The short version is that 3 guys came out onto the road and blocked our path asking for water. It quickly became apparent that water was not actually what they wanted. After forcing us down into the ditch next to the road (Matt: did we mention that they had a gun?), they went through our bags and took whatever appealed. Beyond the obvious stuff (computer, camera, money) they also found our shoes (except the ones we were wearing), swiss army knives and a bunch of other stuff to their liking. They made a point of giving us our passports so that they wouldn´t get lost in the mess. So, after they left we gathered up what was left, straightened out Matt´s bike and made a beeline for the border. On our arrival, we told the moneychangers (always the first people to greet us at borders) that we were robbed. They replied, ‘again?’ and pointed us towards the police, where we found out that we are the third group of cyclists to be robbed on that stretch of road. (We have since put the warning out on all the bike/travel forums we can find to try to prevent it from happening again.)

We wanted to get a police statement for insurance purposes, but we didn´t expect the police to actually do anything. I´m still not convinced that they are actually going to do anything to find these guys, though we did spend a huge amount of time making statements. We even went back to the scene with 6 armed police to show them the hiding spot. Some of our stuff was still there (things like small bags of cookies that we hadn´t bothered to pack up) so they took forever putting little numbers by everything, taking pictures and making a detailed list of what they found, all of which seemed pretty stupid to me. They should have been looking for stuff that wasn´t ours, right? They did try to dust some of the stuff for fingerprints, but didn´t find anything.

Next, they took us to the health clinic where a doctor looked at our scrapes and wrote a report, but didn´t actually put on bandages or anything (we had cleaned up while waiting for the police and they were just scrapes, but still, what a joke.) The best part was when the guy with the camera took a picture of us talking to the doctor to prove that they had taken us there. (Matt: Everybody kept asking me whether or not the robbers had hit me…I wasn’t sure why everybody kept asking me that until I looked in a mirror later and saw that I had a pretty bad black eye.)

When we were finally free to move on, we dug out the money we had stashed in our bikes and other secret places and came up with about $90. Enough to get us over the border and on a bus to San Jose where we could deal with everything. We caught the last bus away from the border. Unfortunately, this meant that we arrived in San Jose after dark, a big no-no of traveling in Latin America. And, as they warn you, one of our bags was snatched as we were putting everything on the bikes to get to the hotel. The bag had been pretty much cleaned out already and only had a couple things in it. Unfortunately again, those things were Matt´s sunglasses, the police report and our passports. At least we were able to get into Costa Rica before losing the passports though, right?

We are working on getting back on our feet and excitedly waiting for Becky to show up on Friday. My dad wired us money and getting passports was pretty easy (Matt: If you’re from the US you automatically get to go to the front of the lines at the embassy—now that’s service!). We also have managed to find some cheap new shoes to wear until we have credit cards again. San Jose isn´t the most beautiful city, but it is nice to be in a place that feels somewhat familiar. We visited the mall yesterday, which was just like being back in the States. Generally, we are doing well.

We haven´t decided what we will do after Becky leaves. We are comtemplating sending the bikes home and continuing by bus, maybe volunteering or doing some more language school, though really, the best part of the trip is the biking and all the nice people we have met. Can we really let 3 bad guys ruin that? We can´t decide. We lost enough stuff that is crucial to biking that it would take us a while (and a bunch of money) to get ready to ride. We go back and forth on the options hourly, so it will probably be a while before we are ready to make a decision.

(Matt: We had a great time the week prior, in Granada and Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua. We may go back and fill in some more details on those days later on. It will help us to remember that not everyone in Nicaragua is bad.)

To the north of the city of Leon is a string of 10 volcanos which rise up out of seemingly nowhere from the flat coastal plain. The youngest of the volcanoes is Cerro Negro, which is only about 150 years old and around 700 meters tall. It is also covered in black rock and shale (the others are covered with vegetation). We decided to take a tour up Cerro Negro and try “volcano boarding,” which is like sledding, only on fast, sharp rocks for 400 meters at a 40-47 degree angle. You sit on this small plywood board with a sheet of aluminum attached to the bottom of it, holding on to a rope handle with one hand, and then shoot down the side of the volcano, with only Flintstone brakes (i.e., your feet) to slow you down. According to our guide (and his radar gun), the fastest boarders can reach up to 60 or so kph. Matt and I each got up to over 40 kph or so, which seemed plenty fast to us! In addition to the thrill of the descent, we also got to peer into an active crater (Matt even descended to the bottom of the crater- the sulfur fumes were too much for me). You can check out the promotional video for the tour here.

We also took advantage of Leon’s close proximity to the ocean to visit the beach towns of Poneloya and Las Penitas. There isn’t much to do in the towns, just a couple restarants and small hotels, but there is a nice beach and it was good to see the Pacific again. We have been within a few hundred kilometers of the ocean a couple times, but haven’t actually see it since Mazatlan.

In Xela, one of our fellow language students, who had lived in Managua for 6 months warned us against spending time in Nicaragua’s capital city. He claimed that you have to be there for at least a month before you enjoy it. Unfortunately, the only way to get from Leon to Granada, the next large city on our agenda is to go through Managua. We decided that we would try to stay in the small town of Mateare after Leon, then take the bypass highway to avoid Managua. The Footprint guidebook recommends visiting Mateare, but they don’t say whether there is lodging to be found. When we arrived in Mateare nice ladies at a refreshment stand informed that the only place near to us with hotels is Managua. So, we were forced to push on until we either ran into a roadside hotel, or reached Managua. About 13 km outside of Managua, we found a hotel called “Bubbles of Love,” an auto hotel (meaning you drive your car right into the private garage connected to your room, then close the garage and no one can see who is entering the room). Since it was pretty hot and we really didn’t want to navigate Managua traffic, we decided to check it out. Bubbles of Love is most definitely a first rate auto hotel priding themselves on customer service and privacy. They charge per 3 hours, but midnight-7am is one time period. Since we were not their typical type of customer, they agreed to knock off one of the time periods and give us a 50 cordoba discount and some free OJ in the morning as well. As for customer privacy, they have room service where you call and request your food or drinks, then they place it in the cubby and ring a bell signaling that your order is ready for you. The bill is also paid through the cubby system, so that you never have to actually see anybody while you are there. The room itself was also one of the nicest we have stayed in for a while, though we still lost electricity for a while.

It was at Bubbles of Love that we looked ahead to the ferry schedule for the boat that would take us from Granada to the Island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. We found out the the boats only sail twice a week giving us the choice of going directly to Granada and spending only a day there, or spending a week in/around Granada. Since the guidebooks had lots of good things to say about the region between Managua and Granada and we still had plenty of time before we need to meet Becky in Costa Rica, we decided to take our time.

The following day, we got lost in Managua before heading east 30 km to the arts and crafts center of Masaya. We passed the entrance to Volcan Masaya National Park on the way (6 km before Masaya) and stopped to get more info. We discovered that there is a paved road leading to the top of the crater. So the next morning, we set out on unloaded bikes to ride up to the top. The volcano is active, so after we paid our admission to the park, we received a flyer on what to do if the volcano starts throwing rocks—hide under your car. Hiding under the bikes it seemed wouldn’t be too much help, so we just hoped that the volcano was feeling calm that day. The park also contains a great museum on how volcanos form and erupt as well as some of the local ledgends concerning these volcanos (there are two volcanos, Masaya and Ninidri, with a total of 5 craters between them). The climb to the top was short but steep. We were very happy to see the park rangers selling cold sodas near the parking lot. We hiked around the top a bit exploring the two of the craters and getting some good views of the surrounding country side.

We decided to take two days to travel the 16 km between Masaya and Granada in order to take a little detour to swim in the crystal clear crater lake, Lake Apoyo. One of the Granada hostels owns a house on the lake (the Monkey Hut) with rooms for rent as well as a beach, dock, kayaks and inner tubes for enjoying the lake. We had a wonderful time swimming and floating in the lake and relaxing on the deck overlooking the lake. I took advantage of the library to read Tim Cahill’s book Road Fever, about his 23.5 day record breaking drive from Tierra de Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 1987. It was a good read and interesting to see how different the politics were in many countries 20 years ago. Anyway, after our day on the lake, we started with a brutal climb back out of the crater, followed by an easy downhill stretch to Granada, where we are enjoying the city until our ferry to Ometepe on Monday.

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