Nicar-agua

As soon as we arrived in Nicaragua we felt so much more welcomed…even smiling cops and not asking for money!
So we decided to head for the coast and find some surfing spots. We saw a volcano with a plume of smoke, we even rode on few miles of fun dirt road and we ended up stopping at …. Nice place but not a real surfing spot at list in this season. So we moved the to a beach more south…a couple of hours south…as few people told us…a rideable road as they all said…
Well…it was not…at list for me…as we all know Carlito is a champ…me …no…and defenetly not on that road with rocks the size of footballs and dips and twists, washed by torrential rains and not on a loaded v-strom with road tires…Karl had to come back and ride my bike up a little hill… an obstacle that should have made me stop going…but…few miles ( they said….) and then the road is great! But the road was bad so and I ended up falling and hurting my left foot.
Then the road got even worse and the heat was horrendous and my foot was hurting and the iboprufen was making me sick, and I was exhausted so I went down again…and thanks to the crash bars the bike was still working but at the third timeI ended up on a wall of rocks, this time hurting the fairing and my right hand…
So I wasn’t able to ride anymore at that point, totally spent feeling sharp pain at every bump… so against his will ( and principles) I told Karl I to try go ahead and eventually getting a ride back with a 4wd and ride my bike back…
I could barely walk, actually limping…
So he went and I sat there, in the middle of the jungle… in pain and totally empty… but feeling not too worried even if the sun was setting , Nicaragua is a safe place …everyone knows…
A local on horse approached and we had a little chat…then he said…you don’t want to be here at night alone and not armed…muy peligroso!
Great! Perfect moment for sinking into Zen meditation…I’m not kidding. What else to do?
Mean while Karl made it (in a flash, due to his skills and the concern for me) to the first village were he found people willing to help. His Spanish is improving too!
So just when my meditation was actually sliding gently into a more western exploration of practical ways to spent the night safer, considering that I had no idea of when the rescue team would have been back, I heard a car coming up the road and towering above everyone on the back of a truck my hero was smiling. He even had a bottle of cold water!
So here I was squeezed on the back of a truck full of kids and luggage. And Capitan Carlito following us on my bike in the dark. Boy he’s good!
But then… we had to move the first rescue truck who got stuck on the road….and other painful hour long confusing chaotic ordeal…
But everyone meant more than well…they were all super nice. Including a family ( with a good 4wd) that on their way to a nice dinner at home, instead ended up being part of the adventure….
And we ended up sleeping in a pretty bad hotel but at list safe and now close to the surfing spot….
So the day after we moved to it…few miles road still dirt but not rocky…
And after few up and downs on the road we found a very nice hotel…except…they had stopped serving food… so in the evening we rode ( I was on the back of carl’s bike) a couple of miles to a nice restaurant…
Then…
It started raining…I mean moonsooning and the nice road becomed a river of mud in matter of minutes….
And we tried to get … and we both went down…no big damage but I decide to walking back….while Carlito was struggling with a mud that caked his tires and locked his front wheel so bad that he really struggled quite a bit to make it back.
Jin the morning we run out of there as soon as the road was dry to find out that Karl felt his clutch
slipping… did he burn it the night before on the mud?
And the clouds again were forming ominously dark over our heads… but we made it out …finally on the paved road! Joy! We got our dirt road fun for a while.
And the clutch needed only to be adjusted! Just in the middle of the main street of a village for the amazement of the locals of course.
So we made it happily to the border to Costa Rica. And we spent the next 3 long hours doing the usual absurd paper work… (we are getting used to it now) and photocopies and stamps and long sweaty lines… this time though in fun company of an other bunch of bikers from US going in the same direction…of course more rain this evening but now we are nice and dry in a Hotel in Liberia.
Tomorrow hot springs and volcano!