Hasta la Tardis

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What an amazing thing time is! ..its my birthday where a lot of you are and its not til tomorrow for me here...so thank you for the wishes....time warping from the ruinas back to the 21st century altho' the border x-ing into Nicaragua was not user friendly...I mean how hard would it be just to put up a couple of signs? like passports here and vehicle stuff here...felt like whipping out the felt nib and just writing on the wall...and no-one, even the people who work there, have much idea...a Panamanian english speaking guy asked several of the officials for directions for us...and they turned out to be wrong!!...anyway, we ultimately worked it out...passports were easy, and the bike stuff a black comedy of errors culminating in a waiting game with the last Honduran official who was insisting on getting the non-existant bit of paper that we should have got on the way in...we outlasted him and in the end he just waved us thru'...or waived us thru'...
And theres almost always someone who speaks a bit of english who helps us out if we're really stuck, some give us phone details etc in case we ever need some help, v generous and kind...but also a lot of really dimwits, don't mean to be harsh but these aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, in fact many are definitely a few palm fronds short of a palapa..even in their own offices they don't seem to have any idea what goes on next door!...still and all.....
All tomatoes lead to Roma...back to the last beginning...had some nice saladas in Copan, getting a bit Antigua-like but finally good coffee, with a touch of cardomom, another local product, sitting in the upstairs room of a tres cute cafe, looking out over the rooftops, watching a guy on the top floor of a building nearby, trying to carry a sheet of corrugated iron, wind picking up, this guy's about to introduce hang gliding to Honduras....
Did I tell you why the roads are so good?..and why they survive the fantastically overloaded trucks...its the thickness of the bitumen...and its cheap coz most of these places have it growing in the ground...and then they lay it on like my hyperbole...thick like butter on sunday morning toast..must be a foot deep...the downside is that theres a great drop-off from the road surface to the shoulder...
Catch bits of music in cafes and bars, big nostalgia trip like music always does...hearing faves from 70s thru..
Copan is like an ants nest with busy, bustling 3 wheel bemos buzzing up and down the cobblestones, and you can fit 3 of us into 1 altho I was tempted to leave the helmet and armour on...scary stuff..
Got out of Copan and the ruinas...did a loop of the country, almost made it to the Carib but hit the industrial 'burbs of whateverville and headed down the guts to el capital...finally a great road!..Honduras has 2 types of road...freeway and fire trail...back into mountain country and hit a huge storm so we holed up in a place until the worst was over...and got down as far as somewhere near the border..ah another San Miguel...and next day to the frontera...and I've said enough about that..
Out on the road and Nicaragua looks a lot poorer, and it is...even the cattle looked thinner, crops meagerer, dogs mangier, bummer....
All over these countries there are guys with ice cream boxes on a sort of bicycle rig...must be military strength ice coz they seem to go around all day and everywhere....even right out in the middle of nowhere I see this Eskimo (thats the brand!) guy by the side of the road, about 30 kms from any town, a million degrees hot, and theres a cowboy, on his horse, reaching down to get his neapolitan cone!!....couldn't believe it!!
Lots of people waiting by the roadside for a bus or theres a system whereby cars or vans or utes stop and negotiate with them for a lift, dunno how it works exactly..
Another little kid thunders along by the roadside on his pony, no saddle, grinning form ear to ear, a lot of horses and some great riders.
Huge oxen pulling overloaded carts, it looks like the weight of the yoke is really harsh as their heads are bowed right down, mobs of little donkey carts, even right in the cities they be used for delivering loads of sand or building stuff...donkeys don't look too happy.
Saw a big load of firewood (again) on a donkey cart with 2 kids riding the load, as I passed them another kid is riding the donkey in its traces.
By a little roadworks diversion I see 2 horses with 2 kids on each going to school, then more arrive...its the midday change of school shifts, the morning kids coming out, the afternoon group going in, and all the kids have immaculate uniforms, fantastic...
Get thru to Leon, a beautiful old spanish city, have a quick bo-peep. eat some tucker, find a hotel w lock up and hey, its only 1.30...across the border, everything and its not even nap o'clock!!

Gored Maude.....stopped yesterday for a mob of cattle crossing the road, in fact wandering down the middle of the fcuking road, sort of rustic and rural and all that and I'm not in a hurry, but as I'm weaving the big adventure thru the mob I can see one with really long sharp horns just up'ahead...what if he's the curious one?..can just see him hearing the bike, turning the head and whack, my thigh impaled ..thru the tank as well, petrol leaking, cow freaking, electrical short...kaboom...stampede does the rest...5 days later my travel insurance send out a rep with a penknife to scrape up whats left....
whoooaaa...thank whatever for non-curious, long horned cows....
So, Leon ad the other cool town Granada..both have the old spanish feel, elaborate wrought iron work, both decorative and functional, thick-walled houses and cool (in every sense) courtyards...not so much the seige mentality of El Sal and Honduras, everything seems a lot safer and the people more laid back...property is the boom and many seppo real estate agents getting stuck right into it!...
Like all countries Nicaragua has a standout feature..its the cutlery, everywhere the knife and fork are wrapped in a paper napkin...so what, you ask, its like that everywhere...but no, here its abso impossible to find the end and they're soo tightly wrapped you have to bust them apart ..and of course the napkin is fcuked!...and its like this everywhere in Nica...and nowhere else!...
So, in Granada, they have a Melbourne/Sydney sort of rivalry, even got to fisticuffs and worse...we decided to miss the carnivale and the 10 thousand horsemen ride-by tonight and left for the beach. Saw the local girl dancers and the boy band support...fantastic, noisy, animated, crazy stuff...
So, the beach, and what a perfect little bay this is San Juan del Sur ...sort of a >Noosa 50 years ago feel altho' the real estate guys are on the job here too...tots a Costa Rican ex-pats are bailing and coming here..some pretty shmiko big places up on the hill...
These bikes are amazing, and they're such a centre of attention, as I ride along I see people spot the bike coming, push thru' the crowd and wave madly or salute ...all sorts of people come and stare, and start telling us about their bikes, in one small town we stopped for a drink, the town was full of people for a military display or something, we stopped at the other end of the square and withing half an hour the crowd had moved down to watch us!!...bizarre, like you'd expect in India...and people recognize us somehow!...after we get changed and go uptown anywhere there's people saying...oh you're the guys on the bikes!!...like we're almost unrecognizable as anything with all the gear on...
And out on the road I kept seeing these little kids waving...then I realised they're holding out their hands for money...they wait, with a shovel, and as a vehicle comes they throw some dirt in a pothole and make like they're working, and hold out for some $$.....
When we got to near one of the beaches a group of schoolgirls held us up...they had some hand-lettered signs and a piece of string across the road...a fund-raiser for the school so we paid up!
Many Rivas to Cross...well I just wanted to get that in,...actually we shot straight thru Rivas so I can't tell you nada!
Saw a cop chatting a donkey cart at the side of the road...had he pulled him over?..booking him?, unlicensed?. unroadworthy?
Later on, an ox-cart leaves the road, OK for the oxen, they just lumber off the shoulder and down into the ditch, but the driver...he's braced himself in the flimsy framed cart as he gets thrown from side to side...funny as...and a good win for the hapless oxen...usually 2, one is the steering ox, the other is the gtrunt ox...should pick up a new model, 2 ox power, eight hoof drive....you know the story..
OK gentle readers, enough again...crikey, is there anyone out there able to read all this...I sure can't....so tomorrow its Costa Lotta Rico...and spend my birthday battling with the admin people at the border...or maybe we can stay here another day...the chicas are hot and the beer is cold....thanks Jen.

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