On December 10, we started retracing my route back as I pointed out various places that I had camped or had stopped for lunch. At one point, when I was driving, I was stopped by the police for speeding. They didn't actually have a radar gun so they could not tell me how fast I was going. Since I had been conveniently stopped in front of the police station, they asked me to come in and an officer wearing dark glasses suggested that I could pay them $20 there at the station or pay $60 at the border. I paid the bribe and we continued on to David where we had lunch in the Youth Hostel that I had stayed at.

        We soon reached the border of Panama and Costa Rica. On the Panama side, we had to empty everything out of the car, fill out numerous forms and pay endless fees. On the Costa Rican side, it was more paperwork and more money and after about one hour, we were on our way.

        We stopped in Palmer Norte to fill up on gas and then took the road along the Pacific Coast and stopped to camp south of Dominicte on the same spot I had camped a few days earlier. My father slept in the car and I tried to set up my tent beside the car but another tent pole broke so I slept under the stars until it started to rain when I was forced into the car as well.

        On December 11, I wanted to re-enact my trip over "Death Mountain" as my video camera had been broken at that point and I wanted to make sure I got some footage of that event. We made our way to San Isidro, unloaded the bike from the car and took various shots of me and the bike. We then reloaded the bike and drove up to Villa Mills, unloaded the bike again and took more video pictures of me roaring down the hill at 60 mph. Finally, we drove to the top of the mountain and took shots of my triumphal arrival to the top. We had lunch at the summit and then started the long downhill towards Cartago. Just before arriving there, we again unloaded the bike and took shots of me climbing the mountain.

        In Cartago, we stopped to visit the people who had invited me for lunch on my way to Panama. They welcomed us in again and we stayed for crackers and tea and talked about my trip. I gave them some pictures, bid them farewell and carried on to San Jose. We checked into the same hotel that I had stayed in for several days in November.

        My main object of returning to San Jose was to pick up the video tape of the interview that had been done about my trip. We found the TV station and I met the woman that I had talked to several times about getting a copy of the tape. After waiting for about an hour, she returned and said that she was not able to find the video. They would have to find the journalist that did the interview, so to pass some time, my father and I went to see a movie in the local mall. We then returned to the TV station and, after another wait, the cleaning lady arrived with the tape.

        We then continued on towards the Nicaraguan border but it was dark so we decided to camp at the side of the road and cross the border in the daytime.

        On December 13, we packed up and arrived at the Costa Rican border too early as they had not opened and we had to wait an hour for a customs officer to arrive. We had breakfast while we waited. When the officer arrived, it was fairly quick and easy to get past the Costa Rican customs. As we made our way to the Nicaraguan Customs, a guide quickly latched onto us. First we got our passport stamped then went to another part of the building to process the permit for the car. We paid the fees and then were told to go to another part of the compound to get some photocopying done. After the photocopying, we returned to the main building thinking we would finish the paper work but we were told to drive to another area where the police inspected the car. While the car inspection was going on, our guide took us to yet another area to get some more photocopying done. With the car inspection done, we returned to the main building again, finished the paper work and paid the guide. Not far up the road, we are stopped again and had to pay another fee to have our car sprayed. After two hours, we finally cleared the border crossing and were on our way into Nicaragua.

        We drove into Managua to try and locate someone my dad had met on the way down but had no luck in finding him. We had lunch in the mall, filled up with gas and left the city. We decided to take the road that ran along the Pacific towards Leon. As we approached Leon, the brakes started to fail despite the fact that they had been repaired on the trip down to Panama. We limped into Leon and found a garage that did a make-shift repair job and we were on our way again.

        The road became progressively worse with gigantic potholes that were almost impossible to avoid. We were reduced to driving 40 km/hour as we steered around these endless land mines. The further we went, the worse it became. As it started to get dark, we decided it was too dangerous to drive so we found a spot beside the road to camp.

        On December 14, we continued on the road from hell, passing kids filling up the potholes with dirt and then putting out their hand for money. We finally reached the Nicaraguan/Honduras border. We checked out of Nicaragua and, as we approached the Honduras customs, we were surrounded by people with endless schemes to relieve us of our money. We sat in the car for a few minutes working out a game plan. We got out of the car and were immediately surrounded by people wanting to help for a fee. I screamed out "No Gracias" as loud as I could but they just laughed. A woman with a customs ID latched onto us and we started the process. The first window we got the passport stamped, the second window there was more paper work and more money, a third window, more paper work, more money and then up the hallway for photocopying, back to the previous window for more paper work and finally to another window for paper work and money.