Nicaragua

Shell and Sherpa and a big yellow ex-US school bus in the background.
Central America is where all the old American buses come to die.

I had intended to stay for 2-3 weeks in Nicaragua and was looking forward to what all the cyclists refer to as a super cheap and super friendly country. However I had spent a little bit longer than expected in Honduras so in the end cycled right through Nicaragua in less than a week. Here are some impressions from the road.

The roads in Nicaragua were largely good. And interestingly there was no litter on the roadside, a problem which plaques Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Each day in Nicaragua I saw men in orange uniforms picking up rubbish along the roadside. 

Workers in the tobacco fields carrying large crates on their shoulders.

I have visited many countries in my life time but none where I saw tobacco growing in the fields. Suddenly this lush green healthy looking crop appeared on the roadside all around me and I didn't know what it was. That was until I saw some huge processing facilities. All US owned. All spanking new. This photo above reminded me of ants coming in and out of their ant hole carrying loads way beyond their own weight.

We are now at the end of the dry season. In May the rains will come.

Una maravilla. A big plate of tasty cooked food costs .75c in Nicaragua.
Gallo Pinto (rice and beans) mixed, salad, an empanada and some fried chicken.

The first time I tasted Gallo Pinto (mixed beans and rice) the national dish, was
from this street vendor.

In the blogpost I wrote about El Salvador I mentioned how strange it was to have come across so many individuals with kidney disease. If I remember correctly I had met 3 individuals during a short 2 week stay in El Salvador who were all on kidney dialyses. Leafing through the Guardian newspaper online recently I found this article. It's exactly the same story I heard from the locals. 

The most close-up picture I got of sugar cane being cut in the fields.

Roads were largely good until they weren't. When the shoulder
disappeared and became a big sandy hole. 

I laugh when I look at this photo below. As good friends of mine will know neither my bike nor my saddle are good friends of mine. My cross bar on my bike is too long which pushes my butt too far back and makes me have to stretch forward with my hands. And the nails on my leather Brooks B17 saddle stick into me and give me lovely red rashes which have now turned into hard calluses on my butt. And then these calluses peel and get all flaky. Lovely.

During this whole trip I have been wondering how I could smooth some nails into my leather saddle. So when I saw this shop on the roadside in Nicaragua I thought to myself that this might just be the perfect place. A shop selling leather saddles will surely be able to convert my bum-hurting-seat into some sort of a comfy armchair. Surely. And what do I do? Well I rode on by and thought well sure I'll stop in the next leather saddle shop. Except there was no next saddle shop. Doh.

I love this photo. It makes me feel like I'm living in a different century. 

Saskia

Crossing over the border from Honduras to Nicaragua I headed straight to the bomberos. And low and behold there tucked away in the corner behind a mighty big fire engine was a lovely little Mexican solo female cyclists. What a treat. We both jumped up and down for a bit and squealed in high pitched voices while working out that we both spoke English and both spoke Spanish and most importantly were both riding south. And so it was. A 4 day friendship made in a fire station. Her name was Saskia Vargas. She was from Mexico city and was none other than a traditional Mexican home-birthing midwife. She was cycling to Argentina to deliver a baby. As you do.

Saskia. A great Mexican gal. Prior to this trip she never owned a bicycle. 

Myself and herself having the craic with the bomberos in Nicaragua.

Messing around with the firemen's uniforms.

So Saskia the non-cyclist cyclists taught me a few very handy tricks. Trick 1 was to get a bed in the bomberos (fire station). Up until this point I had always rocked up and asked if I could kindly camp but her approach was more 'could we stay'. She had worked out that each fire station has a small room for the female fire fighters. And voila, so it was, staying with Saskia in the Nicaraguan fire stations actually resulted in us both getting beds to sleep on. No air conditioning just yet, but beds.
 

A little thirsty after a long sweaty day on the bikes.

Nicaraguan bike shop

We went to a bike shop to get new brake pads for Saskia's bike.
The dad chatted to us while his 8 year old son repaired the brakes. 

Quite liked this sign in the bike shop.
Smoking is suicide. So go and commit suicide somewhere else please.

Along the roadside

I cycled through Nicaragua on Palm Sunday. There were all sorts of celebrations going on. One particularly interesting one was the Penata. A paper mache man containing lots of sweets in his tummy is hung from the roof and blindfolded kids lash out trying to smash it with a baton. It's a tradition I have seen in lots of Spanish speaking countries. 

The Penata is hoisted up to the roof by a rope. 

Some Palm Sunday parades took up the whole of one side of the Panamerican highway. Cars queued for miles. No one seems to mind waiting.

Reeds carried over the shoulder at a Palm Sunday parade.

Everything on the roads came to a standstill on Palm Sunday.

A horse back rider passes some kids playing on hay bales while taking his
cows to be milked.

As in so many developing countries everything is donated by somebody.
This bridge was donated by the People of Japan.

And everywhere fires burn along the roadside.
Maybe the remnants of sugar cane plants. I'm not sure.

And just like home, the cherry blossoms were out in full bloom.

In the hard shoulder a man on a horse trotting along. The man is chatting
on his mobile phone.

Even though I feel like I have known the name Daniel Ortega since my
childhood he has only been the president of Nicaragua for 7 years.

Some colourful handmade chair hammocks selling at a roadside stand.

Always very cool when a cycling club catches up and cycles along with you.
These guys were cycling from Managua to Granada. Only 40kms. And they had ALL the gear.

Bomberos have no funding in Nicaragua

Looking up Nicaragua on the Human Development Index (HDI) I see that it sits at 124 in world development rankings. This means that both Honduras and Guatemala, both of which I have cycled through, are poorer than Nicaragua. How come than that Nicaragua is by far the cheapest of all the Central American countries? I don't know.

By looking at the facilities of the Nicaraguan fire stations I can safely say that they are beyond doubt the shabbiest in all of Central America. The following 3 pictures are from one particularly poor station. 

Saskia sits in a plastic chair on the dirt floor of a tin shack
fire station in Nicaragua.

The poor fire fighters who sleep here mustn't sleep too well.

Myself and Saskia had to clean out the rubbish
from this fire station shower before we used it.

And yet in the same shabby tin shack of a station, within minutes of arriving one of that lads had popped out to the local street stall and brought us back a treat. A ball of popcorn glued together with sugar cane honey. Is that called molases? First bite was tasty, after that it was just a bit tooooo sweet.

A big ball of popcorn and sugar cane honey.

Ometepe island

My final destination in Nicaragua was the island of Ometepe. The island has 2 big volcanos. Perhaps an 8 hour hike said some of the backpackers on my boat. They were all excited about getting up in the middle of the night to start the long hike. I was looking forward to some quiet relaxed off-the-saddle time. 

Chatting with backpackers on the boat on the way to the volcano island
of Ometepe. I cycled 120kms that day trying to make the boat. Phew. Made it.

After 6 months of chasing each other I finally met up with Herbie (from Galway)
and Laura (from the UK) on Ometepe island. I had previously met them in a campsite in California, USA.
They invited me to cycle with them for a day or 2.