Day 620
Nicaragua
Another day, another country, and now it’s Nicaragua. Growing up in the UK, this and El Salvador were somewhere I never thought I would visit. War-torn dangerous countries. Turned out El Salvador was a friendly interesting place. The locals feeling free and safe due to the actions of the government in crushing and cartels and rival gangs. The rule of law and human rights have been ignored in the process, but for the ordinary Joe life is better. Easy as an outsider to criticize but after thousands of years on interfering maybe it’s time we left the locals to run their own country and sort out the mess we all helped to create. Life is never that simple I guess.
Nicaragua is proving to be another friendly place. To be honest, as time goes by it becomes clearer people are basically the same the world over, want the same things. Somewhere safe to live, family healthy, the kids are curious and like to play, dads like to keep fit then chat to their mates in the pub. Women seem to do most of the household chores but still find time to laugh with friends. Every country has its share of mean, feckless, greedy and cruel folk but the majority are just lovely.
The riding should have been easy, relatively flat, little traffic and a great hard shoulder to ride on. The heat, generally 46C by midday and constant head wind made it much harder. We have enjoyed eating at local street cafes, the plentiful fresh fruit is made up into fantastic refreshing drinks or you can buy chunks of it and just sit and eat by the roadside. We did both!
We’ve met so many fellow travellers on our journey. Yesterday we met Torsten travelling in their campervan exploring the Americas, and a Mexican riding his motorbike, ‘angelsonwheels’, to Argentina. All of us from different parts of the world, different ways of travelling but all with the same desire, to explore and understand somewhere different to our home town. We love these brief chats so much.
The views of the volcanos inspired us, though the gas rising from ‘Monotombo’ was a little unnerving. It erupted In 1610 and destroyed the old capital of Leon, which was rebuilt 40 kilometres away from its original site. It last erupted in November 2015 and over the following 3 months over 80 explosions of gas and ash plumes were lofted into the air. Monotombo is used as the symbol of Nicaragua and it’s to understand why. Our road took us all around its base and it was beautiful from every direction. Everywhere we look we are surrounded by more volcanos, Nicaragua has 19 in total and tomorrow we plan to camp on one, hopefully it’s dormant!
