Distance cycled to date: 10,378 km
International borders crossed since our last entry: 4
Longest cycling day to date: 163.78 km (8 hours, 21 minutes of riding)
Highest daily trip climb to date: 2320 metres
Flat tires to date: 20 (Jeff - 11, Keenan - 9)
When you fit as much into a week or so as we have, it's hard to write it all into one blog entry. A couple spaced out over the week would have been better - but we've been busy, so what could we do? So, here is what we've done since Chiquimula, Guatemala:
We left Guatemala, crossing the border into Honduras and reached the ruins of Copan. It was pretty sweet - not quite as grand as Tikal, but impressive nonetheless. We lucked out with the weather once again, and had blue sky and sunshine in the morning after being the first ones let in the gate (Just like we were in Tonina, Palenque, Tikal and now Copan!). The rain clouds came in the afternoon and so we spent it inside, comfortably watching UEFA Champions League soccer, live. What a fantastic day.
From Copan we faced the two hilliest days we have had yet on the trip. Consecutively. Both of them were over 2000 metres of climbing, and both were unexpected. It left our legs shaky and ourselves exhausted, but we crossed into El Salvador the next day, and nothing lifts ones spirit like an international border crossing.
We managed to make it 17 kms into El Salvador before stopping in La Palma for pupusas, the national food of El Salvador. They were delicious. For those of you who have never experienced a pupusa, they are homemade corn tortillas, stuffed with cheese, meat, beans, or any combination of those things. The description doesn't really do them justice, because they taste awesome. For 6 pupusas, and 2 sodas we paid $2.90 US. We finally got to use some of those American dollars we have been holding onto since leaving California because El Salvador uses them as their official currency. It was strange to see everything marked in dollars again.
We cycled the entire country of El Salvador, and only spent 2 nights in the country. And yet it was in this small country that we hit our milestone of 10,000 km. Ten thousand kilometres! It was exciting. We had guessed we could do the trip of 20,000 km in 12 months, and we hit 10,000 km on February 28th - exactly 6 months after leaving. If you're not impressed with the trip, you should at least be impressed with our estimating skills. We nailed that one.
All through El Salvador we had a decent highway with a decent shoulder (ok, maybe half-decent shoulder), and the only thing to slow us down were the few fast food restaurants that we saw along the way. A divided highway with a shoulder and a shopping mall with fast food was reminiscent of California once again.
From El Salvador, we had to cross into Honduras one more time, but this was a much easier experience. The highway was no longer washed out in places, lines were painted on it, potholes were virtually non-existent, and the hills were nothing compared to the Copan area. The wind picked up, but we found it switched directions so often that we had a tailwind just as often as a headwind, and so we couldn't really complain. In fact, we were expecting so much worse that it made southern Honduras great.
We slept at another 24 hour Texaco station outside Choluteca on our last night in Honduras, and after chatting with the friendly, smiling (but shotgun yielding) guard we felt very good about the place. He showed us a good place to set up our tent, and enjoyed watching us cook our supper (although to be honest everybody really enjoys watching us cook our supper. Anytime we pull out our campstove we get a pretty good sized crowd, with lots of oos and aws when the flame first bursts). However, this smiling, friendly guard then started to ask us something that we had never heard before. We just smile and nod as usual. He says it again in different words. We still don't understand, but smile and nod. Finally, he has to resort to rubbing his fingers together, the universal sign of money, and using the word "cuota", the same one used for the toll highways. We almost feel bad that we made him have to ask us so directly for a bribe. Almost. He asks for 80 Lempira, but we barter him down to 50. Is it smart to barter the shotgun yielding guard for his bribe? We don't really know but we've never paid for accomodation without some sort of give and take, so he settled for 50 and we're all happy. Or at least relatively happy - we were happier when he was just the smiling, friendly guard.
On leaving Choluteca we went towards the border of Nicaragua, planning on doing about 125 km to Chinandega, the first major town across the border. But, the day started out well with a tailwind, and the border crossing went so easily we suddenly thought that we might be able to make it 160 km to Leon. But then as soon as we got across the border the road turned to rough gravel, and our average speed was cut in half as we struggled against the wind and dust and generally poor riding conditions. Our very first impression of Nicaragua was
n't the best. However, luckily we kept an open mind because once we got through those initial 15 km the road turned to the smoothest, flattest pavement we have yet experienced. We were just saying yesterday that we didn't believe anymore than anywhere in the world is flat (except southern Saskatchewan, of course). Other than that, it seems like everywhere is hilly. We were wrong though, as it turns out that Nicaragua is in fact flat. Blissfully flat. We started riding hard, and decided to try for Leon, despite the fact that even with our most optimistic math we wouldn't get there until sunset.We rode hard, and just kept going. As we got close to Leon, we started to see the first recreational cyclists we have seen since Mexico. (Lots of people always are riding bikes down the highway - however not many in spandex, wearing helmets). We were passed by 2, and we ducked in behind them, drafting for as long as we could. They let us for 10 km or so, but then suddenly sprinted after a truck and disappeared down the highway before we knew what was going on. But soon after, another cyclist passed beside us, but rather than just fly by he slowed down and started to chat with us as we went. He'd talk to me for a few minutes, then ride beside Jeff, and generally just kept us going after we had already biked 150 km. In fact at one point he literally put his hand on our back and pushed us along, encouraging us to keep up a steady pace. As we got into the city and he found out what sort of budget accomodation we were looking for, he realized that we would never find a place like that in Leon. And so, he invited us to stay in his house. We couldn't refuse the offer, and despite being extremely exhausted, we were quite excited at getting a chance to meet a family here. It turns out that everybody in Jimmy's family is very nice, and we had a great time conversing in our mix of broken Spanish/English and them in their broken English/Spanish. We enjoyed both dinner and breakfast with the family, and we have an open invitation to stop by the next time we're in Nicaragua.
So far, we've had almost entirely great encounters with everybody that we've met in Honduras, El Salvador, and now Nicaragua. We know we sound a bit like a broken record, but everybody really has been so nice. Everywhere. It's amazing to see how helpful and just generally friendly everybody is to us.
The first half of the trip is now over, and now it's closer for us to keep pedaling to Argentina than to turn back home. So far the trip has been the adventure we were hoping it would be, and it's exciting to think that we still have another 10,000 km to go. That's still a long way to go. But we feel good. We're excited to keep heading south.
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