costa rica map | Costa Rica Travel and Vacation

costa rica map

Image taken on 2006-03-24 13:03:10 by citizenof1world.

Related Blogs

costa rica map

Image taken on 2006-03-24 13:04:18 by citizenof1world.

Related Blogs

These days, couples seek romance and adventure for honeymoon
Exotic travel is to honeymoons as strapless gowns are to weddings.

Related Blogs

The Demand for Discounted Airfare and Airlines | Travel and Tourism
Honeymoon Vacation in Hawaii – What You Need to Know | Travel Plan Information
Reliance Energy Shareholders Wealth Divided | Business, Finance & Stock Expert
Rehabilitation Centerss » Blog Archive » SILLARS v. STATE EX REL. ITS DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT, REHABILITATION, AND … – Leagle.com
Hip Hop Lovers Cry “Get Rel!g!on” « Get Galvanized

read comments (0)

INSPIRATIONAL, MOTIVATION & LIBERATIONAL QUOTES FAILURE, MISTAKES CHALLENGES & ENDURANCE You are where you are, because that is where you plan to be through your practical action – Anonymous – Anonymous A man who won the battle never quitted when the battle was going tough - Sesan Until you believe in yourself, you won’t believe in your future success - Anonymous Proper preparation prevents poor performance - Anonymous Failure to plan is plan in to fail - E. A. Adeboye Success is getting up one more than you fall - Bill Newman It is not what happens but how you handle what happens to you makes the difference - Bill Newman Always remember Failure is an event never a person; an attitude, not an outcome. It is a stepping stone teaching you something and adding to your experience – Bill Newman My great concern is not whether you have failed but whether you are content with your failure - Abraham Lincoln It’s not where you come from – it’s where you are going that counts. Where you come from is not as important as where you are going - Bill Newman Past failures are guide pests to future success – Bill Newman Failure is in a sense, the highway to success in as much and every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after. Mistakes mark the road to success. He who makes no mistakes makes no progress – Bill Newman It doesn’t matter where we start only where we finish. Often it is not the wrong start but the winning stop that makes the difference between success and failure It is not what you have lost but what you have left that counts - Bill Newman Men don’t fail, they give up trying in trying time – Bill Newman If you want the rainbow you have to endure the rain - Bill Newman It is better to fail gallantly being yourself that succeeding being another person - Anonymous Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed. Not all who fails have therefore worked in vain – Anonymous Success is failure turned inside out - Anonymous Great achievers of old were people who attempted difficult things and who overcame tough time - Anonymous You need to go through the pains to be promoted. No cross, No crown, No pain, No gain. The man who would tell the story of the battle never died at the battle field FOCUS & DETERMINATION It is true that tough times came for everyone but it is also true that the source of most tough times is lack of direction - Anonymous A 100% commitment to one goal is more than twice as good as a 50% commitment to two goals - Bill Newman This is one thing I do, not these fifty things I dribble in - Bill Newman Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety – nine percent perspiration - Thomas Alva Edison If your determination is fixed, I don’t counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill – Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance – Samuel Johnson - Denis Waitley Success is a journey and not a destination – Anonymous – Bill Newman The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal, the tragedy lies in having no goal to reach – Bill Newman Better to die for something than living for nothing – Bill Newman The Strategy befalls a man is running nothing – Bill Newman X Many people look allied, some look back, but most look confused – Anonymous Goals cannot be properly pursued without action plan laid out to give direction and focus on area of concentration - Anonymous Many people look ahead some look back but, most look confused – Anonymous – Sesan Your destination determines your direction. Always make your journey with a MAP ROAD. You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to be with satisfaction – George Lorimer DREAMS, VISIONS & GOALS Great success is a product of foresight and forthrightness in pursuing a set goal – Anonymous Great men and women of the past and contemporary, who were successful in each academics, businesses and inventions, were men and women of Dreams & Visions – Anonymous Every success starts with dreaming of ambition – Anonymous The successful man must be an individualist who can think and act independly Success is not a product of chance, destiny, luck, it depends on how you work it out. Success is a product you must be ready to get – Anonymous Your destination determines your direction, your action must be relevant to your goal – Anonymous Don’t waste your life you only have one life give it your best short – Bill Newman Obstacles are what you see when you take off the goals – Bill Newman One thing you cannot recycle is wasted time. A waste of time is never waste of life. Lost time is again – Bill Newman Where there is no faith in the future, there is no work in the present. Almost everything comes from almost nothing – john Mason Adequate planning is always essential before progress can be made in any area of human endeavour . – Anonymous When you live without goals you live like goats -Sesan Where you are going determines the direction you are going – Ofem Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life – Les Brown Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has self sail with no destination – Fitzhugh Dodson To solve a problem or to reach a goa, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach – W. Clement Stone If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end to somewhere else – Lewis Carrol – Greg Anderson ACTION, PLANNING & DISCIPLINE Without plotting there will be no harvesting, success is the precious harvest of great dreams with diligent action – Anonymous If you don’t make a move, you wont make a dime – Anonymous You cannot achieve God’s plan for your life unless you will put yourself in His plan – Anonymous A man’s desire is achieved by practical action – Anonymous A man who cannot follow a leader intelligently cannot become an efficient leader – Napoleon Hill The sad of the diligent shall be made fat – King Solomon Success is not a product of chance, destiny, luck, it depends on how you work it out. Success is a product you must be ready to get. – Anonymous Undecision to your great determination is a great disease that kills your success slowly – Anonymous – Ofem Knowledge is not power, but potential power. Practical and applied knowledge is power indeed which attracts your success – Sesan People never know the diamond in you until you display if through practical action – Ofem Goals cannot be properly pursued without action plans laid out to give direction and focus on areas of conservation A man who cannot read good books has no advantages over a man who cannot read at all – Anonymous Your past cannot be changed but you can change tomorrow by your actions today – Bill Newman If you put off everything until you are sure of it, you will get nothing done – Bill Newman These is nothing as sad as the people who spend their lives for their ship to come in when they never send one out – Bill Newman The people of uncertain terms, they are going to get started tomorrow and tomorrow…………. Success comes by starting with something you have, and not what you don’t have – Anonymous No degree of excuses can justify the degree of procrastination – Sesan Great faith always involves great trials – Albert Benjamin Simpson Ideas wont work unless you do it – Bill Newman Great achievement starts with starting with small beginning – Sesan He who loves to lead must love to labour – Anonymous Outstanding performance comes by reaching out to what others see as impossible – Anonymous One way to stand head and shoulders above the crowd is to choose to do regular, ordinary things with extra ordinary and supernatural way with great enthusisasm – John Mason Precious stones do not lie on the surface of the earth – The winners dig deep down to get them. A consistent step after another, the longest journey is ended – Sesan There is no joy in victory without action – Bill Newman Action may not always being happiness; but there is no happiness without action – Benjamin Wieder Success seems to be connected to action, success people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit – Conrad Hilton Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability – Bill Newman A man must suffer one of the two things. A pair of discipline or a pain of regret – Anonymous The best things in life don’t come easy. They may come free, but not easy! Setting and waiting wont put a fish on a table – Anonymous You wont catch a fish, until you draw your nod into the river – Ofem Persistence drives the nails of success – Anonymous The best way to be ahead is to go ahead – Ofem What the New year brings us will depend a great deal on what we bring to the New Year Eni maa je mundun, a jowo egungun 20 LAWS OF SUCCESS & GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS What I say has a reflection effect to what believe; what believe has a reflected effect to who am I. I would rather choose to say positive things to my life daily - Sesan Success is just a little after the splat – Anonymous Great achievement are neither be achieved by never falling, nor by falling and never rising – Ofem There is no joy in victory without running a race of defeit – Bill Newman It is true if you don’t draw your net from the river, you wont catch a fish. Success comes to those who finish it – Ofem Opportunity never come to those who wait, they are captured by those who dare to attack – Bill Newman In life, for you to get your success, you must have stumbling blocks on your ways but conquer them and do not let them drag you down – Anonymous There is no speed limit on the road to success – Anonymous Success is the man who does today what others see are thieving to do tomorrow – Anonymous Fear of failure is none destructive than a poisonous food – Sesan Fear of failure is the father of failures Don’t get discouraged because of the early get back, it is called the time of learning. You must be ready to learn – Anonymous Don’t be afraid to start something and don’t be ashamed to fail. It is wise try again after missing the target the previous time. Great achievements is usually the product of great difficulties One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments – Henry Ward Brechure Success is not the key to success. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful – Albert Schweiter I believe that the true road to preeminent success in any life is to make yourself master of the live – Andrew Carnegie Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up – Thomas Edison I would rather lose in a cause that will someday run, than win in a cause that will some day lose! – Woodrow T. Wilson It takes 20 years to make an overnight success – Eddie Centor It is a clear defeat to say I can’t. It is a coward’s doubt to say I may. It is a champions decision to say I CAN – Anonymous PROVERBS AND MEANING 1) A bad worker always quarrels with his tools Meaning: A bad worker often gives unnecessary excuses for doing bad work A loaf of bread is better than none Meaning: To have a little is better to have nothing As you make your bed so you lie on it Meaning: You will harvest the fruits of your doing A rolling stone gathers no mess Meaning: To be unsteady in things we do will never lead to success All that glitters is not gold Meaning: Things are not what they appear to be A bird in hand is worth two in the bush Meaning: To have little thing in hand is more valuable than the big one we hope to get A tree does not make a Forest Meaning: A thing is made up of many parts A friend in need is a friend indeed Meaning: A true friend helps his friends in the time of need A hungry man is an angry man Meaning: Anger makes people act unreasonably and irresponsibly A friend to all is a friend to none Meaning: To be ticklish and unsteady Better late than never Meaning: Absence is worse than lateness Brick by brick a house is built Meaning: A great achievement is realized little by little Cut your coat according to your cloth Meaning: Live your life according to your income. Dead men don’t bite Meaning: Weak people are not feared. Don’t kill the goose that lays golden egg Meaning: It is a tolly to block our means of livelihood. Don’t carry all your eggs in one basket Meaning: It is better to have more than one way of making money. Delay is dangerous Meaning: To do something at night is beneficial Early to bed, early to rise. Meaning: Punctuality or doing things in the right time is profitable. East to west, home is the best Meaning: There is no better place than our homes. Experience is the best teacher. Meaning: It is easily to learn from what we, hear, touch, taste and feel. Every disappointment is a blessing. Meaning: One learns from one’s failure or misfortunes. Examples are better than precepts. Meaning: We believe more of what we see than what we hear. Empty vessels make the most noise. Meaning: Those who have or know little often boast and shout most. Eat to live but don’t live to eat. Meaning: Have a purpose in your life and work to achieve it Enough is enough. Meaning: Don’t overact, be moderate. He who laughs last laughs best. Meaning patience brings great reward. He who eats with the devil must use a long spoon. Meaning: We must be very cautious while dealing with those we trust. It wishes were horses beggars would ride. Meaning: It all we need we would come true everybody would be very rich. Let the sleeping dog lie. Meaning: Do not cause trouble by recalling past disputes. Man is never too old to learn. Meaning: People keep on learning everyday. New brooms sweep cleans. Meaning: Newly employed workers always put in their best. Out of the fry pan into the fire Meaning: Making a poor situation worse. One’s man food is another man’s poison. Meaning: Likes, dislikes and tastes differ among people. Old birds are not caught with chaff Meaning: Experienced people are not easily deceived. Punctuality is the soul of business. Meaning: Punctuality and delication to duty are keys to success. Practice makes perfect. Meaning: Continuous repetition of a skill leads to success. Prevention is better than cure. Meaning: Avoid trouble or danger. Rome was not build in a day. Meaning: It takes a times to achieve great things . Still waters run deep Meaning: People who are often quiet are dangerous Two wrongs cannot make a right Meaning: An evil cannot be corrected with evil There is no smoke without fire Meaning: Every event must have a cause Those who live in glass houses should not throw stone Meaning: People with blemish should not find fault Too many cooks spoil the broth Meaning: Too many opinions cause set back Unity is strength Meaning: Teamwork is very rewarding United we stand, divided we fall Meaning: Group work brings great reward Where there is will there is a way Meaning: Making up our minds to do what we want to brings success When the cat is away the mouse governs the house Meaning: The servant rules the house when his master is away You cannot cat your cake have it. Meaning: What you have spent cannot be unspent. We experience profit and loss You can take a horse to the stream but you can’t force it to drink Meaning: One cannot do everything for someone. Everything has a limit THE NAMES OF GREAT MENTOR OF THE PAST WITH THEIR NAMES AND THE GREAT INVESTORS AND THEIR INVENTIONS. INVENTIONS & INVESTORS 1) Aero plane Wilbur Wright 2) Air Condition Willis Carrier 3) Automatic Gun Hiram Stephen Maxwell 4) Electricity, Dynamo and Electric Transformer Michael Faraday 5) Gun powder Roger Bacon 6) Locomotive (Train) George Stephenson 7) Lightning Conductor Benjamin Franklin 8) Microphone David Edward Hughes 9) Motor Car Carl Benz 10) Printing Machine John Gutenberg 11) Photography Joseph Niepce 12) Badin Marches Marcum 13) Stream Engine James Watt 14) Safety Lamp Sir Humphrey Davy 15) Steel Sir Henry Bessemer 16) Television Set John L. Baird 17) Telephone Alexander G. Bell 18) Wireless Telegraph Marches G. Marconi 19) Weaving Machine (Power Loom) Edmund Cartwright 20) X-Ray Machine Wilhelm Roentgen CURRENCIES AND PLACES (COUNTRIES) CURRENCY COUNTRIES 1) K Costa Rica, El Salvador 2) O Nicaragua 3) Dollar USA, Canada, Australia 4) Euro France, Austria, Belgium, Germany 5) Franc France, Switzerland 6) Naira Nigeria 7) Peru Mexico 8) Ruble Russia 9) Rand South Africa 10) Sterling Britain, New Zealand HISTORY OF NIGERIA (EVENT & ESTABLISHMENTS) The Arabs entered Nigeria through the North early in 14th century, while European entered Nigeria through the Ocean-Lagos, Calabar in 18th Century In 1450 Arabic Schools were established in Sokoto, Kano and Kaduna In 1859, the CMS Grammar School was established in Lagos In 1796, River Niger was discovered by Manijo Park in Nigeria and died in 1805 t Bussa on the river In 1864, English Bible was translated into Yoruba by Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther who died in 1891 The first main truck road was constructed in 1905 Ibadan/Oyo road. Nigeria was amalgated in 1st January 1914 by Sir. Lord Frederick Lugard Construction of Railway link commenced in Nigeria in 1914 The First World War was taken place between 1914-1919. While the second World War was in 1945. In 1955, Chief Obafemi Awolowo introduced Free Primary Education in Western Nigeria. Queen Elizabeth visited Nigeria on Tuesday 14th February 1956 In 1958, The Central Bank of Nigeria was established and opened for business in 1st June, 1959 In October 1st 1960. Nigeria became an Independent Country and a Republican in 1963. The First Nigerian President was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. He was elected in October 1960 and died on 21st May, 1996. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was born at Ikenne Ogun State on 6th March, 1903 and died 1987. In October 1963 Sir. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was elected the First Nigerian Prime Ministers and killed during the First Military Coup in January 1966 Lagos was created on May 27, 1967.

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

costa rica map

Image taken on 2006-03-24 13:03:24 by citizenof1world.

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

costa rica map

Image taken on 2006-03-24 13:03:35 by citizenof1world.

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

costa rica map

Image taken on 2006-03-24 13:03:29 by citizenof1world.

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

On the pampas the horizons seem to flee. The llamas are golden, the clouds impossibly white. We let the bikes run. Suddenly, the view changes. The lead bike rises above the line of the horizon, a rider flails through the air 10 feet above the ground. This is not good. Jeff has gone off the road at 70 mph. Katie goes into paramedic mode, calming Jeff, running her hands up his spine, probing, checking ribs, legs, arms. The fall has ripped his touring jacket from shoulder to waist, peeling the back protector to reveal the We-Build-Bridges T-shirt. He is scuffed, but within moments is giggling, flashing the “I Can’t Believe I’m Still Alive” grin that is his default expression. Ryan pulls the bike up and starts collecting the bits scattered across the desert. The luggage is destroyed. The right handlebar is bent almost to the tank. Mirrors, turn signals, front fender snapped off in a microsecond. Both wheel rims have dents. Incredibly, it still runs. He puts the parts that still work back on the bike, takes it for a test ride. It will last another 7,000 miles. Our motto: We Will Make This Work. Jeff tells what happened. A small bird had hopped into his path. The next thing he knew he was off the road, launched into a culvert. “I thought, wow. I’m Superman. Oh look, there’s the bike. Oh look, there’s the bird…” In a field strewn with jagged boulders, he had landed on sand. THE BEGINNINGThe trip came up long before I was ready. A phone call, an invitation to tag along with a group of BMW riders embarking on a five-week, 8,000-mile journey from Peru to Virginia. I would document the ride, a fundraising effort for a group that builds footbridges in remote areas of the world. I’d been thinking about a long ride, something open-ended, without support vehicles, the experience of being totally “out there. ” This seemed to fit the bill. A third of the distance around the world with complete strangers. I had a brand-new BMW F 800 GS and it was thirsty. If there was a point of no return, I crossed it before I hung up the phone. First, the riders. Ken Hodge is an insurance benefits specialist and member in good standing of the Newport News Rotary Club. He discovered motorcycles late in life, when he bought a bike, rode it across country in 48 hours, then began to dream of a bigger adventure, something for a good cause. He recruited his daughter Katie (a fire department paramedic), his stepson Ryan (a mechanic and dirt-bike rider) and Ryan’s best friend Jeff. I’m impressed by their preparations. They ride old BMW R 1150s and F 650 singles. Ryan had spent a year renewing the bikes, poking about the inner recesses, memorizing the shop manuals for each machine. They would bring enough tools and parts to handle almost every emergency. INTO THE ANDESWe stop at Nazca to view the ancient figures scratched in the rocky desert. From the top of a tower we can see a figure with raised hands. Just to the north, the Pan-American Highway bisects the figure of a lizard, decapitating the creature. Bound by the tight focus of brass transit levels, the surveyors who laid out the road were not even aware of the sacred relics, discovered when aerial flight became common. I realize that we are as blinded by focus, by concentration as the surveyors were by their instrument. The trip will be a series of images, sidelong glances, captured at speed. Descendants of the people who built the Inca trail, Peruvian builders know their stuff. But it’s the tracery, the managed flow of momentum, that has our respect. The road ascends ancient seabeds, hills covered with talus, fractured dry ridges with cornices sculpted by landslides. Midday, we find ourselves on a high pampas inhabited by thousands of vicuña and alpaca. In the distance, our first sight of snowcapped peaks. There are stone corrals on nearby slopes, one-room huts. In the middle of this giant nowhere, a lone shepherd walking on the side of the hill. We discover that the distances on maps are those of the condor. We travel incredibly twisted roads that sometimes take a hundred turns (and several miles) to get from one ridge to the next. The map indicates towns, but to our dis-may not all have gas stations. We buy gas in a small outpost from a woman who ladles it out of a bucket with a coffee pot, then pours it through a plastic, woven kitchen funnel into our tanks. The whole town watches. We push on into the descending night. We make it to the next set of lights, 20 or so buildings on two streets, find a hotel, and park our bikes in an enclosed backyard with dogs, chickens, dead birds, plastic bottles and an animal hide tanning on the wall. Instead of the usual exit signs, the restaurant in our hotel has green arrows that say “ESCAPE. ” It is not a criticism of the food. The forces that drive the Andes skyward have been known to demolish whole towns. The next morning we fire up the bikes, and ascend into the Andes on a perfect road. We are fluid, going through hairpins, double hairpins, squared-off turns—climbing the flank of a single 4,700-meter peak. I can think of only one word: delicious. We move through mist and low-hanging clouds, with shafts of sunlight slanting into rainbows. The valleys below are green and fertile, a mix of old Inca terracing and more modern farms. Slender eucalyptus trees line the road, providing shade for huts with red tile roofs. A girl tends a flock of goats (identified with colorful ribbons) on a green meadow, book in hand. At one point I think the clouds above have parted to reveal patches of blue, but when I look up I see that it is snow-covered rock, another 3,000 or 4,000 feet of mountain. On a turnoff near the top of the peak we find a dozen or so tiny shrines, little churches decorated with flowers and ribbons and photographs of loved ones. The site of a bus plunge. On a hillside across the valley paragliders work the thermals, the canopies looking like bright-colored eyebrows, or ostentatious angels. We share the road with vicuña, alpaca, llama, sheep, goats, dogs, roosters, pigs, horses and cows. On a narrow lane near Abancay, a bull tries to gore me as I pass, charging and making a hooking motion with its horns. One night after the sunset, I round a corner and a beautiful roan stallion wheels in the light from our bikes, filling the lane with wide eyes and flashing hoofs, inches from my head. I realize that riding sweep poses a risk. The novelty of our passing bikes wears off, and the local wildlife has time to react. Entering Cusco, Ryan asks directions, a girl directs us onto a narrow cobblestone street, slick with rain, as steep as a bobsled run. The rocks are turned on their side, like teeth. The knobbies have no traction whatsoever. The people on the sidewalks frantically wave their hands, indicating that the road gets steeper. I touch my brake and the bike goes down, pinning my leg against the curb, a quarter of an inch shy of a fracture. The bike behind me goes down. It is harrowing. The locals help us lift the bikes, get them turned uphill. A police escort leads us to a hotel that lets us store the motorcycles in the lobby. Without bothering to shower, we make our way to the Norton Rats Bar on the northeast corner of the central plaza. The owner, an American expatriate, once piloted a Norton to the tip of the continent. The walls are lined with photos from the trip. Above the bar are mounted heads, the four past American presidents, with their best known soundbites: I am not a crook. I did not inhale. I do not recall. We will find WMD in Iraq. We sip beers, trade stories, trying to reassemble the past few days. The dead battery. The punctured radiator. The roadside repairs. The incredible rush of unrelenting beauty. Three days of desert north of Lima generate a few details. The total absence of life, the three colors of sand. Young boys pedaling tricycle ice cream carts in the middle of nowhere. We enter a zona de nimbleras, but instead of fog we find a 60-mph crosswind that sends a layer of grit skittering across the road like a special effect in a Steven Spielberg movie. Two lanes narrow to one covered by blowing sand, thick enough to swallow the front tire, deep enough that a road grader prepares to clear the drifting sands. We decide to try a secondary route through the hills. We turn onto a dirt road and everything changes. We pass through villages alive with people, dogs, tiny three-wheel taxis fashioned from old motorcycles. Kids on motorscooters ride past, snapping pictures with their cell phones. The road throws split-finger fastballs at the bash plate that clang as loud and adamant as the sound of an aluminum bat. We slosh our way through gravel, gray dust on everything, parts falling off, teeth rattling. Oh yes, this is what we wanted. ECUADORIn Macara, we sit on the sidewalk near a minor town square, eating pork cooked by a rotund woman in a yellow dress. Her daughter brings us three beers (giant) at a time, and keeps the empties in a milk crate for accounting later. Boys on motorbikes cruise the quiet streets, the lucky ones with girls on the back. Across the square, girls sit on benches. Jeff experiences a cultural revelation, that South American girls have breasts, and wear tight pants…and “Hey, I think she likes me. ”Our dinner companion is David McCollum, an American expatriate that Ryan had met on ADVrider. com. He tells us stories about riding the Ecuadoran Andes, and gives us tips on handling roadblocks. “Act Stupid. Do not try to communicate in Spanish. Say ‘No fumar Espanol’ (I don’t smoke Spanish). If all else fails, have Katie cry. ” Er, Katie does not do “cry. ” The next day he leads us into the Ecuadoran Andes. Impressions: Razor-sharp ridges. Lumpy, conical outcroppings. Monasteries on top of hills. Slopes so steep they will never be worked by machine. A couple standing above dark earth, the man holding a wooden hoe, the woman a bag of seeds. A woman on horseback, black and red cape, a whip coiled in one hand. Trees. Cloud. Mist. The feel of a Japanese block print, the ones that suggest the road goes to infinity. I had introduced the group to a family tradition. When we travel, we end each day by recounting high point, low point and funny bone. After this day, I will add “Pucker moments. ” Trucks hurtle out of the fog, running without lights, signaled only by the ghostly wave pushed before. They appear in our lane without warning or reason. We go through construction sites where the road narrows to one lane that offers no escape route. One side seems hideously close to the new concrete, studded with rebar fangs. The other side is precipice. Pucker moments? Take your pick. Sometimes it’s the surface, a half mile of muddy bobsled run, of loose gravel, of gushing water, the bike handling like a loose bowel. Twice, we round a corner and find no road, the surface having caved in, sucked away by underground torrents. Katie’s moment comes when a cow, with no footing, scrambles into the path of her bike. For Jeff, it is passing a truck that suddenly swerves to avoid a pothole, the trailer swinging toward him like a baseball bat. We spend two days in Cuenca, a 500-year-old city surrounded by mountains. Ken phones ahead and discovers that the ship that was to have taken us and the bikes from Ecuador to Panama doesn’t exist (had we had drugs or been illegal aliens, no problem, but there are no accommodations for turistas with motorcycles). We ask David for help. While we ride to Quito, he will work the phones. He finds a contact, a guy known for getting things done when no one else can. We meet up with this air freight magician at The Turtle’s Head, a biker bar in Quito. At midnight. The next morning we ride our bikes to the military section of the airport, then into a refrigerated warehouse. The steel floor is covered with embedded ball bearings, across which slide steel palettes. For the next three hours we wrestle with tiedowns. A skinny man dressed entirely in black oversees the operation, taking pictures of the bikes with a digital camera, making sure batteries are disconnected, tires are deflated. Drug-sniffing dogs poke their noses into every recess. Then, just like that, our bikes are gone, on their way to Panama in the belly of an airplane. CENTRAL AMERICACentral American countries are the size of postage stamps. You can cross them in a day and a half, only to spend a half day at customs and immigration. Ken had prepared Xerox copies of all our documents (passports, licenses, titles, registration, VIN numbers) and had them notarized. As he works with the official in the air-conditioned office, we sit in 100-degree heat and watch ants carry grains of dirt from beneath the ground. We will become used to the demands for more copies, the freelance currency traders waving bills in front of our faces, the young hustlers willing to facilitate the process, the food vendors waiting for starvation to overcome caution about local cuisine. Before embarking on this trip, I’d read State Department travel advisories. The section on Peru warned that five Americans had died from liposuction in Lima. OK, was that consensual liposuction, or were there gangs of thugs wielding vacuum cleaners with sharp pointy attachments? Virtually every entry on Central American countries warned about fake checkpoints, bandits in uniform, soldiers in the middle of nowhere. Along the roadside are signs with a blood-red eye and the warning vigilantes. We round a corner to find two soldiers walking patrol, miles from the nearest town. They ask for paperwork. A surge of adrenaline turns my mouth to cotton. David, our friend in Ecuador had given us good advice: Act stupid. Smile. We seem to have a natural talent for that. No fumar Espanol. After inspecting our paperwork, they wave us on. In the next few weeks we will be stopped repeatedly, sniffed by dogs, x-rayed, wanded with devices that look like carving knives with car antennas where the blade should be. At border crossings, guys in jumpsuits and facemasks spray our bikes with liquids designed to kill stowaway bugs too lazy to cross borders under their own power. There are soldiers at every gas station, armed attendants at convenience stores and restaurants, guys with shotguns on Pepsi trucks. We are aware of poverty, a culture of criminal opportunity. The night air can strip your bike naked, if you don’t find a hotel with secure parking. These countries are linked by soil to the United States, and our culture has rattled its way through. Central America is a motorbike culture. Whole families whiz by, perched on narrow seats, wearing helmets with missing visors. In Panama City we run into a group of Harley riders. The bikes have exhausts the size of howitzers, the horns blare a soundtrack of special effects. They surround us, and ask if we want to join their regular weekend burger run. We follow them to an exclusive country club just beyond the Mira Flores locks on the Panama Canal. They send us off with directions to a bed-and-breakfast up the coast. I fall asleep that night in a hammock, a bottle of beer still clutched in my hand, the blades of a fan whirring softly overhead. Central America has a different feel than Peru and Ecuador, a different gravity. We move through verdant countryside at a speed that would be natural in Virginia or Colorado or California. The vegetation looks like fireworks, only green. Here clusters of one plant have taken over a hillside. There a different species explodes. A slow war. We have been in the saddle for three weeks. Nothing can break our pace. We abandon the Pan-American Highway and find roads that make it seem like you have two flat tires, ones that seem like you’re riding on an oil spill. There are narrow, one-vehicle-at-a-time bridges of mismatched narrow-gauge rails, or on lesser roads, steel plates tossed across rotting timbers. The terrain is a geological mash-up, without the power of the Andes, but enough unexpected elevation change and tight corners to make for an interesting ride. Towns announce themselves with speed bumps and potholes that can swallow bikes whole. I see road signs unique to the country, silhouettes of odd animals. A snake crossing. A jaguar crossing. In Costa Rica we hit a 30-mile stretch of gravel road, and the world becomes dust. The bikes come alive. We romp, skitter, wander, trusting the gyroscope. I try to read the strange shadows that appear in the dust—bicyclists, ATVs, huge trucks with no lights—not always accurately. There are breaks in the dust cloud when I see fields filled with white cattle and at their feet white egrets. The sky tinges pink with light from a setting sun. A feeling almost like peace. We spend a night in Arsenal, a destination resort for adrenaline junkies with discretionary income. Posters advertise canopy walks, zipline rides through the rain forest, the chance to rappel down waterfalls, night hikes to lava flows, kayaking, canoeing. We ignore the offers, saddle up and ride into the rain forest. A group of meercats swarms down an embankment onto the road. Monkeys cavort in the trees overhead. A tourist zips by on a steel cable casting a shadow on the road, a blur of color in the sky. It looks like someone was hanging laundry and forgot to take his or her clothes off. Nicaragua has its own feel. We ride past volcanoes so large they make their own weather, the crowns hidden beneath wide-brimmed clouds. Don Quixote in his barber bowl hat. The streets are clogged with horsedrawn buggies. We find a hotel near the town square. Across the street from the hotel is a shop offering galactic Internet. The traditional culture is slowly losing ground to bandwidth. Relay towers compete with church steeples, billboards for cell service block oversized statues of saints on nearby hilltops. We visit a bridge, built by Ken’s organization, in a remote area of Honduras. At the turnoff from the main road I think we are entering a drainage ditch. Indeed, during the rainy season the road is impassable, the clay surface too slick for traction. Now, the bikes tackle a road gouged by erosion, working their way around rocks exposed by the force of water. This is by far the most technical riding of the trip. The 40-mile road will take five hours to cross. The clawmark gullies pull Ken’s bike out from under him; Katie rides into a ditch and smashes her bike’s windscreen. Even Ryan has trouble. The river, when we reach it, is intimidating. I take pictures of the bikes as they come through, pushing a bow wave over front wheels, jouncing up the rocks on the other side. If a trip can be reduced to 1?250th of a second, a single moment seared in memory, these pictures would be it. We cross into Guatemala, and spend the night with Hemingway impersonators and Jimmy Buffet wannabes in Rio Dulce. The hotel has a wonderful tacky feeling. The overhead fan showers sparks. The power goes off at regular intervals, as does the water. If you want a shower, step outside. We spend a long day riding through rain. The water destroys one of my cameras, turning the LCD into an aquarium. Hey, I have enough pictures. ALMOST THEREAt the first town over the Mexican border, we stop for directions on a crowded street. A truck sideswipes my bike, snags a sidecase, and drags me down. I’m unhurt, but the windscreen and instrument panel lie in fragments. The police, when they arrive, are the opposite of helpful. We collect the broken bits, duct tape everything in sight, and fire it up. We are unstoppable. We ride on, but the mood of the ride changes and the calendar beckons. Katie, Ryan and Jeff have to be back by a certain date, or they lose their jobs. The ride becomes time vs. distance, a push that blurs most of Mexico, and a final border crossing into the United States. We hurtle across long roads, nursing bikes that are showing signs of wear. Ken’s bike is missing a sidestand. Ryan’s helmet a visor. Katie treats her BMW’s busted windscreen like a badge of honor, but still, a 75-mph headwind is exhausting. Jeff’s bike has chewed the rear sprocket to nubbins, the chain is beginning to slip. It will wind up in a U-Haul 100 miles from home. Five weeks after departing, we see the lights of Newport News. As they enter the city, Ken, Ryan and Katie spread across the road, side by side, arms raised. The long ride is over.

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

te time = Tue Jun 1 7:00:01 UTC 2010 MAG UTC DATE-TIME y/m/dh:m:s LAT deg LON deg DEPTH km Region MAP 6.1 2010/06/01 03:26:18 9.350 -84.281 29.3 COSTA RICA MAP 6.4 2010/05/31 19:51:49 11.119 93.698 127.7 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 6.0 2010/05/31 10:16:03 6.925 123.995 33.0 MORO GULF, MINDANAO, PHILIPPINE

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

costa rica map

Image taken on 2006-03-24 13:03:02 by citizenof1world.

Related Blogs

read comments (0)

Friends

Sponsors

Categories

Pages

Costa Rica Travel and Vacation

Archive for the 'costa rica map' Category

DSC00004

Related Blogs

DSC00014

Related Blogs

These days, couples seek romance and adventure for honeymoon

Related Blogs

INSPIRATIONAL, MOTIVATION & LIBERATIONAL QUOTES FAILURE, MISTAKES CHALLENGES & ENDURANCE

Related Blogs

DSC00005

Related Blogs

DSC00007

Related Blogs

DSC00006

Related Blogs

Chasing adventure via motorcycle in Latin America

Related Blogs

I IWLL NOT GIEGV TO PRIPAHAT MENA FOR QUAKES,FKY OBJECTS READ

Related Blogs

DSC00003

Related Blogs

Friends

Sponsors

Categories

Tags

Pages

Archive for the 'costa rica map' Category

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs

Related Blogs