photopia!!!!

El Gulfo

Such a pirate

Tajin Ruinas, Mexico

Puerto Arista, Mexico

OUR LAST NIGHT IN MEXICO

We had been driving for 14 hours, four of which we were lost in the beautiful city of Monterrey, Mexico. The only thing on our mind was a place to sleep. After a half harted attempt with no luck of finding a spot we threw out our tarp in a gravel pull out. Just 40 feet from the highway Shawny slept in the car and Ryan and I along side it. Ryan and I would wake through out the night blinded by semi trucks backing up and maneuvering to get there trucks back on the highway. Just before the sun rose I heard Ryan say "I think he's gong to hit the car." Delirious from sleep I felt unconcerned and unbelieving. Even fter I poked my head out my sleeping bag and saw the trucks bumper a few feet from the car I still didn't believe the truck would hit it. Just as I had put my head back down to fall back asleep Ryan was ripping himself from his sleeping bag and screaming HEY,HEY,HEY. When I looked back up the truck was pushing the car backwards. Awakened by the reality of the situation I found my way to my feet running even before I was free of my bag. by the time I had reached the cab of the semi and slammed my fist against the door a few time the truck had pushed the car a good ten or twelve feet back. The truck promptly put it in gear and pulled out on to the road without ever looking back. Shawny emerged from car frazzled and shocked. we sat there on the car laughing for a good five minutes, and decided, good riddance Mexico we are going home.

A HUGE THANKS TO OUR GREAT FRIENDS

After countless nights of horrible sleep, flat tires, dozens of police check points, and hours of driving. We woke this morning frustrated, tired, and with millions of bug bites. We drove into the city of Oaxaca to spend the day seeing what there is to see. When I checked my email I found that we had recieved some donations, and felt instantly loved, relieved, and with a renewed hope to get this car and us home. Thank you mucho mucho mucho to those friends of ours who have and are planning on donating. Another huge thanks to Nic Hogan for his second donation, youre a good friend, we all thank you, and cant wait to see your smilling face upon returning.
As we hit the boarder of Mexico we relized that we had made a huge error in reading the permit that ryan had obtained 10 months ago. you see we had left Guatemala thinking that the original permit was good for a year, and that we would have no trouble gettting into Mexico with out the title. Come to find out mexico and the rest of the world excluding the USA switch the day and the month when printing dates on documents, so in all actuallity the permit was only good for 190 days. So once again we were sitting outside the boarder defeated. If not for Ryan and his very diplomatic way of dealing with boarder gaurds we would of had to give up and leave the car in Guatemala. He pursuaded the gaurd to let us buy him dinner, and in return grant us a permit to enter the country with the car.
After driving all day we decided to stop at the ocean, where shawny and Ryan swam, and I had great conversations with some of the local drunks who couldnt believe that they were swimming at night. We returned the next morning and swam for hours, getting tossed and turned in the waves, and gaining back a little sanity. One thing someone should know when planning on driving through the whole country of mexico, is that you may go insane, youll get tired and want to be anywhere else, and then with in seconds you will see, hear, or experience something that will snap you out of the insanity and truley reveal the beauty of this country.
We looked at a map of all of North and Central America this morning while having a flat tire fixed, and realized that we havent even made it half way back. Making it back all in one piece with the car and all our stuff feels overwelming to say the least. Were optimistic though and feel confident that we have the abilitys and stamina to complete this wild journey.
Thanks again for all your support, keep us in your prayers and thoughts, and we´ll do the same. Ill try to get some pics up next post so hit it back.

Up to date updates

I would like to apologize for the lack of keeping this thing up to date and current. traveling as fast and as crazy as we have been has left us sleeping in tents, avoiding police, and pinching every penny to put into the gas tank.
We now sit here in Guatemala, We've gone through 4 country's now with the panamobile. Hours of driving, hours of sweating, days of excitement and pure boredom. we feel as if were in a movie as we swindle through boarders, dive to the bottom of the sea and meet magical lady's along the way.

Let me explain the chicks below for a second. The day that we got the car fixed my friend Travis flew in to Costa Rica. We saw these chicks being sold on the side of the road and decided that we needed to buy some. As you can tell by the pictures they're the cutest creatures on this planet, second to a panda bear which I'm not going to cuddle up against even though its tempting. Anyways we hid the chicks from shawn and ryan for about 20 hours, until ryan accused me of smuggling something in my suspicious brown box. We were going to be crossing the boarder the next day and the other guys said we should get rid of them. I was under the impression at this point that we could probably smuggle them accross the boarder, until a little later in the day the chicks almost got our car inspected and taken away by a local police officer. So the chicks needed a new home and we found one witha lady who let us sleep in her vacant office space in a horrible little town near the boarder of Costa Rica.

Just after we had crossed the boarder into Honduras after a lenthy wait and a little help from the American embasy, we were pulled over by a group of police officers. The told us to get out of the car as they searched it for who knows what drugs, alcohol, maybe baby chickens. Anyways none the less they were searching the ca for the first time since we started our journey back to the states. after a few minutes they let us go and told us to be careful of robbers along the way. The next mornig after we had camped in the woods that night by a radio tower shawn had notice that he was missing money fro his wallet and realized that the police had stolen his money the night earlier. Now alot of people have told us to watch out because we'll probably get robbed, we just didn't realize that the only time that we would get robbed on this trip would be by the
police.

so now the time comes to concure a Giant called Mexico. Ive been dredding driving back throught that country. Its the hottest place on the planet and a huge country to say the least. but tommorrow we'll enter into its boarders illegal and with one goal in mind, Getting this car and ourselves finally home.

Once again if your reading this you probably know Me(David), Ryan, or Shawn and we kinda need your help. We've gotten down to our last dollars, and were all thinking of going on the water diet( only water) all the way through mexico due to not having any money to get home. So what Im pleading, begging, and asking if you could drop a couple of dollars in the paypal account to the right(DONATE BUTTON) we would all appreciate it more then you know. Thanks again for all of your support. Also remember that any donation over 15$ we will send you a free DVD of In pursuit of Panama. Any donation will help though!!!!!!

love the Panamobile crew!!!

Our chicks

KAOSTIC

This last week has been extremely crazy! Lets start from when we got the car running in Costa rica sometime earlier this week. The day we recieved the car back from the mechanic we found out that the title for the car had been lost over the last 9 months in Costa Rica. This we knew would cause huge problems crossing the 6 or 7 boarders that lay ahead of us on our path back to the States. We also had no permit to be in Costa Rica, and the cars registration from the states was now 9 months expired. To say the least the car had not one thing legal about it in Costa Rica. We decided to bust it to the boarder and hope for some kind of miracle to get us through, even though we knew that there would be over a thosand dollars in fines and almost no way to get it into Nicaragua with out a title. We feared driving during the day because there are so many police check on the roads of Costa Rica, so we drove at night and hid out in some crazy places during the days. we avoided most the road blocks along the way except for one right before the boarder. The feeling was horrible as the cops questioned and asked for reasons why we had no paper work what so ever. To make matters worse, shawny some how entered the country with out recieving an entrance stamp into the country. The cops seemed more occupied by the fact that Shawny had no stamp then the car being illegal. We waited things out and they told us to take care of stuff at the boarder, which they reconfirmed would cost 1500 dollars to get the car out of the country.

As we went throught the steps of recieving our exit stamps on our passports we knew that getting the car out of the country would not be an easy task with armed gaurds everywhere, and no possible way to slip the car through the cracks. This did´nt deture us from trying though we hoped in the car and skipped the vehicle office in hopes that we could figure a way out with out them checking the car for the proper papers. As we aproached the exit gate a few cops stopped us to inspect the car for who knows what. They said the car looked weird and that we needed to open the hood. they looked under the hood and deemed the car ok. we proceeded on to the last gaurd before entering into Nicaragua. when we reached him he asked for our exit papers. We played dumb for a while and finally started flashing some bills in hopes that he would take the money and let us move on, but as soon as we showed him the money he walked to the gate and closed it, got on his phone and went into his booth. At this point we all felt doomed, the cars and our future looked bleek. We sent Ryan to the office to try and smooth things over but it just got more intense. We were holding up the line to get out of the country, there was a line of angry truckers behind us and no way to turn around. We were stuck with the gaurd calling for back up. just when we thought all was lost, a pesky boarder pirate who had been trying to rip us off earlier stepped in and did some negotiating with the boarder gaurd for us. after pooling all of our money together we came up with roughtly 140.00 dollars. To our suprise the Gaurd took the bribe and opened up the gate we were free of Costa Rica, with a whole new set of problems and a renewed hope that we could figure out a way to jimmy the sytem and get into to any country down here.

We found her about 4 miles up this road in the hills of a muddy finca(farm)

Our Route

We have arrived

Success!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have obtained the Panamobile from its muddy, jungle, hell. the last five days have been quite absurd to say the least. shawnys trekk is so classic of his luck. At one point he was escaping the rain under a highway viaduct sharing his only food with some homeless guys. I believe this was the night after he had to sleep behind a billboard next to the freeway in the middle of nowhere. We both got lost Trying to find the farm where the car was, shawn slept in a field the night he got lost and I actually was lucky enough to find the farm after hours of wondering around in the back woods of coasta rica in the dark. Needless to say we have got the car.
Oh yah it doent work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ok stop laughing and thinking we told you so!!!
We were able to tow the car to a small mechanic shop where they are at this time trying to figure out the problem and get us up and running. Ryans plane is probably landing as im writting this and he`ll most likely meet up with us today or tommorrow.
Shawn and I are probably the dirtiest we have been on this trip, we smell bad, we look bad and we just feel really homeless at this point. We cant help but burst out laughing when we look around and were in the middle of a mud field with a broken down car, no money in our pockets and smelling like a couple of old goat.
were excited t get on the road from here and feel the wind flowing through our nappy dirty hair.

I would like to thank every one who helped by going out to the premier of ¨In pursuit of Panama¨ and to our friend nic hogan for his donation to the cause(you can be like Nic too and help out by donating, just click the donate button to the right and help bring us home)
Love David and Shawny

Ometepe, paradise layover!!!

We wanted nothing more then to pirate this boat, and man its helm all the way to Costa Rica

The Layover

After finding out Ryan was coming out to meet us we needed to find somewhere, cheep , beautiful, and exciting. Well we did just that on the Island of Ometepe in the middle of lake Nicaragua. This place was paridise and really cheap it made for such a great lay over. The time came to leave and shawny took off down a river into the unknown jungles. I(David) will be meeting up with him and ryan in San jose in a couple of days where we will hopefully find the car and get her up and running again.

TRUCK´N

HITCH´N

when we set out three days ago we set a rule that if we had been sitting for more then an hour with no ride that we could pay for one to a better spot. Suprisingly we´ve traveled through 4 countrys and have only had to catch a bus for 20 minutes, the rest of the time we´ve been shoot´n the breeze with truckers, locals, and one generous American. I´ve been really suprised at how easy it is to hitch down here in these countrys. We´ve made it to southern Nicaragua in three days of hitching, were we recieved news from Ryan(owner of the car and maker of the documentry) that he´s bought a plane ticket and is on his way to Costa Rica to meet up with us. We´re really excited to be meeting up with Ryan and can´t wait for the adventure of bringing back that amazing car.

COSTA RICA HERE WE COME

Our plan when we started our motorcycle trip to Guatemala(click link to the right to view more) was to be gone for 2 months. This week marks are third month, and also the first week of our new adventure of going to save the Panamobile and bring it home. We're penniless travelers at this point. We've exhausted our budgets ten times over and were still heading south. We're on a mission now, we have a purpose again, and we feel just as nervous now as we did when we set out 3 months ago.
We're taking a bus to the city limits of Guatemala city this morning, where we'll stick out our thumbs, hold up our signs and hope for some good rides. This is definitely a different pace of traveling for us now. Before we would hop on our bikes and be a free as we wanted - now our path is uncertain. We plan on 4 or 5 days hitch to Costa Rica, but who know it may take much longer. For that reason we've packed light, bringing only the essentials and leaving the rest with some friends in Guate (thanks Janet and Claudia). We've got our trusty tent which has sheltered us so many nights on this trip, and a stove for food. We're hoping to meet some great people along the way and share these story's here. We're off now, so lend us some support . Send us a comment, add some pennies to the cause, give some adds some clicks(right side of page), and keep coming back for some great story's and a few pictures.
Thanks David & Shawn

Give some of the links some clicks to learn more about the Panamobile, and the great Adventure that got it to Costa Rica.