A Brief Update

Hey everyone! Just jumping on here to let you know what we´re up to. We left Utila, Honduras and headed for Nicaragua. We lost Michelle, who decided to stay and complete her Master Diver course (I'm jealous!), but we traded her in for Dave and Lucy - a Brit and a Czech. They both came along to Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua, before we dropped Lucy off at the airport. We had some run ins with the policia who are absolutely horrendous - I spent five days jumping from station to station tracking down my driver´s license after one of them chose to confescate it! Dave continued on with us as we made our way to Granada, a colonial city on the shore of Lake Nicaragua which is so big you can´t see the other shore. We got a tour of the city from Alan, a guy we met in the market. Nicaraguan history is crazy - look it up some time (especially a guy named William Walker!).
After a couple of days there, we decided to make a break for the Costa Rican border. Granada at least showed us that the country does have a nice side, but after paying $40+ dollars in fines and bribes for less than three days of driving, we were just fed up and ready to get the hell out.
The Nic.-CR border is easily the most frustrating crossing we have made thus far, yet ironically the cheapest. It took nearly six hours to get through the throng of offices and free-lance ´helpers´clamouring for tips. While I got to know a group of Central American truckers, all of us waiting on an old man with failing vision and a faulty computer to issue our temporary vehicle permits, Thai and Dave sat in the car and got serenaded by a thoroughly gay 15-year-old who danced to the radio and otherwise peddled Chicklets and cocaine - he took quite a liking to Dave in those couple of hours too. After I got my permission and we jumped the car battery (Thai killed it playing music for their newfound dancing queen), we said our tearful goodbyes and entered the country.
We quickly turned East, heading for Tortuguero on the Caribbean coastline via Hwy 4. We had to stop for the night in Upala, as the border crossing had taken most of the day. We continued on in the morning, making it to Cariari where we must leave the car and take a boat the rest of the way. Tortuguero lies in a permenant flood plain making it impossible to drive to. So we are stuck here for the night and must wait for a river boad first thing tomorrow.
As always, we hope all is well at home. We´ll try and post some pics as soon as possible.