September 6, 2015

My last weekend in Antigua. It’s been raining every afternoon, but the mornings have been gorgeous, with temperatures in the 60s and low 70s. On Saturday I walked to the mercado again and bought some fruit: two limes, an onion, two avocados, and six rambutans. Grand total: Fifty two cents.

I think I mentioned rambutans before, but if not, they look like big, hairy strawberries:

BUT…they are not hairy strawberries. Not even close. You don’t just bite down on one of these. First you have to slice it open and peel the rind off of the fruit inside.

NOW you can pop the white fruit out and pop it in your mouth.

BUT be careful, because there’s a pit inside the fruit. Its all worth it, though. A rambutan tastes and feels (the texture of the fruit itself) a lot like a green table grape, although it’s much larger and thicker than that.

After a little bike maintenance Saturday afternoon, dinner was a great Sopa (soup) place. Because it was election weekend (the Presidential elections were Sunday), alcohol was not allowed to be sold after noon on Saturday. But, as with many things in Guatemala, rules are made to be broken, and the waitress delivered the Brahva beer with a napkin wrapped around the mug to “disguise” it. The Italian meatball soup was fantastic. Probably will have to go back there before leaving Antigua.

Sunday morning came early, as the tour bus left at 6am, with the driver, our guide and three of us aboard. This time of year it’s important to take the early morning tour rather than the afternoon tour, since it rains every afternoon.

It took about an hour and a half to get to the beginning of the trail to Volcan de Pacaya. Along the way, we were stopped by a blockade that was making sure that nobody in a van or bus was transporting masses of people to vote. Apparently this is a no-no. Wouldn’t want to make it easier for all of the poor people without transportation to actually vote. But enough politics for now…more of that later.

The trek up the volcano is fairly short and not too steep for the most part. The entire loop is a little over four miles, with only a slight elevation gain from around 6,000 feet to around 7,500 feet.

 

 

 

 

 

Being the “old guy” has its’ advantages. No one expects the old guy to be first up the mountain. Everyone cuts the old guy a little extra slack. They all think the old guy might have trouble doing this stuff. I’m still too competitive to give in that easy, and typically I’m eager to prove them wrong. At Semuc Champey, I was the first to jump off the rope swing into the river, after everyone else declined. Was that smart? Of course not, but occasionally you have to prove that just because you’re the old guy doesn’t mean you can’t do things. Maybe the wrong tactic when climbing a steep trail at 7,000 feet. On the way up the volcano, our other tour guide Manuel asked me a couple of times how I was doing. “Como estas?” “Bien” (wheeze, gasp). A little later: “Como estas?” “No hay problema. Es pan comido.” (No problem. It’s a piece of cake.) (Gasp, wheeze.) I was glad this was a short hike with a long downhill. I’ve definitely had more exercise on this trip than I’ve had in the last couple of years.

 

Volcano day for me was also Election Day for Guatemaltecos. In Guatemala, if no one presidential candidate receives 50% or more of the vote, then the two candidates with the most votes move to a run-off election in late October. With twelve candidates on Sunday’s ballot, it was clear that there would be a run-off. It appears that the October election will be between Jimmy Morales, a comedian (yes, that’s right) with no prior political experience and who has the highest vote count at 24%, and either Manuel Baldizon or former first lady Sandra Torres, who as of now, with 97% of the votes counted, are within 1,000 votes of each other.

My current plan is to leave Wednesday for El Salvador. Unless I suddenly change my mind and stay for more Spanish lessons. Or head for Lake Atitlan. Or, who knows.

 

 

September 10, 2015

Before leaving Guatemala, I wanted to add a few historic tidbits about Antigua that I found interesting. 

Antigua was the third capitol of Guatemala. The previous capitol was just south of Antigua in Ciudad Viejo. When a huge mudslide buried the city in the mid 1700s the capitol was moved to Antigua, which was then called Santiago de los Caballeros. 

Several large earthquakes struck Antigua between 1753 and 1773, and the last one did major damage to Antigua and the capitol was moved to Guatemala City, which continues to be the capitol of Guatemala today. Some time after Guatemala City was established as the new capitol, Santiago de los Caballeros began to be called the “Old Guatemala” or Antigua Guatemala. 

When the King of Spain proclaimed that the capitol would move to a new Guatemala City, he also insisted in 1776 that all of the residents of Antigua relocate. Many of these people had spent their entire lives in Antigua and refused to move. Some of them hid in the valley and river areas outside of Antigua when the troops came to force everyone to move. The Spaniards employed an embargo against food into Antigua in an attempt to force people to move. Those hiding in the country were left with nothing to eat except the native plants, After a while, the plant diet began to turn their skin green. The people became known as “Green Belly”, a term which is still used in Antigua today.

After the embargo failed to remove many people from Antigua, the Spaniards tried another tactic. Since there are more than thirty churches and monasteries in Antigua, the Spaniards began removing many of the images and other religious items from inside the churches and moved them to Guatemala City (where they remain today). But the people continued to go to the churches and worshipped outside, where there were many large stone statues on the facades that were too large to be moved. When the Spaniards realized this, they cut off the hands and heads of the statues. This is what I saw when I photographed these churches. I mistakenly assumed that this was the result of earthquake damage, but these statues have been headless and handless since the mid 1770s due to Spanish rule, not due to natural disasters.

September 10, 2015

After completing my two weeks of Spanish school, and feeling fully fluent in garbled two-word sentences, it was time to head south again. My instructor for the past two weeks, Alvaro Morales, is another example of the people I keep meeting on this trip. Alvaro is nearly my age. He has four children, three of which have a genetic problem which has left them in a condition similar to MS. They require wheelchairs and constant assistance. The youngest son helps Alvaro and his wife care for the older two sons and daughter. Alvaro also is in need of gall bladder surgery, which because of Guatemala’s health care system, has been met with multiple delays, and there is no insurance to cover any of this, nor are there schools in Guatemala for children with special needs. Yet Alvaro showed up every day at school with an incredibly positive attitude, never complained about his situation while explaining it to me, and never seemed to be sad or down or in any way upset about the cards he has been dealt. He often would end the discussion simply by saying “es la vida” (that’s life).

Loading the bike and saying goodbye to my new friends at La Union Spanish School, I joined up with Judith, who I had met while hiking the Pacaya Volcano. Judith is from Switzerland, and is riding a Suzuki DR-Z 400 (which she shipped from Switzerland to Anchorage) solo from Alaska to South America. It turns out we are on a similar path through Central America so we decided to ride together for part of the way at least. This makes the border crossings much easier and more secure, as one person can watch the bikes while the other goes inside to do the paperwork.

Out of Antigua, we headed to Escuintla, then turned southeast toward the border of El Salvador. I was not prepared for what awaited there….several miles of parked 18-wheelers, many of which had the drivers sleeping in a hammock under the trailer. This was the line for the border crossing. Fortunately we were on motorcycles, and didn’t have to wait in that line. Another bike with El Salvador plates and two guys on it passed us, and the passenger motioned for us to follow them. Like Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, we spent a good twenty minutes threading between oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road, sometimes moving all the way to the opposite shoulder or off the opposite side of the road to pass traffic. Eventually we arrived at the border, and we immediately were approached by another guy on a small dirt bike who offered to help guide us through the border crossing logistics — for a price, of course. The fee seemed reasonable to avoid the added time involved in tracking down each of the proper windows and in the correct order.

After breezing through the Guatemalan side fairly quickly, we headed to the El Salvador side, which took considerably longer. At one point I asked our helper where he had lived in the United States, since it was apparent he must have spent time there based on the quality of his english.

“California”, he replied.

“Where?” I asked.

“Riverside”.

“I lived in Corona”, I mentioned.

He said that he worked in the orange groves in Riverside. I mentioned that at one time I had owned a small grove in Riverside. It turns out he worked for the guy that managed my grove, and probably even worked in my grove at one point. Unfortunately the real estate debacle of 2007-2008 caught up with him, and he lost his house and ended up returning to El Salvador, although he said he had a lot of good memories of California.

It took a bit over two hours to get through the border process, but I felt fortunate even at that considering that I heard the truck drivers were expected to wait at least five hours at the border.

I noticed three things right away in El Salvador. The first is that the official currency is the U.S. dollar, which makes things easy. The second is that gas is sold by the gallon (it was in Guatemala also, actually), so the gas prices in U.S. dollars per gallon look familiar, although cheaper than in the U.S.; a gallon of gas here is around $2.80. Diesel is $2.40. The third thing is that, finally and thankfully, the topes or speed bumps are gone. It was so nice to ride for miles and miles and not have to suddenly slow for a random speed bump in the highway.

The ride from the border down to El Tunco is worth the trip. About thirty miles before El Tunco, the road emerges onto the Pacific Coast and the views are incredible. Both the road and the views reminded me of the Pacific Coast Highway up around Big Sur in California, but without all of the traffic and RVs. Okay, there was one or two chicken buses, but literally only one or two, and they were actually headed in the opposite direction. There were also about four tunnels, which were a bit frightening, as you suddenly plunge into total darkness and it is very hard to determine where the center line of the road is. And if there happened to be a pothole in the tunnel, you would never see it until it was too late. Luckily, the road was in great shape and the twists and turns along with the ocean views made for one of the best rides of the trip so far.

El Tunco is a major surf location. The surfer-tourist part is a very small area, similar to Zipolite in Mexico, with only a couple of streets, but loaded with hostels, surf shops, and surfers. The crowd here seems to be international, but shares the same surfer style, and the day-to-day activities revolve around surfing during the day and partying at night. The beach itself is nothing great; in fact, it’s mostly just rocks, but it’s not the beach people come here for. It’s the surf.

 

Tomorrow will require a trip into San Salvador to visit the local Yamaha dealer to buy a couple of spares, and perhaps shop for tires. I’m hoping I can make it further before buying tires, but if I find the right set at the right price, I may just pick them up here. Then it’s back down the coast for another night in El Salvador to set up for two border crossings in one day.

 

September 11, 2015

After some light bike maintenance and a lot of sweating (the sun here is strong and it’s fairly humid as well, and the bikes were not in the shade), we headed out late toward San Salvador. I hadn’t planned to go through the largest city in El Salvador, but I was able to locate a spare air filter at a Yamaha dealer there, and it was only 50 kilometers or so out of the way. 

As usual, Garmin took me to the wrong location even with the actual street address entered. After about 30 minutes of running around in circles, we finally found the dealership — a beautiful gleaming store with a spotless service center behind a full glass wall where customers can watch their bikes being serviced. Ten minutes later we were back on the road out of San Salvador and headed south. For the first time I was on the PanAmerican Highway (CA-1), and glad I didn’t have to ride it the entire time, as it is just a highway, with plenty of traffic. 

The scenery was nothing spectacular, so I didn’t even bother to stop to take photos along the way. Although there was one moment in San Miguel when I wished I had the camera handy. After 6 weeks on the road and three countries, I had become used to seeing jugglers in the crosswalks in larger cities. Usually either a guy in a clown costume, or a couple of young guys with a large assortment of bowling pins. Until today I had not seen a guy on a unicycle juggling three large machetes in a crosswalk. Now I have. 

We arrived at our destination — La Tortuga Verde in El Cuco — just before dark. The last two miles were down a dirt road parallel to the beach, with hostel after hostel, many of them either closed for the season or with very few guests. 

The beach here is completely different from El Tunco. Not a rock to be found. Miles of  beautiful sandy beach, with virtually no one on it.

Hammocks hang from the palm trees and from the covered porches everywhere. While the hammocks are the cheapest alternative for overnighting at La Tortuga Verde, I’m strongly considering taking my tent a little further down the beach and staying in it…the lack of expense for a night or two will quickly help to balance out the nights I’ve gone over my budget on a room. Regardless, this place is muy tranquilo.I could definitely stay here a few days or more.

It would be nice if they actually had wifi though…

The food is good, though a bit more expensive than I would like (of course). Six bucks for a fajita dinner, two dollars for a beer. That’s still budget level, so I’m okay for now. The three dollar lunch yesterday at the roadside comedor was more my style, and was tasty and filling. 

Tomorrow is looking to be a long day, with two border crossings in one day, and both likely to be extended ordeals. Then again, if that’s the sign of a “bad day”, then life could be a lot worse…

September 14, 2015

It was a sleepless night. My room is nice enough, but between all of the events of yesterday’s Honduran border scams, and riding the last 20km in the dark, I was still wired. So when my alarm went off this morning, I was not ready to get up. I was just starting to relax.

Nonetheless, it was time to see the canyon. Six of us piled into a very tired Honda Civic, and drove 10km back toward the Honduran border to Cañon de Somoto. Ricardo, our tour guide, took us first to his house, where we were provided life jackets, then back into the Civic for the hike to the entrance to the canyon.

 

The trek through the canyon is about five miles total. Much of it involves swimming through sections. Another large part is climbing over rocks and hiking between sections. And then there is about 1km in a rowboat. The scenery is very nice. The extremely slick moss-covered river stones, less so.

 

 

 

 

September 15, 2015

I had breakfast at the hotel in Somoto before packing up the bike and moving on.

With some time to kill before moving south toward Panama, I decided to slow down a bit and stay in the mountains of Nicaragua. The day was spent riding dirt roads between Somoto and Jinotega. Garmin got a bit confused, as usual, but eventually the right dirt road off the highway was located and some beautiful scenery presented itself along the way.

 

Monday was Independence Day in Nicaragua, and Tuesday was also a holiday, so there were a lot of parades in the small towns. While stopping for a slice of pizza in Jinotega (all of the comedors were closed for the day), a parade formed in the street next to the bike, and I found myself suddenly needing to get out of town.

About 15 kilometers up the road was another steep dirt road turnoff to La Bastilla Ecolodge. This place is absolutely beautiful, with lots of natural foliage, coffee plantation, and more. It is run as a foundation with the intention of teaching local farmers sustainable responsible environmental farming.

The lodge offers cabanas, dormitories, and wooden platforms for tent camping. The elevation made for much cooler weather, and an afternoon rainstorm cooled things off even more.

The next day was spent on pavement again, riding from Jinotega to Leon. The first part of the ride between Jinotega and Matagalpa is beautiful. Lush, green scenery everywhere and a first-class paved twisty highway with not a single pothole. Nothing but great fun.

After Matagalpa, the road flattens out and the heat returns. It was warm the rest of the way into Leon. Unfortunately, about three miles before entering Leon, my Garmin’s screen froze. Removing it from the cradle, pushing the power button, nothing would turn it off. And somehow I managed not to pack the 2.5mm allen wrench necessary to remove the battery. So without GPS (and it gets worse….my phone was dead and the power outlet on the bike had just failed also), I rode around Leon for a half hour until I stumbled on the hostel.

Lesson learned: I now have a 2.5mm allen wrench from the local hardware store in Leon, and although I have yet to fix the power outlet on the bike (on my list for a couple of days from now), I will be sure to charge my phone each night.

Tomorrow;s agenda: Volcano Boarding. What’s that, you ask? Stay tuned…

September 17, 2015

Up early for breakfast, and then across the street to the other hostel: Bigfoot, which offers volcano boarding down the side of Cerro Negro, a local active volcano. As usual, I’m “the old guy” among the twenty-something backpacker crowd, and Heath, our Aussie tour guide, has taken to calling me “Legend” (it sounds better than just calling the client “old man”).

There are eleven of us this morning along with two guides and a few porters who will haul your board to the top of the volcano for an extra $5. At first that sounds like an extra expense that I can avoid. Then I see the volcano an realize the hike up is enough without a 25 pound awkward toboggan in my hands.

We pile into the back of a large Mercedes truck for the one hour drive to the volcano.

Just outside of Leon we turn down a one-lane dirt road to Cerro Negro National Park. As we get closer, the volcano comes into view.

 

As with anything involving gravity, you have to go up before you can go down. The hike up the volcano is not that long, but it is loose and somewhat steep in places.

 

 

 

 

 

And away we go….

 

 

We are on purpose-built toboggan-style sleds, for good reason. They have a metal bottom, with a slick formica surface to help slide. They were originally developed by a guy who came here trying to set a speed record on a snowboard, after Eric Barone set a speed record down this same volcano on a bicycle (I should mention that at the point where Barone hit 176 kph, his bicycle broke in half, and he spent quite a while in the hospital in Leon. He later went on to set a record of 220 kph on a bicycle down a glacier).

There was one guy that wanted to try using a snowboard rather than the sled. It turns out volcanic rock doesn’t behave like snow. He tumbled hard a few times, and by the time he got to the bottom he had a black eye and a bloody nose and said his head really hurt. This is what he looked like as he walked away from the hill:

 

And again as we returned to the hostel:

 

Various shots of sledding down an active volcano at speeds of around 50kmh:

 

 

Overall, it was a lot of fun and I’d do it again. There’s definitely a lot more to it than just sliding down the hill. The ride out, the hike up, the interaction with the volcano, and then after the slide down, the ride back, the scenery, and the bar stories afterwards all add up to a fun day.

At the end of the day, I met Stan. He is one of the owners of the ViaVia Hostel in Leon where I stayed. Stan came here from a civil engineering job in Belgium several years ago, and seems very happy with the lifestyle change.

I highly recommend this place to anyone riding a motorcycle through Nicaragua. They are very supportive of motorcyclists, and made room in the main atrium area to park the bikes. Sure you have to ride through the lobby and the restaurant, but that just adds to the fun of staying here.