After three days of doing nothing, we packed up and left our refuge. The local road between the villas was steep and slow until we reached the main road in San Juan del Sur. After a few moments, we encountered a police checkpoint. Routine inspection of our documents. No problem. "Seguro," said one of the officers. What the hell, we do not have any car insurance issued in Nicaragua. So far, none of the countries on our way required it. US insurance is not enough for them. At the border, there was no indication that we needed additional insurance to be able to travel in Nicaragua. How to fix the problem? The police would not let us go. Not knowing the local practices, I did not want openly bribe the police. One of the officers started talking about an expensive ticket. "Wait, let's try something," I said to my wife and got out of the car. I quickly found a small box in the back. I felt that giving it directly to an officer might be a wrong move. I gave it to my wife in the front seat instead. "Open it up and show him what's inside," I told her. We both watched the policeman's reaction. The black box contained sunglasses with interchangeable mirrored lenses. Everything neatly arranged inside. His eyes widened and we noticed a soft smile. "Me friend," he said. He was like a kid waiting for a birthday present. There was no doubt he loved it. Eva closed the box and handed it to him. With pride on his face, the policeman left to show the gift to his colleagues. We were free to go.

It is only a 45-minute drive from the coastal city of San Juan del Sur to the Costa Rican border. About 10 km before the border, we encountered another police checkpoint. We were stopped again. Before, there were so many checkpoints in Nicaragua and no one bothered to stop us, but today we were out of luck. Exactly the same routine check and obviously insurance is missing. The young policeman was very interested in gadgets. A Maglite flashlight mounted under my seat caught his attention. "Oh shit," I said to Eva, "we will have to sacrifice it." Unfortunately, the cost of buying a flashlight is much higher than the free sunglasses I received in the mail as an unwanted marketing gift. Let the flashlight be my last resort, I thought, and handed the officer our US insurance, saying "seguro internacional," that is, international insurance. He repeated my words smiling, indicated that everything was fine, we could go. What a relief

After another few minutes, we were at the border, doing the Nicaraguan departure formalities. I asked if local car insurance was really required. "Yes, of course," the official at the counter replied in a lazy mood. It was a detail that I had missed while preparing for this trip. Sometimes it's hard to find something you do not know you should be looking for.

The next step, as usual, was the formalities related to the country you are entering, in this case Costa Rica. We got entry stamps quickly, but the car permit took longer. It was because of the lunch break. We were sitting idly for half an hour. The total time to cross the border was two hours. This is the average for us in this part of the world.