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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09/12 For the record, Costa Rica is not an island. You know who you are. I think people get it confused with Puerto Rico. Easiest border crossing ever. The guy didn’t ask one question and didn’t even look at me until he wanted $2. I noticed later that I didn’t get an entry stamp though. The only new stamp I saw afterward was an exit for Nicaragua. Hopefully just being in the system is enough because he definitely scanned my passport.

Crossing into Costa Rica was like someone had flipped a switch labeled “Jungle: On:. Almost immediately both sides of the road were lined by huge trees and extremely thick ground cover. Camping is going to be fun if I get the chance. I’m going to have to remember to ride with my mouth closed more. I ate like a dozen bugs today.

There are some things here I’m going to have to get used to. Apparently it’s safe to drink the tap water. I guzzled down a gallon of it already so we’ll see. That should save some money at least. The exchange rate to the US dollar is crazy. US $1 gets you about 514 colóns (the colón is named after Christopher Columbus BTW). Now I have all these bills in denominations of 10,000. I went to the bank and took out 100,000. Lunch with 2 Cokes was still US $7 though. A little pricey here.

La Cruz is in much better shape than a similar sized town in Nicaragua. The tourist dollars sure make a big difference when it comes to infrastructure. The roads in town are all paved, the sidewalks are in decent shape and the fire truck I saw looked as good as any in the States. The TV station picked up channel 10 from South Florida so I could watch some news from the homeland. I’m going to miss the food in Nicaragua though. Lunch and dinner were bland. Best food in all of Central America, including Mexico, was in Nicaragua I think.

Kids in Costa Rica don’t like getting passed on their bikes either. 3 of them were walking up a hill when I rode by. Having none of that, they jumped on their steeds and rode right behind me for a good mile before the smallest kid gave up. The other 2 didn’t last much longer. I gave them some props because they actually hung in there a lot longer than I thought.

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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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09/03 A new day, a new country. The border crossing was a bit confusing due to a lack of signs or officials of any kind but once I tracked down the immigration offices all was well. $10 to get into Nicaragua.

Saw some interesting things on the road today. First up were two kids fishing. That was the first time I’ve seen people fishing since leaving California (technically I don’t think I saw anyone there fishing but I’m sure there are fish somewhere; there’s just not a lot of water). No fishing rods, they were just tossing out some line. As for the quality of the water, since leaving northern Honduras the water is not quite as brown and looks like it might be cleaner (not so many garbage piles nearby or people washing themselves/clothes/dishes). It could be that things actually live in it I guess. Whether or not I’d eat it is a different story.

The second thing was kind of disturbing only because at one point I actually owned a couple as pets. Some kids were selling rather large lizards (iguanas presumably) at the side of the road. Not sure what was in store for the dead lizards, at least I think they were dead–2 of them were being held up by their tails and it looked like the were tied together. Down the road a ways there was a little shack by the road and the lady was grilling up chicken nuggets. Maybe it wasn’t though…

The hotel I’m at is OK (Las Fronteras). Small room but for $11 it’s not the worst place I’ve stayed. The owners are really nice and helped me break back into my room after I locked it by accident (they don’t have a key). Knowing that no one is going to walk in on me by accident is a bit refreshing. That’s happened a couple times. Knocking first isn’t a big thing with the cleaning crews in these parts. I had my first bucket shower too. It was a little weird but at least I’m dirt free.

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