March 31st 2023, Santiago Matatlán. I suspect that Emelio Mato was catching 40 winks somewhere out back when I called into his roadside mazcal distillery on the edge of Santiago Matatlán. The distillery, a fairly ramshackle affair, was set back from the road by about...

March 30th 2023, Salinas Cruz, Mexico. It's not long after crossing the border from Guatemala into Mexico that it begins to dawn on me that this is a huge, like a massive, massive, country. No great revelation there seeing as Mexico has been more or less as it is now...

March 27th 2023, Antigua, Guatemala. The gods have blessed Antigua. Once the capital of Guatemala, they wrecked it in the late 18th century but in doing so, almost certainly stopped it turning into just another sprawling Latin American city, choking with people and...

Match 24th 2023, Antigua, Guatemala. For the first time on this long journey, I have travelled with a biking buddy. I went from El Tunco in El Salvador to Antigua, Guatemala, a distance of some 260 kilometers and very largely an uneventful journey . . . until I fell...

March 21st 2023, San Salvador. Leaving Nicaragua was not as difficult as I feared it might be. The various officials at the frontier were, well, as they should be -- polite and efficient in their work, and I and the bike passed through their hands without incident,...

March 19th 2023, Coyolito, Honduras. I was stopped once more by the police in Nicaragua and, on this occasion, they could not have been more pleasant, friendly and professional. I am happy to be able to write that because it proves, again, that even in a society where...

Peter Murtagh in Managua. There is quite a contrast between Central America's Caribbean and Pacific coasts. With the exception of El Salvador and Belize, all of the other countries of the region -- Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico -- touch...

March 13th 2023, Chuita, Costa Rica. When I first heard the noise coming from the woods behind the beach, I thought it was a recording -- some sort of piped animal grunting through loudspeakers laid on by the authorities. Part of what one friend termed Costa Rica's...

Peter Murtagh at Camp Los Planes, Panama. The defunct army camp at Los Planes, some 460 kilometers west of Panama City has a new lease of life. Notwithstanding the fact that many of its timber clad buildings are literally falling apart, the former military base in the...

Peter Murtagh in Valle de Anton, Panama. Having air freighted myself and the bike across the Darién Gap and explored some of Panama City and the canal (see Tip2Top.ie), I got out of the city after a few days and headed west -- the short term goal being Costa Rica and...