Last Leah wrote she told you about our stay with Alex and Guadalupe. When we left early in the morning Alex insisted on driving us out of town to a good place to start our ride from Siguatepeque to La Esperanza.
We were anticipating (and kind of looking forward to after the long climb the day before) an
easy start with a major downhill. But to our surprise we encountered more uphill and
crawled our way up the steep 10km climb before reaching our anticipated downhill, and what a downhill it was. We successfully traveled 17km with out pedaling one stroke, not even after
I stopped a million times to take pictures. We estimated that we descended around ~3000 ft at a rate of about 100 ft/min, I've never coasted so far (or used my brakes so much) on a bike and
damn did it feel good, especially knowing that we earned it, I had a smile on my face the whole way down (bugs in my teeth and all). We just had to avoid thinking about the climb that awaited us in the other side of the valley. (If you look at the speck on the road you'll see it's Leah) It was neat to watch the rapid changes as we descended out of the pass and into the valley. As we began the air was very cool and we were surrounded my greenery (pine trees and such). At about 1/3 the way down we started to notice the air warming up and we started seeing some really cool looking "tiger crickets" (our own scientific name). At
half way down the air was definitely warmer, the vegetation was drier and the crickets were EVERYWHERE on the road. One cricket even dive bombed Leah while she rode 40km/hr and caught a ride on a front pannier for awhile. When we reached the bottom of the valley and town of Jesus Del Otoro we were in the desert, the vegetation was scarce and the dust and heat was plentiful.
We biked a very hot 10km across the valley floor, 8 of them accompanied by twelve and thirteen year old Jorge and his brother who didn't have school that day. We couldn't convince them to climb the hill with us so we started our climb alone.
Climbing at a pace 1/7 of what we descended into the valley at we slowly made our way up the mountain. We continued climbing for 4 hours (that's all "in the saddle time") and 23 kms, a new record for us and gained ~3500 feet. We stopped plenty of times and would have stopped more if there was more than 1 roadside fruit stand to stop at. As we climbed it felt great to re-enter the cooler mountain air. We arrived in La Esperanza after dropping down for a spell.
That night we treated ourselves to a comedor (cheap eating establishment) that served us the the butteriest potatoes, tender beef, eggs, beans, tasty pickled stuff, tortillas, and some things that we had no idea what they were. The meal was EXACTLY what the doctor ordered, we walked out of there on rubbery legs and smiles on our faces, this however didn't stop us from going to the bakery and eating our best banana bread to date. We hit the sack and didn't move until the morning, sleeping wonderfully in the cool mountain air of La Esperanza.
The next morning we decided to stay another night and check out the town. We hit up the mercado and were blown away. The mercado was full of Hondureno indigenous Lenca folks that wear brightly colored dresses and scarf things on their heads, plenty of people were also walking around in jackets and beanies (although Leah and I were still in our shorts and t-shirts.
It was also full of cool climate fruits and veggies. We made out like bandits and managed to get 1lb of: carrots, onions, broccoli, avocados, strawberries, and blackberries;
half a pound of local coffee, some garlic and a watermelon all for $4US. We also saw several
people walking around, and passed out, really drunk. We were disheartened to see so many in this state, but we later found out that the surrounding areas were all dry areas and La Esperanza is where the majority of the folks go to get "bolo" and pass out half on the sidewalk, half on the street with their head hanging in mid air due to the angle of their body with a sting of puke/snot hanging from both nostrils and mouth connecting to the puddle of puke under their head (that's not from my imagination).
We unfortunately spent the majority of the rest of the day there trying to figure out what was wrong with our ATM card as it wasn't working in the one machine in town and we were down to our last $350 Lempiras ($20) and wouldn't be seeing an ATM for another 5 days. It didn't stop us from eating our watermelon and hoping to have a nice peaceful lunch when a drunk, scary gangster guy with all kinds of tattoos sits down next to us and proceeds to tell us of his time in the states when he was dealing drugs and got in a gun fight in which his cousin died and he had his gun to his cousin's killer´s head (as he also had his hand mimicking a gun up to my head). At this point my Spanish wasn´t good enough (plus I wasn´t really trying too hard) to figure out if he pulled the trigger or not. He reached in his pocket and I tensed up but luckily all he had was more guaro (the local cheap alcohol) and not a real gun and the first chance we got we said, "We're leaving, bye".
I don't what it is about me that crazy or drunk people are attracted to, but I swear they can single me out in a crowd of 1000 and talk my ear off. Unfortunately I haven't mastered the art of leaving the conversation easily, I think the fact that I look people in the eye and seem interested keeps them talking. One time I spent an hour in a drugstore in Seattle listening to a guys experience of getting abducted by aliens and how beautiful of an experience it was. In Bacalar, Mexico we probably mentioned the crazy Canadian lady that talked AT us for 30 minutes about all sorts of aspects of her life (we ended up seeing her again at the Guatemalan border but were able to avoid her seeing us). In Guatemala, at a rodeo a drunk guy singled me out and sat down next to me and introduced himself and insisted on shaking my had no less than 7 times, in 30 minutes. Two days ago with my friend Steve and Leah a Canadian guy started talking to us for 30 minutes about all of the Nicaraguan "investment" opportunities there are here for people like him. Good ol' Leah and Steve wander off and leave me talking to the guy, very nice of them. Just a day later another Canadian guy starts talking at us about world bank loans and recession and all kinds of economic stuff, even though all I asked him about was bike pedals, but this time I actually had an excuse and got of the conversation in under 5 minutes, record time for me. Okay, sorry for that little tangent, looking back on these experience I'd also have to say, why are there so many crazy Canadians in this part of the world too?
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