Ephemerica

We just passed a couple of important milestones in our trip—4000 km biked and 150 days on the road! Speaking of the road, with the exception of our little stretch of unpaved road that we encountered on route to La Esperanza, the roads here have been surprisingly good, meaning that the pavement is smooth and that most of the time there is a shoulder that is rideable. Now that we’ve been riding in the early morning consistently (usually starting at 6 AM and being done before noon) there hasn’t been a lot of traffic either.

The three days riding from Siguatepeque to Tegucigalpa were largely uneventful. We dipped below 1000 m to around 500 m elevation to the town of Comayagua, which had a little colonial charm to it, along with some churches. Then we had a fairly big climbing day (but not very steep), hitting a peak at 1500 m before settling down in the small town of Zambrano at about 1350 m. Definitely the most exciting day was our approach into Tegus from Zambrano. Since it was supposed to be a short ride with a significant downhill portion, we got a late start, taking breakfast at the hotel restaurant. The day started off with waking up to a flat tire before we even hit the road (never a good sign). Then the same tire managed to flat two more times on the ride. It wasn’t until the third time that it dawned on me that the holes in the tube kept appearing in the same spot. Armed with this knowledge, I finally found out what was in the tire causing the flats, but I couldn’t completely remove it. Being desperate to make it to Tegus without any more flats (because we had exhausted our supply of tubes without holes in them), I stuffed a Mexican 50-peso note into the tire over the prickly bit to protect the tube. If you’ve never seen one of the new 50-peso notes, they are made of plastic and are nearly indestructible. So far this has done the trick and the tire hasn’t gone flat since (fingers crossed).

Back to the ride…at one point a guy on a motorcycle sped past us, pulled over to the side, and then whipped out a camera and started taking pictures of us. As we rode past (we were too late to stop and chat), he told us he was taking pictures for a magazine, but we have no idea which one. Between the late start and the flats, it was getting relatively late in the day (around 2 PM) as we were approaching town, which meant that we were at risk of getting caught out in the rain. And wouldn’t you know that right as we arrived in downtown Tegus the raindrops started to fall. We pretty much biked as fast as we could into the first hotel we saw, which turned out to be a good strategy, because for the next hour, the faucet from above was turned on full blast. We were still moving our bags upstairs into our room when we noticed that the street outside the hotel had become a river! The hotel staff were desperately trying to sweep the water that was coming in through the doors back out into the street before it flooded the lobby. After about an hour, the rain stopped, about as suddenly as it started. As we were up on a hill, before long there was no longer any sign of all the water that had just flowed past the hotel. It wasn’t until the next day when we read the papers that we realized the magnitude of the flooding and damage in the lower parts of the city.

We spent a couple of days in Tegus relaxing and doing some shopping for supplies. We also took a day trip to the nearby town of Valle de Angeles, which is a cute little touristy town that is known for its handicrafts, mostly pottery and items carved from wood. Then it was time to head for the Nicaraguan border. The first day out of Tegus had a short climb and then a huge drop out of the mountains down to the coastal plains, right around sea level. The weather is now incredibly hot, but this is tempered somewhat by the fact that the terrain is dead flat, so we’ve been able to ride a lot faster through these portions. Speaking for myself, I think I’m finally getting some fitness back and the legs are feeling good again for the first time since we left Xela.

The border crossing into Nicaragua went without a hitch, although between the hit we took with border crossing fees and money exchange, it cost us quite a bit. Central America really needs to consolidate their currency a la Europe and the Euro…put those money changers at the border out of business, please! The first thing we saw after crossing was a bridge over the Rio Guasuale that was rebuilt after Hurricane Mitch with donations from the Japanese government. The smooth roads of Honduras gave way after the bridge to the potholey roads of Nicaragua. Oh well, we’ve been assured by our guidebooks that better paved roads await us.

One other thing, we’ve been staying in some poorer areas since we left Tegus now, and we’ve found that problems with running water and electricity are common here. As far as I’m concerned, it’s nearly impossible to sit in a room here without a fan directly on you, but when there’s no juice, you either have to sweat it out in your room, or take your chances outside with the mosquitos. Actually, there are plenty of mosquitos in the rooms as well

Posted by Matthew on June 19th, 2007 | Filed under: Honduras, Nicaragua