life @ 13

south of another border, and then another

after weeks of blood and sweat your faithful author and web guru bill stube are able to offer a few pics of my current part of the world. take a look for yourself, eh.

shortly after my last post in the unlikely honduran internet cafe an even more unlikely event occured -- i ran into another gringo(a) there. adrienne was a peace corps volunteer doing health education type stuff and from a detroit suberb and a former UM student. it was the frist time i'd spoken to anyone in english in nearly a week, which was nice, especially since we shared a decent bit of context. the town, san lorenzo, happened to be right on the pacific coast so she showed me to the pier and the pacific and i had our first rendez-vous in well over 10 years. cool. rest of the day was uneventful, i rolled into choluteca, honduras around sunset, found a decent hotel, ate a whole pineapple (mmmmmmm) and proceeded to pass out for 3 hours, which is not a good thing for a couple of few i.e.
1. i was either overworking myself or biking on little sleep
2. it's damn impossible to get to sleep at 11 when you just woke up at 9:30
3. eating at 10 isn't the best for the digestive system, which is a key player in being able to bike all day
additionally that night i was pretty proud of myself, as i managed to remove 10 almost microscopic stitches with a swiss army knife, a nail clippers, and a flashlight, with one eye open.
next day i was planning to bike 127k into chinandega, nicaragua but faced some really fierce headwinds in the first 48k up to the boarder. i'm not sure how many of you have really seen me swearing and screaming before, but i assure you that if there was a camera and mic on me friday you would have had your fill. i was trying to think of a sonnet to write about my mortal enemy (the wind) but i didn't know the rules of sonnet writing until now, so be patient. anyway after crossing the boarder -- $5 for a tourist card and a $4 sietsa surcharge -- i pressed on, but upon finding a hotel 7k from the boarder i figured it wise to stop since the hour was getting late and making the push to chinandega would not save me any time, my destination city being leon, only 40k from chinandega. so i stopped in somotillo, a little town near the boarder. the hotel owner was a black man (always a little strange to see them in latin america) who spoke some english, so he must of been some carribean descent. i was under the impression that i was the only gringo in town when around 8 i heard a clearly american preacher on the street, who appeared to be making a grand tour of central america, which i suppose gave us something in common. and just after eating dinner a little boy stole the last two sips of my coke, somewhat maliciously. i was unfortunately unable to conjure up the word for "asshole" (cerrote) in spanish at the time. and the electricity in my hotel sucked.
i remembred adrienne telling me that "like half of the road between somotillo and chinandega is, like gravel". naturally i ignored this piece of advice, but i paid for it dearly on friday (i could have taken a different road from choluteca, but that would have cost me at least a day). and it turns out that she was a little off as about 90% of the 70k stretch between somotillo and chinandega was unpaved, meaning again that said camera would have recorded some delicious hostility. the road wasn't nearly as bad as the one outside melchor de menchos (see Jan. 25), but the gravel made the would-be 2.5 hour sprint into a 4 hour slugfest. if i didn't have the decent tailwind things would have been really ugly. towards the end of the stretch i stopped by the side of the road, had one nicaraguan gaseosa (soda) which quickly turned into 3 gaseosas, lunch, and an hour or so of choppy coversation in spanish. the lady there refused to name a price for the drinks and meal, so i gave here 20 cordobas ($1.30) and a $1 tip. the 40k from chinandega to leon was easily the hardest i pushed myself. even with a cross/headwind most of the way i did the stretch in a little over 90 minutes, the first time i'd really pushed myself hard, and the first time i noticed that my legs are starting to pack a little punch, meaning some people are going to have to watch out next time we take a ride. about 110k on the day.
so this is actually my third day here in leon, but the first time the internet's been open. up until now xela, guatemala had been my favorite city and considered the most tolerable to live in, but leon is way cooler. actually nicaragua in general seems to be the capital of cool in central america. but more on that later. it's still damn hot down here, but the difference between 85 here and 95 in el salvador is noticed and appreciated.
my hotel here is really cool -- it's a tad pricy at $5/night, but it's a real house (more like a hacienda) with an indoor courtyard, a kitchen i can use, a tv with lots of shows in english, and a huge bedroom for me. and there's a supermarket barely two blocks away. seriously, you can put me in the shittiest room in the shittiest city, but if there's a supermarket nearby i'm more than content. i had my bike tuned up by a really excellent mechanic (latinos seem to have a gift for this stuff) -- for about an hour of labor the guy charged me $1.65. i'm actually forcing myself to leave this town tomorrow, otherwise i think i'll get sucked in. tomorrow i'm heading 135k to granada which sounds like another antigua guatemala (i.e. not really to my liking), so i'll probably take one more day off to kick around with the gringos, swim in the big lake for a bit, then charge on toward costa rica.