a little breakfast and promptly fell back asleep for five hours.
We spent a little time that afternoon reacquainting ourselves with the town. We had one of the local brew.. “Tona” and bumped into an old friend of Sara’s, Yader Garcia. To end our first day, we had a light dinner and went to sleep early to gain energy to greet our friends the next day.

Bocas to Ometepe, Nicaragua…..miles traveled…….420

The boat left Bocas in the morning to mainland. From there we hopped on a minivan that drove us to the Costa Rican Border. We saw a lot of banana plantations on the way, including the famous Chiquita Banana.

The actual border crossing was a ramshackle of a bridge that we crossed ever so precariously on foot.

Once on the other side, we transferred to another minivan that took us to San Jose. There, we spent the night at Hotel Elvis across the street from the bus that would take us to Managua, Nicaragua early the next morning.

From Managua, we headed directly to a taxi that took us to the bus station for routes leaving out to the San Jorge on Lake Nicaragua (best known for being the only lake with fresh water sharks). We arrived to San Jorge and bought our tickets for the ferry that would carry us over to the volcano island of Ometepe.

Needless to say, it was non-stop travel for a few days there and we were pretty tired by the time we found our way to a hostel, one of our best deals to date – $14/night.
Unfortunately, our time was shortened on the island due to problems accessing cash. The ATMs were not friendly and we ended up getting enough cash for our food and return trip via a pharmacy that operated doling out cash on the sly. We had two days to explore. We enjoyed the view of the two volcanoes that make up the island and enjoyed swimming in the lake and taking in some rays on the black sandy beach even though the fresh water sharks were surely lurking!!

It certainly was a tranquil place. Only one road rings the island.

Scooters, motorcycles, and the bus service are the main motorized transport. Bicycles, pedestrians, and horses make up the rest of the traffic. Outside of the two main towns you are very likely to be stopped by crossing herds of cows, stray pigs, goats, or chickens.

Sara saw her first Brahma cow. They are well suited to the heat, luckily the hump that Sara thought was a growth was merely one of the trademarks of the breed along with their large floppy ears. Once you leave the main road you will be walking on a dirt path. We walked about two kilometers from the main road to the black sand beach through pasture and banana trees. We had the beach completely to ourselves. We were caught in a thirty minute torrential downpour when we sheltered under a palm frond covered restaurant nearby to enjoy the rain.
After this brief respite, we returned to Managua to catch the bus and speed boat (panga) to journey to Bluefields on the lively Caribbean coast.