A good day for a mugging ....

I had found a hostel and checked in. I took a little nap and woke a little stir crazy from the bus ride, so I decided to go for a little walk. I walked all the way to old town which was about 3 miles away. It was getting very hot, so I grabbed some lunch and decided to head back. Full of lunch I came to the conclusion that I'd just walk it off instead of taking a taxi. I had walked around 30 minutes when I realized I was in the area of my hostel but did not know exactly where it was. I rounded a corner and saw a run down apartment complex with younger men yelling at me. I ignored them and continued walking. I made it another 30 feet when a young man stood in front of me. He grabbed me by my lower shirt with his left had, and reached into my pockets with his right. Being a warrior I had a natural reaction; I grabbed his left hand with my right, twisted his arm, and gave him a good left hook to his face. Instantly I was knocked to the ground by an unknown force. I got up as fast as I could to continue the fight when I was slammed to the wall. There were four of them and one was holding a knife to my upper pelvis area. Once the first guy who I punched started pulling money out of my pockets one of the guys holding me let go, and the guy with the knife removed it. A guy removed my passport, I grabbed it, and kicked him in the stomach. Ready to run, I noticed they had to began to run. I felt it was fear of the new fight in me, but this was not the case. Two Panamanian National Police had seen me getting mugged and were chasing them. I stood there in shock for a good 20 seconds when a gun fight broke out. I started running away from the sound of firing, when a third police man told me to run with him. "ARE YOU CRAZY!?!" I yelled, and decided to follow anyway. Before I knew it there were police everywhere. They had caught one of them and put him in the back of a police pickup truck that had a cover over it. They then started to ask him questions with answers that the police apparently didn't like because then they began to taze him. They must of tazed him 10 times for about 5 seconds each time. I don't know if you've ever been tazed before, but I give props to the kid for not passing out after the third. They had caught another and they asked me to identify him in the back of a police car, I identified positivly. They told me to get in one of the police trucks and they brought me to the station. They told me that they don't file reports for tourist and that I had to wait for the tourist police. The tourist police took me another place that didn't seem like a police station at all, and sat me down. After about 20 minutes a man walked up and told me he was my translator. He spoke english really well, buuuuuutttttt reeeeeaaaalllllyyyy slllloooooowwwww. He asked me where I was staying, I had told him that I didn't remember because I wasn't there for very long, and I had a piece of paper in my pocket, which was taken, if he could get me the internet I could find it in no time. "OUR GOVERMENT CAN'T AFFORD THE INTERNET!" He said very angerly, with his raised slow english talking voice. He soon informed me that I couldn't file the police report there, and we had to go somewhere else that had juresdiction. Yet again another police station, they brought me down stairs and sat me there. I sat for a good hour or so when they told me that one of my assalants was shot, and they were ready for my report. The report took forever because the translator talked just as slow in spanish as he did english. Once we finished he told me they had sent a tourist police to pick me up and bring me back to my hostle. "I'll just walk" I replied jokingly, which he did not find funny whatsoever. I was mugged at about 3:30pm and finished the report around 10:30pm. I was taken back to my hostel, and fell asleep instantly. I woke when a man shook me and said "Alvin, your friends are here.""Not another mugging!" I cried. It was not, in fact, it was the sweet sweet faces of Dean and Bob. Ok, maybe their faces aren't so sweet, but after all that had happen I was ready to no longer be alone. My hostel was full so we took a cab to another hostel that they had found which was much better. We are now trying to figure out how to get to Columbia. There are boats that take five days and stop at islands, or there are plane flights. The planes are a little cheaper, and to the point. The boats have meals that come with them, and seem like a really awesome experience. I guess it's down to the democracy of the group.

Dutch people, Designer socks, and Danger.

I ended up staying in a hostle that night. I was having a beer with a couple of guys I met in the Bearded Monkey. I started to talk about how there were so many casinos in San Jose and none of them had poker. Right as I said this a beautiful dutch woman came up to me and asked if I wanted to play poker. There's only one right answer to a smoking hot dutch girl asking you to play poker, so we were on our way. She was staying in San Jose being a tour guide, she loved to play poker, and had met a guy at the last game that knew of another tonight. He picked us up, and brought us to this casino 20 miles out of town. We started playing a tournament of Texas Hold'em. It must have been about 95% locals, a couple of older retired folk, and us. I've never in my life got such great hands. I must have got 5 straights in 10 hands. This was great for my winning, but then everybody started looking at me and whispering in spanish. We both made it to the final table where you start getting money. She had been knocked out in 7th place, and I was still going strong. Many people followed her, and I came out with 2nd, which paid $250. This made me fear for my well being because all these people knew I was atleast carrying $250. We soon left, and had two more guys in the car then we came with. This is where things get really scary, and even more akward. The following events take place in the car while Norah Jones plays in the background: The man in the passenger seat had a backpack, he opened it and pulled out a hand gun. I started sweeting bullets. He then contined by pulling out bags of something, I came to the conclusion he was a drug dealer, which didn't really put me at any more ease. He handed something to the driver (the man we came with), he looked it over for a while, then handed it back. This is when I saw what it was, not drugs ....... but designer socks. OF COURSE!!! The man was a designer sock dealer! He dropped the two men off, then brought the dutch girl and I back to the hostle. There are very few things in this world that can make me feel akward, but there are even less that are so akward I start to cry, and this my friends is one of those. She asked if I wanted to play the following night and I told her I was indifferent. I went to bed around 4, and woke up to loud noises at 8 where I immediatly had the urge to continue south. I took a cab to the bus station and got a ticket at noon to Panama City. The trip is a 17 hour bus ride so they play movies. Lucky for me they happened to play one of my all time favorites .... Big Mama's House ...... in Spanish! Yipee! We got Panama city at 3:30ish in the morning. This sucked because I didn't really have any plans or anywhere to stay. I found a dutch guy traveling with his canadian girlfriend, I asked them where they were going and they didn't know. So I followed them. They jumped on some random bus, and we were taken to a really sketchy part of town. We decided to find a lighted area, and hang out until the sun cam up. Once up I left them to go get some food. The man at the counter helped me order, so I started to talk with him. He was wondering why me (a gringo) was in this part of town, and said it was very dangerous for me. Natrually I replied that "Danger is my middle name", he thought this was funny and felt he had to tell everyone that my name was Danger, and that it was a challege for him to pick someone for me to fight. I quickly corrected him and started walking away .... fast. Now it's time for me to find somewhere to live for the night.

All by myself ....

We hit the parties at the bearded monkey pretty hard for 3 days. We had decided that Bob and Dean would head to the embassy, ryan would be on his way, and I would continue south for much needed alone time. Because of these reasons we said we´d only have a few beers and we´d hit the sack early, but as always this was not the case. Insted we had many beers, hit the dark roads rolling deep with 10 of our new friends, bought and shared a bottle of rum, had some more beers, and went to bed at 4 or 5 when we needed to get up around 7. Somehow we did get up at 7, Bob and Dean packed and headed for the embassy while Ryan and I had breakfast. At around 9 I left for the bus station and found a bus leaving for San Jose, Costa Rica at 11. While waiting for the bus I met a really awesome british guy, and a Czech guy who spoke spanish flulently, which would later help me in my travel. The bus was 8 hours long, and had many stops, one of which was a beautiful eatery that had the most amazing view of Costa Rican beaches. We got to San Jose around 8 and waited for a girl that was friends with the czech guy, but had got on a bus 30 min later. Since I had no plans I decided to follow them to the place where there were staying, and we shared a room. I woke this morning, and said my goodbyes. Now I´m sitting here deciding whether I want to wait for Bob and Dean at a hostal or continue to panama city. The world will never know .... until it happens.

Stuck in Nicaragua

We stayed in the hostle in Leon for a couple of days. We decided that it was time to head south so we grabbed our packs, and walked the mile to the Bus area. The next large city down was Managua about 50 kilometers away. We threw our bags on top of a family looking van and paid a dollar or so for the ride. While on the drive we found out one of the other travelers in the bus was from Oregon, which is a little weird since we have met so many people down here from Oregon. We got to Managua, ate lunch, and jumped on another van to the beautiful city of Gernada. We had met a guy in the Leon hostle that worked in a hostle in Gernada caslled the Bearded Monkey, so that is now where we are residing. We were talking to this retired navy guy who owns a bar down the street from the Bearded Monkey, and he told us that we were probably going to have problems with getting Bob out of this country because the van is directly attached to his passport. We decided that we should probably go to the embassy insted of just trying to bribe, or sneak Bob across the border. The Embassy isn´t open until Monday, so we´ve been crashing in Gernada, partying hard (always), and meeting a lot of amazing people. I really wish I could write about every amazing person we´ve met so far. They come from every corner of the world, and are here for a million different reasons. BUT ALAS!!! There are not enought hours in this life to write of every other persons life, so you´re stuck with my stories.

No Van. Nicaragua. Night.

We left Flo early the 19th to get on the move. We were going to go through Honduras because we were told that El Salvador was very dangerous and any white man that entered was dead on site. We ended up taking a wrong turn (or two), and ended up going through El Salvador. In El Salvador the roads were amazing, and we didn´t get any problems from the locals or the authorities. We made it through El Salvador in hours, and got to the southern Honduras border at night. They wouldn´t let us enter that night because of paper work issues, and the person at the post didn´t have enough authority to let us through. We parked in a gas station parking lot and waited for the morning. The next morning Dean and Bob went to get what we needed while Ryan and I sat in the van. Ryan and I sat ..... and sat .... and sat, until (four hours later), we had what we needed to continue. A mile into the country we were stopped at a check point and asked for our papers. We gave our papers and were told to get out of the car by the police. They then explained that my drivers licenes was expired (which is was not). The date on the licenes reads 05/01/09, which we all know is May 1st 2009. In Honduras they don´t read it this way, they read it Day/Month/Year, Janurary 5th 2009. We picked up a little trick from the Czechs; we have all the time in the world, they do not, so stall, and talk about calling the embassy to fix things. This worked ...... for the first of many harassment stops. At the next stop we were told that we had to pay them so they could get booze . At the next we were "fined" for not having "reflective triangles" on the van. At the next it was for the lack of fire extingisher. Many stops later, and with little money we found the border. We found there was no ATM, and we didn´t have enough money for us and the van to enter Nicaragua. For fear the rest of the countries would harass us for the van, I was insantly in favor of dithching the van. This was not an option because the van was attached to Bob´s passport, and he could not leave the country if not with the van. We got our passports stamped and convinced the border people to clear Bob´s passport. Now we talked about selling the van. We found a kid who was in love with the idea of picking it up for $20, so we started the process. Many hours later this process wasn´t working, and there was a crowd of astonised onlookers wanting to veiw the $20 van. Then all hell broke loose when people started trying to buy things out of the back of our van. We quickly pulled out our bags and anything we found we needed and let the crowed go to town. We gave most of it up for free, but I picked up $10 for an old pair of running shoes I brought, and Bob got $10 for the spare tire. After about 6 hours of this the kid told us that we had to bring it to Nicaragua to sell it to him. He also told us he´d pay for all the fees. We got it in with a lot of ease, and started driving. The kid went a little ahead because he didn´t want to be associated with us. We met him a mile into the country where he then decided he didn´t want the van anymore, only the $10 he had spent getting it in. We were alright with this because it meant we could keep the van. We started driving, and I laid down in the back to get some rest. I woke to the motion of stopping, and the smell of burning rubber. We had popped a tire, BAD! We got out, and immeditly decided that it was no longer worth anything to us, and that it has brought us much further then we ever expected. We took the plates, and VINs off the van when a young farm boy walked up to laugh at us. Dean gave the keys to him, and we threw on our packs and headed down the road. Less then a kilometer away we hitched a ride in a small truck that was delivering dough to bakeries. He brought us to the capital Leon, where we are staying the night at a hostel with many other gringos. So no more van, everything from here on is survival training ..... and luck. Pray for us.

Picking up gringos, and punk rawk french women.

Not a lot of time to update, but we'll do a fast recap of the last couple of days. Got to the Guatemalan border, got hassled by con-artist for many hours, but eventually made it through. Started driving in Guatemala and saw a gringo hitch-hiking, picked him up, and continued. His name is Ryan, he hails from Texas, and he completed the fellowship. Met someone on couchsurfing.com who said she'd let us stay at her house. Her name was Flotche (Flo for short), she is a french woman that teaches english in Guatamala, she was part of an all woman punk band, and knows how to party. Brought us out a couple of nights, and showed us around the country. She's an amazing host, but an even more amazing person. This morning we left her house, and are on our way (with Ryan) to Costa Rica, with many countries in between. Thanks for reading .......

Driving driving driving ....

After leaving Mazatlan we drove, and drove, and drove a little more. Bob saw a guy on a bike pulling a trailer carrying a surf board, so we thought we'd stop and see if he wanted a ride. We found that he was a french man that was just biking to find some waves, but unfortunutly didn't want a ride because we were driving away from the coast. We gave him 'Good luck' and continued our drive. Stopped at Guadalajara, ate ..... drove some more. I drove into a town outside of Mexico City, and woke Bob so I could catch some rest. I couldn't get any serious sleep, because we were driving on such crudy roads, and at times I was catching up to 2 to 3 feet of air when Bob didn't realize that there were speed bumps and hit them going 40 plus miles per hour. When I woke all the way three hours later I found that Dean and Bob had got lost, and had just got out of the city, which really screwed up the driving through the night thing, but I'm glad we got lost there at 2 in the morning insted of at rush hour. We continued driving thorugh the day. Southern Mexico has many windy roads high up in the mountains, which makes driving really long, and the driver even more irritable. It was dark and Bob was driving when someone began tailing us very close. We became very irritated by this so we pulled over so he could pass, but once we pulled over he pulled over as well. We thought he wanted a fight so I reached for my knife and went into battle mode. We noticed his plates were from the EU, and wondered if we came across another french man. He got out and walked towards us. He told us he was low on gas and asked if we had any to spare. We didn't, but told him we'd follow him so if he ran out we could give him a lift to the next station. He eventually ran out of gas, stopped, we met his friend, threw him in the back, left his friend there, and went on search for gas. We went many miles and found nothing but small little villages. So we asked a lady, and she had informed us that there was a local man down the street that sold gas. We had found him, drunk, and followed him into a dark court yard where he took the Gasless man, and Bob left the van to get the gas. There were many eyes on us, and Dean and I started to feel unsafe. Lucky ten minutes later, Bob and the guy came back and we brought the gas to their car. We decided to stop at a gas station with them, then follow them to get some cervezas. We talked for hours over many cervezas and found out much about them. Their names were Michal and Martin, they were from Czechoslovakia, they had been sponsered to drive from there, through Russia, South Korea, The United States, Mexico, Central America, and were probably ending at Brazil. They had many fun stories, and much good advice. We decided to park the cars close to each other and crash out somewhere along the highway. Went to sleep, woke to the sound of them getting out of the car. We exchanged e-mails and websites, and talked of meeting in Panama. We got in the van, and continued the drive. Now we are in Tapachula, a border town in southern Mexico. We plan on leaving for Guatamala tomorrow morning.

A stuck van and bathing in the ocean ....

After leaving Guaymas, I drove 7 hours. Dean picked up driving for another 2 hours to bring us into the town of Mazatlan a tourist beach town. We drove through the poor town to get to a beach littered by condos and large hotels. Had a little dinner, and started walking around to find a place that we could park the van and get a little sleep. We found a parking lot that was open and led to the beach. Almost immediately we happened to get our van stuck in the sand, and the rear wheels so deep that we were resting on the gas tank. After an hour of digging ourself even further in the ground we decided a tow was the only way. We started out from our beach front, and were yelled out by some garbage men. After a lot of sign language, and much bad spanish we came to the conclusion they wanted to help tow us out using the dump truck. We attached a rope to the frame of the van and to the dump truck. The van came out with ease, and we gave the men $30 for their help. We then thought that bathing in the ocean was a good idea, so we did so by sharing a bar of soap and drinking from a bottle of wine. Once so fresh, and so clean clean, we started to dry off at the van. Then came the cops, who spoke no english, but could communcate very well that we weren't supposed to be swimming during the night. So we jumped in our van, soaked, and found a place where we wouldn't be bothered and and hit the rack.

In the begining there was a start .....

We started our journey at 3 in the morning from Chino Hills, California. As we drove the first leg of our journey in the white 1990 chevy van Dean was fast asleep getting rested for his turn. Bob drove 3/4 the way to Phoenix, Arizona. Once there we woke Dean to drive, but Bob felt a new will to drive and pushed forward to Tucson. I was fast asleep in the back due to only having one hour of sleep the night before, I woke 50 miles to the border. Once at the border, we were stopped because of the shystyness of our van. They held us in a place that they call a "waiting room", but resembled more a cell then anything. After a 45 minute wait they released us and told us of the insanity that is our trip. We attained visas, and international insurance for mexico, and started the drive. Many hours later we ended up in the port town of Guaymas. We parked near the port, and shacked up for the night. This morning we were awaken by the blasting of the sweet sweet of so sweet sound of 50dbs of Mexican pop music. Now I sit here in Burger Kind using the free wifi, we intend to update as much as possible, but do not know the availability of the internet, or where burgerkings may be located. Until next time.