I thought that this title was simple and descriptive. However, now that I read back upon it, it looks like the title of a gay adult film. We have arrived in Nicaragua, in the town of Leon. We had initially went to the beach town of Poneloya, but after walking for over an hour looking for a hotel, decided that it wasn’t worth it and made the drive back to Leon.
It’s nice to be out of Honduras. There really wasn’t anything there worth staying for. The ruins were interesting, but not beyond a day. Besides, the whole country is full of potholes, that is, when there is enough road for a pothole to form in. We drove for a long ways on gravel and unfinished highway. They should take all of the speed bumps from Mexico to fill in the potholes in Honduras.
New year's eve was relatively uneventful with the exception of the start of world war 3 at midnight. Our whole time there kids had been lighting fireworks off in the main plaza, but come midnight the war had escalated. It sounded like the invasion of Baghdad. Most of the fireworks don't produce light, but instead put all of their power into sound. Some of the bigger ones you can feel the compression wave of air and your whole body goes into danger response mode as if you are about to die. The noise went on for hours, and in the morning we found piles of paper and cardboard firework remnants clogging the streets. Truly unbelievable.
The Honduran/Nicaragua border was a little crazy this morning. After driving around the town we slept in for an hour because we couldn’t find the highway, a friendly policeman saw that we were lost and decided to search our car. Thankfully an actual friendly citizen stopped during our search and asked us where we were trying to go. He spoke English very well and led us to the turnoff. About 10 km from the border, there was one last police checkstop where we had to pull over and have the car searched. I find it very hard to understand all of the Honduras people. I’m not sure if it’s the accent or what, but it might as well be Greek. Through some hand gestures I figured out that he wanted to see our safety cones and fire extinguisher. I took great pleasure in producing said items, and you could tell he was annoyed that we were prepared and would not be getting any fines today.
We pulled up into the border, well, drove right through it first, then went back and were swarmed with kids and adults trying to offer their services. They wouldn’t go away, and although we had managed all the other crossings thus far on our own, had two people get all the paperwork done for us for 10 dollars each. When we got to the Nicaraguan side, we had to go through the same process, but this time only 10 dollars for one person, and 12 dollars for insurance for the car. Oh yeah, we tried to get car insurance for Guatemala and Honduras, but could not find any, so have been uninsured in both countries. It seems fairly appropriate looking back on it now. The highways here are fast and smooth, with little in the way of hills. Right off the bat we drove past a large active volcano which was fun to see. We’re spending the night in Leon in a hotel that has internet, and will head south in the morning. I’m not sure where we’re going, as we want to check out the lake and the volcano island in the middle. But we might stay for a couple of weeks if we find a nice town, close to the Costa Rican border, and then we can always do day trips from there.
I’m excited to get back on the beach again and into the water. It reached 38 degrees today, so it would have been nice to stay on the ocean, but not nice enough to stay where we were at. The surfing should be fun. The waves were small in Poneloya for the brief time that we were there, but the winds were strong offshore, even in the late afternoon due to the big cool lakes in the middle of the country, so the surf should be good all day wherever we end up. That’s all for now, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
You can view the link to the map here:
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Tyler.
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