All the way south

Nicaragua is a country I’d like to return to and spend more time exploring. Because of my need to respect the timeline to make it to Tierra del Fuego, I needed to really start making some miles through Central America. As a result, my understanding of Honduras and Nicaragua is very limited.

I was in Grenada, Nicaragua for a few days. Grenada is like Antigua but without cobble stone roads and busloads of gringos. In Antigua, there are tons of horses offering “romantic carrige rides” (that have poop bags) through the Spanish Colonial city. In Grenada, the road is their bathroom. The beautiful scenery is disrupted by the stinch of horse shit.

With sufficient mouth breathing, Grenada is a beautiful town. Many of Managua’s rich come here for the weekends. It is very well developed for tourism offering a variety of tours. We went on a boat ride of Like Nicaragua.

Getting to Grenada was pretty easy. Our original plan was to go to Leon, but the road from Honduras to Leon was _very_ slow. While the road was paved, it was not maintained. There was a reasonable amount of traffic on the road, but because of its condition, we did not feel safe driving it. My understanding is that the road went on for 3 hours of complete dodging of potholes.  It is really interesting to watch cars (and probably bikes too) drive down this road because of the massive swerving required to not have your tire swallowed up by the road.  It looks like there are some seriously drunk drivers.  Well actually, there could be some seriously drunk drivers.  You never know.

However, the main road to Managua / Grenada was great:

Once in Grenada, we stayed at El Club. Lonely Planet described this place as “sleep where you party”. That is what we did. There we met the owner Marco who very generously hooked us up with a great room and rate.

El Club is a boutique hotel that has a modernly decorated bar in the front and a hotel in the back that exuded modern elegance. This place was nice. Check out my room!  Thanks Marco!

In Grenada, I continued the tradition of not shaving myself.

After a couple of day in hip luxary at El Club, we headed to Costa Rica.

Because I had no computer at the time, I have no idea about the border crossing except that it was fairly painful.

Here are some misc pictures I took through Nicargua:

This is Bryn’s camera mount. He tapes his camera to his arm. It is actually a brilliant idea and the footage he gets is pretty good.

Here is a giant wind generator on the coast of Lake Nicaragua.  I found it interesting that they were pursueing alternative forms of energy when they have such greater social problems like individual security.

This is the view of Theo from my bike.  Look at all that stuff!!

The following pictures are by Theo Schlaghecken. Please visit his blog and if you’re feeling generous, donate to his paypal account that he’s using to fund projects helping children who he meets around the world. Most recently he built a playground in Guatemala. Seriously, buy a few kilometers. I mean, it isn’t like he’s selling miles, you can afford a few KM, right? All of his pictures are copyright Theo Schlaghecken and are only for use by his sole discretion. Without him, I’d have no pictures of myself!

Here Pop, I lit a candle for you a month ago in Nicaragua.

My current level of flare.

This guy is working hard on the boat ride we went on in Lake Nicaragua

Sad doggle.

Honduras money changer.

I’m happy to be in Honduras.  Yeah, I noticed I didn’t have a post from Honduras.  It is because we went through it in 2 days and I don’t have any good stories or insight.  Basically we were trying to make it south and in order to get to the nicer places in Honduras, we would have had to tack on a couple more days of driving.  The part of Honduras that I drove through was beautiful rolling hills.  Everyone had Aunt Sandra’s haircut!  I didn’t realize it was a Honduran thing.

More death heaters.  Even in nice hotels.

Theo is happy to be in Nicaragua.

Inside El Club, Nicaragua.

More Inside El Club, Nicaragua

Wheels roll THAT way.

Grenada

Lake Nicaragua

Grenada

Nicaragua, like Guatemala, had armed guards all over the place.  Almost every store had a guy with a sawed off shotgun.

Another potholed shot.  That road was wild!