10/26 Yesterday sucked. Rode for all of 13 miles before a spoke broke. The wheel wasn’t too wobbly and after waiting for a taxi for an hour I decided to just ride the couple miles back to a small town I’d passed. It wasn’t too long before I found a bike shop and had the broken spoke replaced. The mechanic also went out and found me 10 spare spokes just in case. I’m no expert on spoke replacements having never done it but it looked easy enough provided none break on the side with the chain rings. Not sure why it broke. I slammed into 2 decent speedbumps going down a hill which probably didn’t help. All day I was paranoid they’d keep breaking.

Big climb today after the longest downhill. The views going up the mountain were pretty amazing thanks to mostly sunny skies. The temperature is much cooler but the sun is incredibly strong. Road conditions were OK. No shoulder but the lanes are wide. Truck traffic was non-stop. The worst is when they get in a convoy so five or six pass you all at once. The noise is incredible when that happens. I should try to take a video of it.

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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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I think the only reason I decided to stay through the weekend was because it’s a holiday and San Cristóbal has some of the biggest celebrations in all of Mexico. It ended up being worth it.

This morning Karin, Marten and I took a collectivo for a 20 minute ride (for US $0.71!) to the busy market town of Chamula. It was very cool. The church is the main tourist attraction so we headed over after paying the 20 peso admission fee. Being a religious holiday there was a lot of activity both outside and inside the church. It was pretty surreal inside. The first thing that hits you is the smoke. The entire building is filled with it. Women wearing blue dresses carry these burning torch-like urns to the statues of all the saints where they bless them by waving the urn at them and saying a prayer. I saw a chicken inside and thought it was going to be a goner but they just used it to bless someone.

There is a compete lack of seating of any kind–people just kneel down on the floor that is covered in pine needles. Groups of mostly women and children sat in clusters in front of the various saints praying. Hundreds of candles were also stuck with wax right to floor so you have to be pretty careful where you stand.

Throngs of Mayan descendants dressed in ceremonial costumes took turns entering the church while playing all sorts of musical instruments. Once inside they headed up to the front of the church where I lost sight of them. No pictures are allowed inside and they are pretty adamant about this. They don’t even want it out–I had to stick mine inside a bag.

We left Chamula and took the collectivo back to the city (a collectivo is a VW van used as a taxi). There was a huge crowd in the central square so we waited a few minutes to see what was going on. It wasn’t long before a huge Easter Day parade made its way up the street. One thing I found rather amazing was the absence of any barriers to keep the huge crowd back off the street to the parade could move through. The one police officer I saw just stood on the side with everyone else and only once motioned for people to move back a little. The parade was cool. Lot’s of people dressed up in costumes ranging from Shrek to Spiderman. Quite a few beauty pageant winners too. That part was good.

03/16 Low miles today but it was intentional. There’s a big hill waiting outside town and 50 miles to the next stop. The weather has been perfect for so long now. I feel like I’m getting spoiled. It was 93 F today which wasn’t bad at all for riding. We were on the road by 7:30am but by 8:30am it was hot.

The only exciting event on the ride today was having 2 dogs come running after me. I had to bust out my bamboo stick but no contact was made. I found out later they came after K/M too. The long descent was down a canyon that provided some gorgeous scenery. It’s cool seeing a line of green grass/trees growing in an otherwise very arid place.

Staying in a motel that has something that no other motel has had so far–an air conditioner! There’s even a pool in the back. I passed on a swim because the water looked a bit too risky but the teenagers that came over are having a great time back there. K/M are here too. Riding with them is great because they are excellent cooks.

Sleep was hard to come by last night. If I got 2 hours rest I’d be surprised. The gas station had a lot more traffic than I thought it would and the 3 dogs that stay there barked all night. I think I’m going to set up my tent just a little further from anything prickly next time. The tent survived but I backed into a cactus getting inside and that does not feel good.

GPX Track

Even though delivery on my tires ended getting pushed back until Tuesday UPS came through and got them to me today. Tomorrow I’ll pop new tires on and head out of here on Sunday morning. I was going to get a tune up on my bike but the guy at the bike shop (Zona Bici) once again was as helpful as a bad case of saddle sores. He couldn’t do any work on the bike because 4 of his 6 mechanics were sick or didn’t show up and it would have been too much of an effort for him to recommend another shop so I didn’t ask.

The biggest and best news is that I have a new camera! I’m now the proud owner of a Canon Powershot SX20 IS. It’s pretty sweet. And what a zoom range! 28mm – 560mm (20x). (I have it sitting in my handlebar bag since I don’t have a waterproof case for it. The pictures from today were on the Olympus so stay tuned for better shots (hopefully). Getting it was a stroke of luck. Marten, Karin and I were walking around last night and I happened to peek in a store called Contino on Independencia and saw some DSLR cameras sitting there. They didn’t have the one I wanted but they were happy to order it even though its not something they stock (see how that works Zona Bici?). It came in this afternoon.

As usual VISA’s top-notch anti-fraud team caused me more gray hair today. They let the charge for the camera go through yesterday but decided to decline the charge the next day from the same store (SD card). I had to sit on the phone with my bank for 30 minutes using Skype while they explained how a problem that had nothing to do with me caused my charge to get declined. That is one screwed up system they have there.

I also have some antimalarial pills now (Aralen). I have to take 2 per week until I get to Panama where I’ll have to switch to a different kind. Fun. I hate taking pills.

It’s very hot here now. It got up to over 90 F this afternoon when we were walking around Mount Alban. That was an amazing place. It’s a large pre-Columbian archaeological site that dates back to 500 BC. We took a bus up a very narrow, winding road and wandered around the huge site for a couple hours. I’d say this place was my favorite so far even though there were a lot of tourists and vendors.