Nicaragua - Time to Leave

I rode to San Juan Del Sur, a town that has long been commented on as a great place to visit. For some reason it didn’t really grab me. Certainly picturesque but there was something that made my intuition uneasy. Too touristy? Who knows. 

I rode around until I found a small guest house with secure parking in the back. It was homely and they were friendly and welcoming. I was sitting in the loungeroom when a young American guy came in with a huff, with dirt all over his back. The lady who had greeted me told him he needs to shower the dirt off. He didn’t understand what she said. She repeated and pointed towards the bathroom and again he didn’t understand.

‘Do you understand Spanish’ he directed at me abruptly.

‘She is telling you to wash the mud off.’

‘Well that’s what I’m doing!’

‘She’s directing you to the inside bathroom.’

‘No, I have the outside bathroom. I have been here a week and that is mine exclusively. I have paid up front.’

‘Whatever buddy, she is saying to use the inside bathroom because the outside one is for the back rooms and I was told to use that one’.

‘Well you can’t use that bathroom because that is mine exclusively.’

‘Well that’s not what she is saying to you.’

‘She is not the owner. What she has told you is wrong. This is my bathroom exclusively and you better not use it.’

 This guy was getting quite worked up and I told him to take it up with the owner and I’ll use any bathroom I want. He raised his voice more and was getting very aggressive with his body language. A very strange situation. I just ignored his rants after that and we had another terse interaction a while later and I felt he was gearing up for a fight so I just let him be an idiot. It left me with a horrible feeling, maybe that’s what I was feeling when I came into the town. Yet I had ridden around and let this guesthouse select me intuitively. Funny how intuition works. I had intuitively chosen the hostel in Leon also where I was robbed.

This started a lot of different thoughts for me because although I believe that intuition always gives me the right situation at the right time, sometimes it’s not easy to understand what the situation is meant to teach you. Not every intuitive decision is a ‘good’ result in the normal understanding of the word but I have learned over years that nothing is necessarily ‘good’ or necessarily ‘bad’, just different experiences. So these two different experiences are here to show me something that I haven’t worked out yet. I preferred the nice warm fuzzy experiences I was having before to be honest!  

The circumstances here and the robbery have caused me some doubt and questioning of what I am doing. On the other hand I have seen incredible kindness and generosity resulting from what has happened and in the bigger scheme of things it is only two people that have given me negative experiences compared with the hundreds and hundreds who have done the opposite.

I took the situation in San Juan Del Sur as a sign to keep going. I was very close to the border with Costa Rica which will be quite a different place to travel according to those I have spoken to who have been there before me. I had to get to San Jose to pick up my new credit cards as I had found a contact whose address I can use. 

The C4 countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua share a 90 day visa time limit and I only had ten or so days left. These four countries are connected strongly culturally, by language, appearance and food. They also have not had the same amount of US ex-patriots settling as has Costa Rica so I’m looking at this border crossing as a bit of a change. Not better or worse, just different.

The four Central American countries have had their different impacts on my journey:

Guatemala is stunningly beautiful, for me the jewel being Lake Atitlan, but Guatemala threw me off the bike five times, nearly ended my journey with a white-water injury, I had my worst illness of the trip, a stomach infection; and had me concerned about Ziggy with the high oil use, which has completely settled down now. I made a couple of great friends.

El Salvador is also incredibly beautiful with amazing beaches, great roads, imposing volcanoes and azure volcanic lakes. People were amongst the most friendly I had met and their generosity humbled me. Being the wet season unfortunately some of the views eluded me and I had electrical problems including being stranded with a flat battery.

Honduras just didn’t fire me up I’m afraid. It felt like it was being environmentally stripped for all it is worth and on a downward spiral economically. The roads were the worst by far of the four countries and one pothole that I failed to see has dented my front wheel and I’m losing pressure. It needs daily vigilance and eventual repair. The Caribbean coast was the highlight for me with different looking people and a Caribbean feel.

Nicaragua has beaten me up a bit with a robbery and at the end some aggression, albeit not from a local. Lack of access to my funds has limited the distance and places I wanted to explore here so there is much I have missed. I don't feel I have given it the best shot. The roads were great and the people friendly and helpful although I didn’t have much opportunity to engage with locals. I had my first blatant request for a bribe from the police when he wrote $20 on a piece of paper. I produced my police report showing that my cards and cash were stolen and he backed down quickly, waving me on. It was a great place to meet up with fellow adventure travellers.

Nicaragua - Ometepe Island, Lake Nicaragua

I travelled south for about one hundred kilometres to the town of Rivas and located the ferry port for my trip to Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua, bought my ticket and loaded up. 

I thought it was nice that the ferry matched my Che sticker!

Ometepe is a small island that has two volcanoes, one active and one dormant. 

Martin had stayed with a British couple, Jim and Caroline, riding two identical Husqvarna 650s. 

Caroline was recovering from a broken lower leg after she fell from her bike on their second day on the island. 

I joined them at a small hotel resort called Santa Martha where I was given the pre-negotiated price of $15 a night for a lovely comfortable room near the water. 

The sound of small waves lapping on the shore was punctuated with bird calls, periodic staff music and the daily storm.

Jim and Caroline were welcoming and chuffed to have another visitor. She had been in a plaster cast for six weeks and recently had it removed so was starting to walk and do physio on her frozen right ankle. They have been travelling for ten months through South America heading south to north so we swapped lots of ‘places to see’ information. During my four night stay I unloaded Ziggy and did a figure eight loop of the two volcanoes. 

Jim joined me for the bigger paved island with a bit of gravel and we explored some of the small towns.

A church being renovated

and village life

Jim didn't feel up to the tougher south island so I did it alone and he returned to the hotel

It was 40kms of exciting riding. Mud, rocks, deep puddles, trucks, local villages and did I mention mud? 

There were some quite challenging spots for me where I felt like I was climbing paths of boulders, that were wet and slippery, but Ziggy kept her footing and I kept my technique and I managed the whole island without a fall. Of course those tougher areas I didn't get photos of. Skills have definitely improved! I arrived back tired but satisfied with a fun day’s riding.

A couple of days relaxing by the lake.

Time again to move on so we made our farewells and Jim rode with me to the ferry port. A storm came in when I was on the ferry and it bucketed down. 

I don’t know if I can count that as raining while I am riding, but I still seem to have this gift of the rain starting when I get off the bike and stopping when I get on. After a full drenching on the ferry, the clouds cleared as the ferry berthed and I rode carefully off the slippery deck. As I was exiting the port I came across a loaded KTM 1190 and met Fernando and Almu riding two-up around the world. 

We talked and swapped details, they too are travelling south but as I am finding, much faster than I am. Also they are taking the west coast to get down to Argentina for the start of the 2015 Dakar Rally.