Costa Rica

This day was quite eventful in a not so great way. We got stopped by a policeman in the city of Managua Nicaragua and he wrote me a bogus ticket for $20. I wanted to go the station to pay it as that is what all the moto websites said to do. This way the crooked cop doesn't get the money and is likely to let you go. My traveling companions though were set against this and one decided to quickly pay the cop and did, got back on his bike and wanted to leave. This puts me in an awkward position as he paid my "fine" so now I am obligated to repay him.

About an hour later some other cops blocked the guy who paid my fine and got $100 from him. When we went back to see what had happened to him, he was riding very slowly, the cop got $20 from my other riding partner. I talked my way out of any fine. We continued riding but now they want to split the fines. I guess I am obligated as I will be traveling with Mike through South
America but it irks me to blow hard earned money this way.

I made it clear that from that point on I would not be paying any "fines" on the road in Central America unless we went to the police station and paid them. We will see.

We met a fellow moto traveler at our hotel. His name is Eduardo and he is from Brazil. He is on a Yamaha 600 and is heading the opposite direction. He had lots of good information for South American travel. I asked about the police and he said that in Peru only foreigners travel by moto on the highway so they look down the road for a single headlight coming their direction, Then they get up, walk out in the road and flag the moto down to find some "infraction", They will make one up even if everything is right. So Eduardo says drive with your headlight off and if stopped to pay a U.S. dollar and they will be happy. Oh well, its not a perfect world .

We spent three hours checking out of Nicaragua as it was a very busy day and their immigration office in setup to confuse. In the end we paid a guy $40 to get us through in 10 minutes. Sigh...

Checking into Costa Rica took an hour so today we lost a lot of riding time with police and borders. Things here in Costa Rica are crazy expensive. Our hotel is $75 and is ok. A Whopper meal is $10! Although the scenery is nice I am already to be in South America. According to Bing maps we have 562 miles to Panama City.