What a waste of a day. Today we woke up and checked out of hostel Mamallena and started the motorcycle export process. First we had to drive to some police inspection building/parking lot thing. At this police area, we stood around waiting for some guy to come look at our paperwork and check out our bikes. We still don't really understand why. In the parking lot we met two other guys doing the same trip on BMWs. They had shipped their bikes from their home country of Lithuania to Alaska and were on their way south (on our boat!) They were going a lot faster too - they had left Mexico on the 28th... That's under two weeks for all of central America! After about an hour or two, we were finally allowed to leave. Great start to the day. Now we had to kill 4 hours before step 2 of the paperwork. We decided to check out the fish market, which was actually open today! The smell of fish was everywhere, and there were a couple neat shops and stuff. The fish all seemed to be stored on ice, which was a huge improvement from the Mexican fish/meat market in San Cristobal! The next thing to check out at the market was ceviche, a cold fish dish with citrus juices, onions, and other fun things. We both got shrimp ones after hearing recommendations from other people at the hostel. Wasn't bad! After that we headed out towards the Amador islands (I think) which are some islands just off the coast that are connected with a man-made peninsula. Trying to find our way there led to a local telling us to drive the wrong way down a one-way street. Sure, what could go wrong? Turns out there were police on the street and they called us out on it. At first they asked for our paperwork and everything, but we just kept asking them for directions until they told us and let us go. We eventually made it to Amador and hung around there for a bit, saw some big yachts, drank some coffee, nothing crazy. Time to head back to the police station now. We sat inside for an hour and a half with the Lithuanians waiting for the secretary general to complete our paperwork... Finally she gave us some document of some sort then told us to leave. Whatever... Now it was time to get to Portobelo. We hit the road and tried to beat the rain... No dice. Of course. Soaked, we arrived at captain jack's hostel. Seemed like a cool place. We met a guy who was travelling from Germany, had been here for 3 weeks, then decided to buy a brand new motorbike. The Unico Samuray 150 cost him $1200US brand new, including helmet... How can you say no? He was planning to ride it up to Alaska... Good luck buddy! The rest of the evening consisted of cervezas and wandering the town...pretty chill evening in a pretty chill town.
No comments:
Post a Comment