Did you ever wonder what happens to all the old school buses in the US?  No, neither did I, but we found the answer here in Central America.   They all get retired to this part of the world, painted lavishly like the old hippie buses of the 60's, and used for public transportation.

Wednesday, January 22^nd: The parts for Chris’ shock arrived last evening by DHL and in the morning he brings them to Larsson’s shop to start the repairs with Esteban. We are planning our departure from San Jose already when, in the afternoon, we discover that I have a seized bearing on the wishbone connecting piece of my shock, and Chris has a crack in the crash-bar frame under the engine, which is causing vibration when he rides. Well, all this means that we are forced to stay an extra day to get these fixed while we have the resources at our disposal.

That night, Norval picks us up (Chris, Jo Ann, and I) for a dinner with some of the club members we have gotten to know over the weekend. The restaurant is high up in the mountains with a striking view over San Jose. It is a restaurant known for its great local cuisine, as well as a cultural show on Wednesday nights. There is much music, dancing and singing (yes, we joined in). At the end there is a carnival type dance with masks and costumes, and a fireworks display off the outside patio.

After the music and dancing end, we are all staring out at the twinkling lights of San Jose below. Norval tells us a few interesting stories, unique to Costa Rica. We found them so interesting we had to pass them on.  Here is a sampling:

• When Costa Rica finally decided to replace it’s lovely painted oxcarts with motorcars, it began with a bang. The first two cars in all of Costa Rica, both out for a drive one day, somehow managed to ram into each other head-on, killing both drivers and demolishing both cars.

• San Jose was the 3^rd city in the world to get electricity. A local engineer went to the US and bought a generator. He returned back to San Jose and connected it to the street-lights illuminating the 4-block downtown area.

• Charles Lindberg, the famous flier, decided to stop in San Jose during one of his flights. The locals came out to cheer him on, crowding the runway. After making several passes over the runway, trying to wave away the excited people below, he was forced to drop a note into the crowd telling them to clear a path so he could land!

• There are many small suburbs surrounding San Jose. When people go into town to go to a celebration, often the whole village goes. One day the whole village went by train into town. When they returned that night, a bridge collapsed and the train overturned down the side of the mountain, effectively wiping out the whole village. For many, many years it held the grim world record for worst train disaster.

Thursday, Jan. 23^rd: Fixed up the bikes first thing in the morning. That night, Norval had us for dinner at his home where we had great home-cooked "Tico" meal and said our final good-byes to he and Jessica.

Friday, accompanying us on our ride to the border was Peter, a BMW club member and fellow F650 rider. We stopped at about the halfway point to have breakfast and chat about what Peter does for a living, which is creating and producing Latin shows for American television.   It was a nice ride, although heavy with traffic, to the border town of Liberia. While we stopped here to say goodbye to Peter, (we will see him again in California) --- Merv and Ruth turned up in the car they rented while family visited. They happened to be coming down from the volcano Arenal and stopped at the same place!

We finally got to the border just before 2pm, later than we would have liked. The Nicaraguan side of the border is notorious for taking ages with the paperwork. As we pulled up to the Costa Rican side, we ran into 3 4-WD’s from Estonia (on a world tour), and several motorbikes of a Pancho Villa tour group.  We all had to wait until the lunch break was over, and the offices re-opened at 2pm.  The Pancho Villa group were very nice and let us cut ahead of them in line.  I stayed by the bikes and had a nice chat with members of the tour group. One of the couples we had actually met this time last year while they were on their PV tour on the Caraterra Austral in Patagonia, Chile! Talk about a small world. 17 days into their 30-day trip they only had one casualty so far---- a brand new goldwing had broken its suspension and had to ride in the back of the support truck. All of the guides were very nice and offered to help us with spare parts or fluids if we needed it. We might see one of the guides again in Mexico City, where he lives.