it begins

After 80 days at sea, my bike finally arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica on July 12. I was contacted by the freight agent and told to meet their representative outside the local shopping mall at 8am the following day. I was a happy man. They warned me however that the process of securing a temporary import visa for my bike could take a while so we better get started early.

Leading up to this moment, Charlie and I have been joined by Tom and Alex, two likable characters from Seattle, USA. Both about 24, they have been riding their Suzuki DR650's South from Washington State since April 2nd and had been traveling with Charlie until he had to break off to meet me in Costa Rica a month ago.

With Charlie well out of commission with a super stomach bug, Alex volunteered to help me collect my bike. Apart from a genuinely helpful nature, Alex brings two skills I regretfully lack; fluent Spanish and a sound mechanical knoweldge of motorbikes. They were sure to come in handy with the jungle of paperwork and bike reassembly soon to be ahead of us.

We woke early, helped ourselves to a buffet breakfast and headed out to meet our freight representative. As it turns out, they too had foreseen a linguistic nightmare so they arrived complete with a translator. Jose was a confident, cheeky looking local Costa Rican who spoke fluent American English. I think Jose has lived more in his short 23 years on this planet than most can manage in 2 lifetimes. Over the next 10 hours we learn there is a lot more to Jose than a helpful translator. His resume reads a little differently than most with cocaine dealer and scam share trading being two career highlights to date. Unable to run thanks to only slight use of his right leg after breaking his back on a motorbike, he was robbed of his wallet at knifepoint leaving the local red light district only the week before meeting him. 9 months earlier he crashed his BMW drunk after being dumped by his girlfriend. Despite this and the many more colourful stories he shared, we liked him. He is a man that does push his life to the limit and I still have a eerie feeling that his luck will eventually run out before it should. I hope I'm wrong.

Collecting the motorbike from the depot was a bureaucratic joke. We spent 10 hours jumping from building to building, form to form, suburb to suburb and official to official but finally I had my bike. Finally....

Alex, Jose and I reassembled the bike and after reconnecting the battery, my wonderful machine started first time like I only rode it yesterday.

Alex hopped on the back and we headed to the gas station to fill up. I knew as soon as I pulled out of the driveway that something was up, the bike handled like a pig. 80 days at sea had knocked the wind out of the tyres and left them dangerously low. Easy fix though and in a few moments we were away again. 10 minutes later we were back at the hotel to find Charlie incapacitated with some type of suspected food poisoning.

We weren't going anywhere yet.