Florida USA to Nicaragua Road Trip Archives

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #10: Chinandega, Nicaragua to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua (aka HOME)

January 7th, 2019susanafield0 Comments

Dear Reader, I am writing to you from my bed in my home. John and I arrived this afternoon. We are really tired. And super jazzed (if such a thing is possible when one is really tired) to be home. The morning started at our hotel in Chinandega. We were the only clients in the hotel and discovered that our toilet didn’t have any water in the tank after we’d already gone to bed. Oh well, John noticed there were bathrooms in the lobby if we had to do anything more than pee. I thought of checking to see if …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #9: Playa El Zonte, El Salvador, through Honduras & to Chinandega, Nicaragua

January 6th, 2019susanafield1 Comment

Dear Reader, We are almost home! Four and a half hours and we will be home. But first we must rest and sleep and let the night turn to day. This morning we awoke to bird song in a lovely setting in El Salvador. We’d slept well and felt excited about our proximity to home. After a great cup of coffee and a wonderful breakfast by the pool, we were out of there. Only two more border crossings to go. Well, four actually, in that we still had to leave El Salvador, enter into Honduras, leave Honduras and enter into …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #8: Ratalhuleu, Guatemala to Playa El Zonte, El Salvador

January 5th, 2019susanafield1 Comment

Dear Reader, Yesterday was rough. Our five-hour delay at the Guatemala border and then the horrific Guatemalan roads along CA-2 kicked our butts. John was so anxious that he announced last night that we were going to hit the road at first light this morning and would just get our coffee and breakfast along the way. I did not like that idea. CA-2 is not an easy road to find coffee and breakfast along the way. As it was, all night we heard traffic going by. (I was too cranky and tired last night to remember to spray our lavender …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #7: Tapachula, Mexico, to Ratalhuleu, Guatemala

January 4th, 2019susanafield4 Comments

Dear Reader, Today involved a lot of standing around at the border. And then some crazy driving in Guatemala to get to our hotel. We’re tired. We’re cranky. We’re ready to be home already. We spent five hours at the border. Getting our personal visa stamps to exit Mexico and then to enter Guatemala went smoothly enough. I first wrote “went smoothly” but it occurred to me that you would think that that meant that it went smoothly, as in when things go smoothly in the United States. So I qualified my statement by writing “smoothly enough.” Because first the …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #6: Coatzacoalcos to Tapachula, Mexico, and the Guatemalan Border

January 3rd, 2019susanafield1 Comment

Dear Reader, Today we drove from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, from sea level up to 3,300 ft and then back down to sea level. The roads were primarily two lane, sometimes potholed, and for the most part very crowded until we got past the large town of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the highlands, about halfway through our day’s travel. If the cost of tolls is any indication of the quality of the roads, today we spent $21 on tolls, yesterday we spent $40, and the day before, when we were bypassing Mexico City on those lovely roads, …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #5: Ajijic to Coatzacoalcos, Mexico

January 2nd, 2019susanafield5 Comments

Dear Reader, We bid our friends goodbye after quietly seeing the New Year in with them the night before and got back on the road. Our main focus is to get to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, as quickly and safely as possible, with our sea kayaks and gear intact. The guests currently staying in our home though are there until January 7th, so it doesn’t do us any good to arrive before then. But any time after that is fair game. What I have not yet mentioned here is that we not only are road tripping from Florida to …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #4: Visiting Friends in Ajijic, Mexico

January 1st, 2019susanafield3 Comments

Dear Reader, It turns out that some very dear friends of ours from Seattle are staying in Ajijic for a month or so. Glen, in fact, introduced John and I thirty five some years ago via a sea kayaking trip he’d put together for friends in Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Although we live far apart, we’ve had a history over the past four years of being near enough to each other during travels to enable our get togethers: twice they visited us in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, where John and I were working and Glen and …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #3: Laredo, Texas to Ajijic, Mexico

January 1st, 2019susanafield0 Comments

Dear Reader, Our La Quinta hotel was right next to a Shell gas station that also had a money changer and a Mexican auto insurance vendor, all of which were open 24 hours, so our day began at the Shell station. From there, we crossed the Rio Grande river at the International Bridge 2. There was little traffic leaving the US so we moved straight through with just a cursory glance by a custom’s agent at our kayaks and through the windows into the back of our truck. So that part was easy. The bitch was trying to get to …

Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #2: Alabama to Mexico’s Border at Laredo, Texas

January 1st, 2019susanafield1 Comment

Dear Reader, We said goodbye to family and headed west, with the border crossing at Laredo, Texas, as our destination. The drive from Orange Beach, Alabama to Laredo, Texas, took us two days. Since we didn’t have our heavy and side-vision-impairing pop-top camper on the back of the truck, we didn’t have to take the slower, albeit more aesthetically pleasing, side roads and instead joined the holiday travelers on the I-10 interstate the day after Christmas. And, since we weren’t making our usual return trip all the way back to Colorado after a holiday spent in Alabama along its affectionately …

The Pink Kayak Swerves West on a Mega Road Trip: Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #1

December 30th, 2018susanafield4 Comments

Dear Reader, Alas, bad news for those of you chomping at the bit to read of Miss Pink and Baby Blue’s continuing paddle along the Florida Circumnavigational Paddling Trail this winter. Instead they are heading overland from where they spent the winter in my sister’s garage in Winter Park, Florida, near Orlando (after we relocated them from the Homossasa Marina last July) on top of our truck to their new home in Nicaragua. Yep. Nicaragua. And yep, that’s a long-ass road trip. So, why the change of plans? Finances, mostly. John and I are retired and we’re attempting to live …