Trip down to Panama

Hello everyone,

Here is a website that I will post our progress through Mexico on our
way down to Panama. We will see if this works correctly on our way to
Panama. We are leaving December 1st on our motorcycles and fly back
Dec 29th. Leaving our motorcycles down there to continue riding
further south later in April.

Feel free to pass along the website. I will continue to clean it up
and make it better.

www.vintagedirtbiker.com

I need to do some more testing. There are more maps and data under
RIDES on the left. I will need to write some more descriptions when I
figure out what they all do. Depending on what kind of connection my
phone will have will depend on where the map will be posted. So I
included all the spots to look just to be safe. On the top of the
rides page is a link to My Maps which includes the route we will be
taking. You can zoom in and see some of the great roads we picked just
because we are on our motorcycles.

We are crossing the boarder now. Tracking is on. Everything is great.

1st Day

First day is done and recorded. Sitting in the bar having a beer.

2nd Day

Ok we finished day two. Few more miles today. Everything good. New map being posted now.

3rd Day

Ok we finished about 250 miles of roads better than McKenzie pass hwy 242. Day 3 ended in Puebla at the foot hills of a smoking volcano. In a really fancy hotel. The day went smooth, bikes ran great the passing was insane. Views were outstanding. Hotel is outstanding spooning will be fun tonight.

Having trouble uploading maps at this really plush hotel. I guess I will do it the hard way and it should be up there tomorrow morning, I hope.

4th Day

4th day was even better than the 3rd day and the 3rd day was outstanding, we talked about it until late at night all snuggled in our two beds. Lol. We road some very cool roads today, the passing was off the wall. It was like being on a supermoto track that never ended. We had more than a hundred miles of nothing but curves and I mean curves after curves. We were laughing and chatting and admiring the roads the whole way. All the bikes are running great. We left the smog in Puebla early in the morning with frost on our bags. We were up to 80 degrees by mid afternoon and shedding our clothes. We are now  in Oaxaca a very nice tourist town. We took lots of photos of some really spectacular views. Had lunch for 4 for $5 not counting the beer. Our new hotel has indoor parking in the lobby. A great ending to a perfect day riding.

5th Day

Sorter day but made it to the coast. We rode 168 miles on some more really nice roads. Everyone was pretty beat today. Had a late lunch. We should make it to the boarder tomorrow. We will probably not try to cross until the next day. Weather was really good today. High of 86. This beach city was not what we expected but it was good to see the ocean. I did upload some more photos and I will probably catch up on everyone else's camera later.

We did have some fun chasing and leading the BMW club earlier in the day. We were keeping up with the Triumph and Ducati that finally got around us. I watched the Ducati drift almost right off in front of me. He was pushing
pretty hard to stay out front. There were about 15 of them total going down the road for a sunday breakfast. We stopped and chatted for quite awhile. Scott made a nice trade for a BMW club of Mexico shirt. Picture later.

Thanks for the medicine mom....everyone is taking it.

6th Day

6th day is posted. Not much else to say. More photos too

7th Day

8th Day

Ok I have uploaded Day 8. There are some very interesting detours on this route. We definitely got lost in Chiquimulila we were supposed to go north and cross El Salavador on the northern border crossing. Looking at the map now it looks like we were really close but chose to go back and cross the southern border. We ended up in a really nice town and a nice hotel. Would recommend this city to anyone.

9th Day

Day 9 was very interesting. We stayed in the same town for one more day. Ahuachapan, El Salvador

We found some very interesting places. We found this really poor dirt road that lead to a nice hot springs. Just a little further up we found this wonderful little coffee plantation. It is out in the middle of the jungle and looks to be owned by someone with a lot of money. It had these really nice natural swimming pools heated by the hot volcanic water coming up out of the ground. THe house was large and very nice for entertaining Star Bucks guests or someone. It was way out of place for the rest of the area. The people around here are very nice and friendly. We wandered through a couple of towns on the bikes looking for the loop that we saw on our maps and only found really bad dirt, rocky roads out. If you look at our tracks you can see we did a lot of u turns. I drove down some of the roads hoping someone would follow but everyone voted to go back to the paved roads. But the coffee plantation was definitely a good find.

I uploaded a bunch of photos today. The link is down below I also organized the folder by days to make it easier to view.

We are off to see if we can find a boat to cross over to Nicaragua otherwise we will have to go through Honduras which we are told takes a long time to get in for the couple hour ride we have to cross the country. So we are going to La Union, El Salvador and find a captain that might have a boat we can talk into taking us across. Sounds like a challenge, and it was unanimous that we must try.

10th Day

Day 10. We had a very warm ride out of the high cold mountains. Lots of cows in the road today. Nobody hit them though. The photos today were pretty spectacular of the high volcanic peaks. We ended in a town called La Union with great view of the ocean and a Comfort Inn Hotel. They are hosting a wedding party tonight. I am sure we can pass on some advice.  This Comfort Inn is really fancy for only $29 a night. Wow.  Check out the view in the photos.

We are off to Honduras and Nicaragua all in one day....boy time is flying
by.

11th Day

Very long day not very many miles. Two borders in one day was pretty rough. The road through Honduras proved to be true. There were so many pot holes we had to dodge and cars dodging pots holes if that made sense at all. Basically it was a high speed free for all. You never knew who was moving where and when. On coming cars and cars in your lane are swaping sides to avoid pot holes all the meanwhile we are passing. Did I mention all the cows and the jumping goats in the road too. And our normal sneak pass on the right was blocked be people walking. What a mess. We made it out of Honduras and into Nicaragua all in one day, barely ....we had to do 3 miles at dusk with our tented lenses, we found a hotel fast. We don't have wifi here so I will have to upload the few photos we did take tomorrow.

12th Day

Day 12 is now done and uploaded. We made it down to a beach town in southern Nicaragua. The sunset was very nice. The map should tell the rest.

13th Day

Ok 13th map is uploaded. I am behind on the photos. We had a good ride today as the story I wrote with the map states.

14th Day

So day 14 was another great day. We left a very warm town called Jaco this morning and headed to a very busy city, San Jose. Once we got there we could not wait to get out. From there we climbed up to 11,000 feet in to the clouds, rain and cold weather. Once we got there we could not wait to get back down to the warm weather we left. Today we landed down near the Panama border. The roads today were remarkable to say the least, that was when there were roads left to drive on. I have added many more photos to all the folders. I finally grabbed the other cameras and started adding them. They will take all night to update at this hotel.

15th Day

Day 15. We are in Panama now. So far so good we landed at a great place. Photos going up now, map is already done.

16th Day

So we did about 180 miles before noon and got to our final destination. It was pretty boring road, straight and no fun traffic to dodge or pass. We had to run into Panama city to rent a car so we could do some grocery shopping. We had a little trouble driving a car again after 3000 miles on our bikes. The bumps are different and you have to be aware of more surface area on a car. On the bikes we just had to have enough room for our bags to squeeze up to the front of all the red lights and construction traffic. Some of us have
soft bags so if we guessed wrong we still made it. Poor Scott on his nice
BMW. But in a car we had to just wait like everyone else. I let scott drive
the car he was pretty nervous trying dodge all the pot holes and non
signaling cars.

The map to our final destination is up loaded. I will try and get some
photos of this place and other stuff we find up loaded later.