Nicaragua!
As morning broke, I awoke and found out that we were being watched by like three shady looking guys! It was probably around 6:00 a.m. It was starting to get light and we had been asleep for a few hours so hopped right up and asked the dude what he wanted. He didn't even move, just stood there and looked at me, and then slowly walked away. We broke camp and once again started the research process of finding out how to get through customs and on our way in Nicaragua. I went to the office first, fought off all the money changers as usual, and then got in line to get my passport stamped. While I was waiting I plugged in my phone to get it charged enough to listen to my tunes. I got stamped in and went and rode around until I found Dave and Nian. We talked over our situations and decided to find a shower and get cleaned up. We were all Black from road grime! Oh Shoot! I forgot my Phone! I ran back over there and....GONE! I ran around frantically for like five minutes asking who took it! Nobody said anything! I was heart broke. Seriously soo bumbed out! I asked two more people if they'd seen it and nothin. As I was walking out some guy walked up to the counter and said something to the guy that I asked first. He put his head down, walked over to a filing case, and grabbed my phone and charger out. Another prayer answered! haha We found a truck stop, got showered up, and after getting all our bike paperwork done and getting all sprayed for bugs we were once again on the road! We road up the West shore of Lake Nicaragua. The landscape and scenery were amazing. The only thing wrong with the picture were the BUGS!!! I looked down and my knees were Black from Bugs! I had bugs all over in my leg hair and just all over for real! Our visors were pure bug guts! Except for daves... he didnt have a visor! That Sucks so bad!
Nians Bug Collection after only like 5 mins!
Nian Ran out of gas so Dave and I rode 5 kms to the next town, filled up, and Dave took a water bottle full of gas back to Nian. When they got back and got filled up I had bought lunch of American style fried chicken and Monsters! That is when we sat down and ate the BEST fried chicken of our lives! The owner overheard us say just that and responded to us in english. Turns out he lived in Silver springs Maryland. 10 miles from where I had lived for the last three summers. We finished our lunch and some old war veteran dude gave us detailed directions in english of how to get through Nicaragua the fastest. We cleaned the bugs off of ourselves and rode hard once again. Soon the dudes directions had taken us in a super big loop and were were headed back towards the road where we started. While somewhat lost we did pass through some super awesome Volcano mountains and really cultural small towns. As we passed through one of them I thought. I bet there are missionaries in every one of these towns. Not more than 2 minutes later. Low and behold, Two Elders walking right at us! haha I locked up my brake and screeched to a halt. We talked to them for a bit, got better directions, and continued our volcano mountain ride down to the Pan American Highway. A couple more hours up the Highway and we were in the middle of a desert surrounded by Volcanoes. Our bikes were burning up and so were we! The first gas station we bought tons of water and got all fueled up. Back on the road we busted it up towards Managua. Once there we stopped to pee and there was a stalled car. I hopped off and we all helped this dude push his suv to the top of the hill. As he thanked us and hopped in his car I noticed that he had a pistol in the back of his jeans. Guess helping him was the right decision. I never told dave and nian this but I took us on a long detour to keep us out of the city after I saw that dudes gun. The detour took us right past lake Managua which also had tons of huge Volcanoes!
Volcanoes Across Lake Managua
It was such and awesome Landscape. After 4 or 5 more hours of burning up in the desert we were close to the Honduras border. About 50 kms from the border we stopped, got gas, and spend every dime we had of Funny Nicaraguan money on drinks and goodies. Another hour of riding and we were at the Honduran border.
Welcome to Honduras! ps i hate you Honduras
Once again the border crossing and customs area was super ghetto and full of fools trying to "help us" and change money. We simply told them the truth and that if they wanted to "help us" with our paperwork for free they were more than welcome. We were truly OUT of money! I had used my Safety $150 and we had spent everything else on junk food. Nian and I wanted to use the bathroom but couldn't because it cost money! We turned in our Nicaraguan drivers licenses and got ready to go in Honduras. 20 Minutes later we had our Passports all stamped and we were ready to go. Then some guy told us that we had to wait for the Motor vehicle people to get out of a meeting before we could get permissions to drive in Honduras. Then came the bad news. It was going to cost each of us over $50 American dollars to get the permission. The worst part about that is we were only going to be in Honduras for a couple hours. My GPS said that it was only 280 kms across. So we waited around for like an hour and fought with people about not paying due to our no money situation. Finally, the boss lady came out of a meeting and we were invited to go in and talk to her. Thats when we found out how big of trouble we were really in. The nearest ATM was 40 kms into honduras. We couldn't ride there because we didn't have permissions yet. We also couldn't go back into Nicaragua because we had already turned in our Nicaraguan drivers permissions. We were really jammed! She said that some guy would give us a ride to the ATM and back for $100 each! NO WAY! Not only was that too much money but also too time consuming. All the sudden dave says. Is this your money? He's got a huge wad of money in his hand. I would guess probably more that $1000 American dollars! He found it sitting on the floor in the boss lady's office! She claimed it and was even more ruthless with us! I was starting to get worried again that this was the end of the road! NOW IT STARTS GETTING CRAZY!
As we walked out of that ladies office with basically no options, the wind started blowing very strange. I walked out to my bike and said "fellas, pack your bags us and get your rain gear on NOW!!" We got geared up for the rain in like 5 mins! It was strange because we had a crowd of like 20 people watching us that all knew our situation. Just before we were all ready to go The heaviest rainfall ever began to pound down on us! At that time, I knew that God wanted us to keep going and that he was opening up the gate to Honduras for us. I push started my bike, as I had been doing ever since my starter went out in Panama. Dave and Nian were right behind me and we FLEW PAST THE BORDER PATROL GATE!!!! Rain so heavy we couldn't even see the road! Someone yelled as we blew past but there was no stopping now! The super heavy rain suddenly quit 5 minutes after we BLASTED the border! I was actually mad that it wasn't raining because that meant that the frequent road stops and patrols would all be functioning normally. We passed one after another 20 mins. I stood up on my pegs, saluted the officers with one hand, and honked my horn a few times with the other hand. They looked us all confused and never bothered stopping us! haha We passed 5 more patrol stations using the same technique! We followed the Pan American Through Honduas getting lost here and there along the way of course. We all got ourselves some ultra energy drinks, got on all our cold weather gear, and heaed for the El Salvador border!!! That's when it happened, Stopped by a road block police patrol! Oh Shoot! I thought to myself. We all fumbled through our stacks of papers and showed them some random wet documents we had picked up along the way. And then acted like we didn't know what they were talking about! haha They really only stopped us because people were getting mugged and or murdered on the bridge just down the road from us. So in a way they were watching over us. They finally let us go. It was probably around midnight before we got to the El Salvadoran border! We got in the middle of a huge line of trucks and went as fast as we could as to avoid getting stopped by the Honduran exit customs. Worked like a charm! We all thanked the Lord for our safe passage through Honduras.
Once in El Salvador we used a different tactic on the customs guy. We just talked about how awesome El Salvador was, how excited we were to eat the food, and what we needed to see while we were there! Pretty soon were were good buds and he sent us along on our way. He mentioned something about getting permission for the bikes but we never saw another government building so we just kept on a going. The GPS once again took us on a sweet unneeded 1 hour detour. Soon it was raining again we we geared up and made good time through El Salvador! We did stop in one small town for Papusas. Sooo Delicious! We got to San Salvador around 2 or 3 am and soon we were again lost! After more Energy Drinks, Gas, and directions we were hot on our way. We flew through some territory that I assumed was really pretty but the darkness ruined all of that! At around 4 am we finally arrived at the Guatemalan boder! We rolled in there super confident and cool, sure that were were once again on our way! There was a big bridge separating the two countries and that bridge was blocked by a gate and like 10 guards. We told em some story about why we didnt have our permissions to drive in the country and of course the didnt buy any of it. We begged them forever to let us through but finally we agreed to hang up our hammocks there and get some shut eye while they called the other border in the morning. The Bathrooms were locked so we went off of a 200 foot bridge. It was pretty funny! Soon we were all camped out and Sound asleep! This was honestly one of the longest, most eventful, hottest, coldest, and most mentally draining days of my life!
