09/13 Big day today. I’m getting new rims installed on my bike. The old ones could have lasted a bit longer but the surface was concave which is a sure sign of old age. No point in waiting for one of them to suddenly collapse. There’s a great bike shop here that has the best brand name bike parts you can buy. I ended up getting some Mavic rims which are supposed to be pretty decent. There are better ones than the 221s I bought but that’s all they had. The wheels should be ready by tomorrow afternoon but there’s a slight problem with the timing.

September 15th marks Costa Rica’s 189th anniversary of independence from Spain (along with the rest of Central America except Belize). To commemorate the holiday a torch is carried all the way from Guatemala to symbolize the spreading of the news of independence throughout Central America. Back then it took a month for Costa Rica to find out it was independent. Eventually the torch will make its way to the old capital city, Cartago, where President Laura Chinchilla will receive it. It arrived in Liberia this evening where a massive crowd was waiting to see it at the plaza.

Along with the torch were hundreds of people on bicycles and motorcycles who had ridden north during the day to meet the torch at the border with Nicaragua and follow it back to their home towns along the route (PanAm highway). I was wondering what was going on when I saw so many riders heading north and finally found out from someone later what they were doing.

Leaving tomorrow would be out since my bike won’t be ready until noon and leaving on the 15th might not be a good idea. So maybe I’ll hang out here. Heavy rain is forecast for the next 3 days anyway and there are big cans of Rock Ice beer and bags of gummie bears available at the nearby supermarket so I’ll have sustenance.

Liberia is pretty much like heading into any city of 35,000 people in the States. All the fast food places are here, there are fancy restaurants/hotels all over and the sidewalks/roads are in great shape.

Karin and Marten are nowhere to be found but I think they took the northern route along the lake so maybe there’s no internet. I’m kind of worried because I haven’t heard from them in a couple days though.

Update: I rewrote the whole entry because my English sucks sometimes. Karin and Marten are in a hotel a mile out of town! Somehow I passed right by them yesterday without seeing them. I Skyped with them and we’ll meet up tomorrow.

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09/07 I’m having the hardest time figuring out if I like Nicaragua or not. Things I don’t like: explosions at 4:30am every morning, incessant honking, car alarms, high hotel prices, constant staring, people are not as friendly and a little bit of corruption. Things I do like: amazing food, good roads, light traffic, not too many crazy stray dogs and the garbage situation on the roads isn’t that bad. I guess I’m leaning toward not liking it mostly because of the people situation. Prior to Nicaragua (and El Salvador) it was exceedingly rare that someone wouldn’t wave/nod back if I make the first move. That happens a lot here and now I don’t even bother. That’s not to say everyone thinks I’m here to steal their kids because a fair number of people still honk and wave even if I don’t.

Mentioning car alarms made me remember something. This might make me sound like a bit of a lunatic though. About a week ago this stupid truck in the hotel courtyard (right next to all the rooms) had a car alarm that was so sensitive that rain falling on it would make it chirp. This went on until I fell asleep but then the rain came back at 1:30am and the stupid alarm kept beeping. Finally I snapped and figured if the thing is going to chirp at least I could make it go off all the way so the retarded owner would have to come out and I could yell at him (in English which would have done nothing). So in the pouring rain I went out and tried for the life of me to get that stupid alarm to go off. I hit the windows, rocked the entire truck up and down by pushing on the bumper and tried to open the door handles. Nothing. This was also the only place I stayed where the owners didn’t live there so I couldn’t even get them. I gave up and went back to bed.

Rode like a madman and made it 66 miles today. I think that’s pretty good with 4600 feet of climbing too. The sun about to go down was the only thing that kept me from making the Leon to Granada run in one day. I think it’s pretty much all downhill tomorrow so it was doable. It poured for 2 straight hours starting at 11am this morning. I can’t remember ever having it rain that hard for that long. Traffic was almost non-existent on the old highway #3 which was good because visibility was horrible. The cool temperature was a nice treat. Riding on the PanAm uphill with no shoulder for 10 miles was a lot of fun. Just kidding. It was brutal.

Not sure where I’m staying but it’s the first hotel coming into El Crucero. It’s way overpriced I think. For US $20 there should at least be hot water. All the rooms sit right on top of the very busy PamAm highway so it’s not even in a good location that would justify the price. Most hotels also have the standard room prices on the back of the door so when they don’t, like this place, I always think I’m getting the special gringo markup. The food in the restaurant was delicious and 3 beers helped take the edge off. The Nicaraguan beer Toma is pretty decent.

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09/05 Made it safe and sound to the colonial city of Leon. It took a while to find a place to stay but I tracked something down right before it started raining. After grabbing a shower I went off to explore. The first thing I noticed were how few people were walking around. It wasn’t dead but there were a lot less people than I’d expect for a city of 140,000. Very few cars too. Not sure what happened to everybody. The historic area is quite charming and there are quite a few buildings dating back to the 18th century. The cathedral is the largest in all of Central America. Getting lost didn’t take long thanks to a lack of street signs but my uncanny sense of direction got me back on track.

Woke up to fireworks and a freaking marching band parade at 6am this morning. Its 5pm now and of course more fireworks are going off. If they were actually fireworks I might not care so much. Real fireworks are kind of nice to look at. The things they set off here just explode and do nothing except make a bunch of noise and set off car alarms.

Stayed at the Hotel Don Mario in Chinandega last night. The hotel was OK but there’s a tendency in this country to keep business entrances closed up with locked steel gates so I had to find someone whenever I wanted out of the hotel. The city itself was definitely not my favorite. Garbage all over the place and it was loud to the point of maddening. Also had stupid little dogs with high-pitched yelps that I want to run over and taxis/cars that honked incessantly. My wake up call in the morning was a chicken bus slamming on its 120db horn at 5:15am.

The garbage situation so far seems to be limited to the populated areas. I haven’t seen any piles of it out on the road so I think people are content to throw it out on the street or next to their house. In Chinandega I saw a horse-drawn cart collecting bags of garbage but from the looks of it I think they need a lot more horses and some education to go with it. One middle-aged guy walking with a lady friend tossed a plastic bottle off a bridge like it was nothing. That’s one reason I don’t like buying drinks/food from the roadside vendors along the highways. They rarely have garbage cans and instead just take whatever it is and toss it in a pile.

An old lady selling Coke at one of the stands warned me about wearing my necklace. I’m going to keep it on though. If someone decides to rob me they’ll do it because they’ve seen my bike/gear and there’s nothing I can do about that. As far as cities and getting mugged, I avoid bad areas just like I would in the States and I rarely go out after dark.

Great scenery yesterday and again today. Coasted along next to the Cordillera Los Marrabiois, a range consisting of 10 volcanos, some active, that rise up from the lowlands. Clouds obscured the tops so pictures didn’t turn out so good but seeing it up close was still impressive. This area is actually the most volcanic region in all of Central America. A lot of the land is flooded, especially on the west side of the highway where the water comes down from the mountains. The highway design has a lot to do with it I’m sure. There were very few places for water to keep flowing under the road so of course it has no place to go but up.

One thing I found interesting was a bridge in the town of Choluteca. I read that the US Army Corps of Engineers designed the bridge in the 1930’s and that when Hurricane Mitch hit in 1998 the bridge wasn’t damaged but that miles of roadway leading up to it were. 94 bridges in Nicaragua were actually destroyed during Mitch. That hurricane was just devastating for the countries in Central America. In fact I’m kind of shocked that I didn’t realize just how bad it was. Over 19,000 people were killed from flooding and mudslides (almost 15,000 were in Honduras). The Army Corps is still here helping to rebuild the damaged infrastructure. The wifi password at the hotel in Chinandega was 1998mitch…

I’m feeling pretty bad for the people up in Guatemala right now. I’ve been following the situation with the rain and mudslides pretty closely and its a shame to see a group of people having to endure so much tragedy over and over again.

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Paid US $47 for another week here at Posada Don Carlos. No word on the rack other than what it says on the tracking page for USPS: Your item left the United States from ISC SAN FRANCISCO at 4:44 PM on July 11, 2010. If it happens to get here before the week is up I’ll leave and try to get the difference back on the hotel bill. I’m really anxious about getting back on the road. I think it’s because of how slow I’ve been moving for the past couple weeks and now that I’m healthy I want to take advantage of it.

Staying here hasn’t been so bad. My only complaint is that it gets a little loud sometimes with the kids playing and people talking on the couch that sits right outside my window. The windows are those kind with glass slats that don’t shut all the way so it’s like they’re sitting right there in the room with me. It helps with my Spanish so it’s not so bad I guess. The weather has been a mix of sprinkles all day or mostly cloudy with steady rain in the late afternoon/evenings. The cool weather is nice though. Been a couple nights now when I wish I owned a pair of pants.

Lot’s of good places to eat around town. I’ve been hitting up the street vendors a lot more since a good meal with a couple beers can be had for $5 vs. the $12-$15 for a restaurant meal and drinks. There a couple ice cream places that I’ve been frequenting quite a bit too.

I haven’t had much of a desire to hop on a boat and visit any of the villages that surround the lake since I’ve seen a good share of quaint Mayan villages and I don’t need to be buying anything. That might change if the weather looks like it might cooperate for the day. Lounging around watching movies on TV, catching up on Entourage and The Office and web surfing from the comfort of a warm bed is enough excitement for me when I get to take breaks like this.

Been doing a lot of reading about Guatemala and Russia (Stalin mostly–what a freaking monster and Time magazine even made him Man of the Year–twice). It’s funny how differently he was portrayed back in school (Canada) when we studied Russian history. This ended up starting a Wikipedia link bonanza where I’d being reading one article, see another interesting reference and open that up in other tab for later reading. Killed the entire day doing that yesterday.

Grabbed a bunch of free books using iBooks on my iTouch that I love so much (even though iOS 4 sucks–poor battery life, lame multi-tasking and app crashes, folders are awesome though). One of the books was a report prepared by the United States Army on the effects of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Talk about chilling. We sure do a good job of blowing the crap out each other.

Not sure if I’ll do this yet but I might end up just hitting Antigua for a volcano tour and then just riding into El Salvador and skipping the run up to the northeast to see the ruins at Copan. We’ll see what happens with the rack delivery and how it messes with my 90 day travel limit.

06/27 Worst day ever. Started off very early with heavy rain all night. Barely got any sleep (loud in tent). Next up were fire ants which chewed merrily on my feet while I was packing my gear in the rain. Finally on the road I hit a water-filled pothole and destroyed my front rack. Half an hour after that my rear tire went flat. Had it filled 90% of the way and it went flat again. Got a decent sunburn. Found a hotel in town, opened my toiletry bag and discovered that the tube of BenGay had ruptured and was all over everything. Jumped in the shower and was electrocuted by the shower head.

The funny thing about today was I had a feeling this morning that it would be a really bad day. I should have stayed put. This will be hard to believe but I didn’t swear or throw anything all day.

The front rack is a major, major problem. The bottom half bent under the weight of the pannier when I slammed down into the pothole. It’s actually a miracle that only one spoke was broken. Glad there are 35 more. I spent the next hour taking off the front fender and trying to straighten the rack back out. Of course bending medal that’s already damaged usually makes it more damaged. Now one of the weight-bearing bars is almost ripped right in half. Getting someone to weld it might work but I’m only going to try that as a last resort. The one bar isn’t the only one that’s damaged. I took almost everything out of the pannier and managed to make it here without it failing completely. There’s no way I can ride off-pavement and that’s another problem because the next part of my route after Coban tomorrow was supposed to be gravel. I’m also down a front fender which makes riding in the rain a mess.

I’m hoping that Coban has some sort of bike shop that could at least order me a new rack and fix the spoke. If it doesn’t I could probably fix the spoke but I’d have to order the rack from the States which would cost a fortune.

The flat tire sucked because now I’m down to 2 spare tubes and it’s harder than I thought to find ones with Presta valves. The one that went bad was the last from a batch of 3 I bought in Mazatlan. All three ended up wearing out at the inner seam.

Camped out last night in the back yard of the people that run the local restaurant. The lady spoke a little English which made things a little easier (even though I could have gotten through it in Spanish). She even offered to let me stay thanks to the weather but I set off to see how bad of a day I could have. It ended up not raining the rest of the day until literally 10 seconds after I got to the motel.

Mega hills today. One of them was the steepest I’ve ridden up on any major road. Traffic was light so I rode up it side-to-side and would have made it all the way except for one truck that messed it up for me.

Rode through some amazing scenery over the last 2 days. There are some beautiful national parks in Guatemala and I was lucky enough to pass through one of them–Ceibal. That place had the biggest trees and ferns I’ve ever seen. The mountain range called Sierra Chinaja was equally impressive. The mountains aren’t extremely high but they are entirely tree-covered and rise up from the jungle like huge pillars.

GPX Track

Pictures are here. Once again the site breaks when I try to include them in the post. Argh.