65. To Baja and beyond

As sunset approaches we cross northwards over the Tropic of Cancer, a sign announcing the fact and the putrid carcass of a cow marking the spot. Continuing on towards the silver city of Zacatecas, we begin searching in vain for access into the well-fenced wilderness that surrounds us. Twenty kilometres later we are approaching the first settlement we've seen all afternoon. An old hacienda surrounded by a ramshackle village. Many of the houses shutterless and abandoned. A placid man in clothes fresh from a day's hard work in the dusty fields, watches over his children as they gleefully torture a newly born pup. We ask if there is somewhere to pitch our tent and he tells us to ask el patron, as he points to the dimly lit hacienda.

Luis appears behind a very bushy bigote and flamboyant cravat and listens to our request, gently nodding his head. Then without a word, beckons us along the collanaded walkway that surrounds the central square of the hacienda, which has been recently planted with large saplings. Opposite every column bird cages sit on pedestles, while a small army of kittens trips over each other. Larger cats prowl in almost every doorway and Luis explains that in a 400 year-old hacienda you have to decide whether you want to share it with mice or with cats. He pushes open a large wooden door and shows us an ornately decorated bedroom, mostly antique except for the ipod on the dressing table. Bookshelves line one wall. Encyclopedias at the top and possibly every book ever published on bull-fighting below. DVDs of all the magical moments of the famous toreros carefully stacked.

Luis is the third generation of his family to breed bulls for the region's many plaza de toros. The hacienda would have been built in the early years of the Spanish conquest and was a staging post on the route from Zacatecas to Aguascalientes and on to Mexico city, the route that brought the latest European fashions to the mining merchants in Zacatecas and the route that Spain drained the region of its silver blood. In the sitting room adjacent our quarters for the night, colourful banners announce the results of the day's fight and cover the four walls of the room from floor to ceiling, spanning over sixty years of blood letting. The large busts of three losers are mounted on the walls. Before he leaves for the evening, Luis shows us to the kitchen and tells us to help ourselves.

After a couple of day's rest in Zacatecas, where Ellie's Brooks saddle finally catches up with us thanks to Hans, we continue northeast across the antiplano. Three days later and an hour after sunset we arrive into the zocalo in Durango city. That afternoon a pickup truck had a blow-out in front of Ellie and rolled into the fields, spilling its passengers out. I only heard the explosion and saw the cloud of dust from farther up the road and returned to the crash. More people arrived and we headed on. The governor of Durango state had made an announcement the previous week that residents of the state's capital should avoid being out on the streets after 8pm due to the rise in drug-related violence. Apart from high levels of heavily armed police and military patrols and the Mexican media's obsession with publishing graphic images of those killed on its front pages, the violencia is something that has felt remote. The states of Durango and Sinaloa, however, are among some of the worst affected parts of the country. A couple of weeks after we leave Durango city, the first mass grave is discovered in a residential neighbourhood. So far 104 bodies have been found. This is in addition to the bodies of 183 people found in the north eastern state of Tamaulipas. Many of the victims are believed to have been migrants heading for the border who were kidnapped and murdered by the cartels.

In recent weeks public demonstrations were held in many parts of the country as the poet Javier Sicilia called for protests against the cartels and especially President Calderon and his government's policies of using force against the cartels that has seen the levels of violence rise exponentially in the last years. Mr. Sicilia's own son was murdered in Cuernavaca last month and he has since taken up the cause of challenging the current strategies and encouraging people to protest. Whether the government changes its strategy or not, any successful strategy is surely going to require the participation of Mexican's as they stand up to the intimidation and fear that is permeating so many aspects of the country now. The US-led strategy of encouraging governments to use their security forces to combat the drug cartels and paramilitaries has proven time and again to fail and alternative strategies have to be found.

From Durango, we pedal along the Devil's Spine as Highway 40 leads us over and across the magnificent Sierra Madre Occidental, out of the highlands and down to the dry and dusty Pacific coast at Mazatlan in Sinaloa state. From Mazatlan we catch the 16-hour ferry to La Paz, at the southern end of the Baja California penninsula. The last leg of our Mexican journey is quite different to the rest of our time in Mexico. Baja has long been a sparsely populated region of Mexico and with its proximity to the US, tourism is the prime economic activity. Many Americans and Canadians live year round and many more come down for the winter months and swap the snow for blue skies and sand. As a result, as many looming motorhomes pulling equally large boats and surfboarded pickups ply the narrow, shoulderless Highway 1 that is the only paved road running the length of the penninsula, over 1600 kilometres from Tijuana in the north to Cabos San Lucas in the south. Other cyclists we had met in central America waxed lyrical about the joys of Baja. Certainly the camping was excellent and if you like cacti, you'll be very impressed with the more than 400 species found in the Baja desert. But they were heading south.

Almost every day in the past month we have had a headwind, sometimes picking up from a stiff breeze in the morning to a pedal stopping 60 kph in the evening. On the Pacific side of Baja, the prevailing north westerlies kept our eyes sandy and our ears deafened. On the shore of the Sea of Cortez, El Norte blew uncharacteristically late in the spring. An extension of the Santa Ana winds in California, the air roars down from high pressure spots in Utah and Nevada to low pressure spots into the Tropics. There's a reason most cyclists head southwards and why sailors will go via Hawaii to get to Washington or British Colombia from Mexico. So most mornings we are cycling by half past six, making the best of the calmer early morning before the winds pick up and we have to seek refuge behind the biggest cactus we can find. We meet fabuously friendly and warm-hearted people, who feed us and offer us places to stay in the US. Day one thousand from leaving home and we find ourselves camped up on a deserted beach on the Sea of Cortez. Ellie produces a small bottle of tequila and sangrita and we get a fire going and watch the plough and pleiades

For the first time in two continents drivers in Baja, from both sides of the border, have become frequently aggressive, giving the finger, blowing their horn and Ellie even had a beer bottle lobbed at her from a passing car one afternoon. But we've also been cycling during Semana Santa and we had been warned that the roads and the drivers get a bit crazy as many people head down from the northern border cities to south Baja's beaches for their two-week Easter break. Two days in a row we come upon serious car crashes, one at least involving a couple of fatalities. We are forced off the road on a bend as a truck skims past us. One afternoon a friendly drunk fetches two high visibility vests from his house. We glow like Christmas trees as our nerves get a little more frayed each day. Some days we choose the bumpy dirt tracks that run alongside the tar road as a better option than braving the traffic. Finally the road turns off the barren desert plains and into the hills, passing through vineyards around Santo Tomas. Thirty kilometres from Ensenada a shoulder appears after over 1300 kilometres of character building. Big smiles and whoops. We survived. Unbelievably the end of Latin America is just over a day's ride away, along the quiet Highway 3 that will take us from Ensenada to the small border crossing at Tecate, through Baja's wine producing region.

In Chapultepec, a suburb on the south side of Ensenada, we find the lovely Senora Delia, who holds the key for a casa del ciclista and we have the house to ourselves. We need proof of onward travel before entering the US. We immerse ourselves in the bureaucracy of Asian travel and we book our flight from Vancouver to Tokyo for the end of July. In the sitting room, Valdo's recumbent bicycle is on display where one might put a TV. Every mealtime we contemplate it. Valdo was a 65 year old Brazilian man who was cycling around the world. He died of a heart attack in his tent last year in one of those barren, windy spots in the Baja and was later buried in Ensenada. A collection of the newspaper articles that documented the former missionary's journey lies on the shelf, along with some photos of Valdo, some of them naked as he pedaled across the Bolivian salt flats, a big smile on his face. A couple of weeks ago a Spanish cyclist came through, heading north to Alaska and he is bringing Valdo's Brazilian flag with him. Quien con la esperanza vive, alegre muere, vaya bien a mi amigo!

Ensenada, Mexico
Pedalled: 44,664 km

64. Los San Patricios

Four and a half days cycling have brought us through the four states of Morelos, Mexico, Queretaro and Guanajuato, climbing up to 3000 metres as we cycled eastwards around Mexico city, through the colonial cities of Toluca, San Juan del Rio and ending up in San Miguel de Allende, stomping ground of the beat writers in the 40s and now wintering ground for North American retirees.

In the dim light of the main church in San Miguel de Allende, amidst crucified messiahs and flickering candles, San Patricio holds up a shamrock and a steady gaze to the empty pews. How did a plastic puppet of Ireland's patron saint end up in the dry cactus highlands of Mexico's Guanajuato state, surrounded by snakes and a population oblivious to his importance for Irish Christians and publicans?

Well, back in the mid 1840s when many Irish were escaping the famine and heading across to the United States of America, Mexico was preparing to do battle with its northern neighbour after the latter had annexed the territory of Texas in 1845. Many of the recently arrived Irish migrants ended up in the US army, either by choice or coercion, and some of them ended up in units preparing to defend the newly expanded southern frontier with Mexico. Desertion rates from the US army were high, however, and attracted by Mexican offers of better pay and land, the Mexican army saw an influx of foreign fighters, mostly recent European migrants from a Roman Catholic background who perhaps were inspired by common religious ties as well as by chances of economic betterment. As a result of the number of Irishmen who joined, the unit became known as St. Patrick's battalion, revered as heroes in Mexican eyes and depised as traitors by the Americans. As a result of their military experience the unit fought well at key battles, though no doubt they were also motivated by the death sentence they faced if captured as prisoners of war. The victorious US army ultimately got their chance for revenge, however, and General Winfield Scott ordered his men to carry out the hanging of thirty San Patricios at Chapultepc, in view of both the US and Mexican soldiers who had fought there, at the precise moment when the US flag was raised.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Trip distance  42,122 km

63. Bikeless in the Big Smoke

We had planned to come in to Mexico city to visit my old flatmate, Hans, and his wife, Marianne, for a long weekend that has turned into ten great days. Rather than pedal into the city, we left our bikes with Hans´ friend Ernesto in Cuernavaca and got a lift with Hans into the world´s third largest metropolitan area (after Tokyo and Seoul). The Valley of Mexico has been the region´s chief urban centre since the pre-Hispanic period and the Aztec city of Gran Tenochititlan boasted over 150,000 inhabitants at its height. The city became the capital of New Spain in the colonial period and by 1900 Mexico city had half a million residents. Through the 20th century the city expanded dramatically as people attempted to escape rural poverty, only to find dreams of urban prosperity were reserved for the few. Today the greater metropolitan area is home for over 21 million people, almost one fifth of the country's total population and the largest in the western hemisphere. It´s big and it´s smokey.

Swapping our bicycles for Mexico´s metro, we're able to explore some of the city's markets and museums, find some new reading material, gatecrash a birthday party, as well as catch up on long-lost episodes of Dr. House and enjoy the use of a life-size cooker and more than two miniature saucepans. Unfortunately Ellie´s eagerly anticipated new Brooks saddle that was sent from England is still floating around somewhere in the Mexican postal system, so we'll have to hope it catches us up as we head north.

Aztec Stone of the Sun, Museum of Anthropology

A Diego Rivera mural in the Palacio Belles Artes

At the Frida Kahlo museum in the Casa Azul

Mexico City, Mexico

Trip distance: 41,761 km

62. Mexican tales

Leaving Chiapas

A couple of Saturday nights ago we'd just descended from another scenically stunning and physically demanding day´s climbing in the mountains of Oaxaca. Out of water and nearing sunset we had to keep heading for the next settlement, the town of El Cimarron, rather than wildcamp in the hills. Our fast descent into the valley below was paused briefly when we met Yannick and Shirley climbing up in the opposite direction and heading south on their transcontinental triathlon. As it was dark when we got into town we decided to try our luck asking at the municipal buildings, where a friendly truckdriver had suggested we might be able to camp earlier in the day.

Camping beside the prison cells in El Cimmaron

Outside the municipal buildings we were greeted with the nightshift beat of Mexico's finest. Your average Mexican policeman more closely resembles a cross between Robocop and a Special Forces soldier than your regular bobby on the beat. The four officers who greeted us with big smiles and hellos while holding their large machine guns muzzle downward, insisted that crime was an unheard of phenomenon in this small rural town and everything was very tranquillo. They pointed to a covered area under the municipal buildings and said we could camp there no problem. Normally avoiding such exposed areas in urban locations, we cautiously set about cooking dinner and getting the tent up, whilst wondering who the steady stream of visitors to a barred door across the patio were visiting. Gradually it dawned on us that we were camped beside the local drunk tank, a couple of cells where the police could put the overly intoxicated for the remainder of the evening. Soon additional inmates began to arrive, some coming meekly and others less excited about being locked up for the night. One fellow was particularly aggreived and made his mind up to keep the rest of El Cimarron´s citizens awake for the night with his relentless banging. Another fierce looking individual with full body tattoos began singing gently while his Mum and girlfriend came with a homecooked meal and a duvet to keep him warm on the cell floor for the night. As the cell was left unattended when the police went off on patrol, visitors could come and ago as they pleased and by midnight the inmates had acquired a saw from a passing friend. Meanwhile we had lain in the tent, numb with tiredness and from the incessant banging the prisoners were making, but unable to tell anyone about it. Only on one occasion had the abuse been directed towards our tent and after receiving no replies as to whether we were Gringos or Germans, the abuse stopped. Shortly after midnight the sawing began in earnest and at 12.20 the prisoners cut through the lock and shuffled quickly away to freedom, holding up their laceless shoes and beltless trousers and allowing us a chance to get some sleep too.

Police prepare for the President's arrival in Oaxaca city. Riots later broke out between the police and members of the teacher's unions.

Carvings at the Zapotec ruins at Monte Alban

As usual, we've met with many daily acts of generosity and kindness, from people letting us sleep in their gardens to a skopkeeper who drove after us once we'd left town to give us bottles of Gatorade. Last Sunday morning, just after Canadian cyclist Tyson had pedaled on ahead after cycling with us for a couple of days, Ellie and I stopped at a comedor for what has become a midmorning ritual of beans, eggs and tortillas. As portions are often large and tortillas are on tap, we often share a breakfast between us. Antonio, however, insisted on giving us each our own plates and began with a starters of nachos and chilli sauce. Afterwards he wouldn´t take any money from us at all and at 11am on a Sunday morning insisted I join him over a bottle of Victoria lager before we headed back into the heat and up the hills. Antonio was 38 years old and had spent over 20 years in the US, working in many different states before settling in New York and raising a family. His spritely, grey haired 75 year old mother sat eating her breakfast beside us, making sure her customers were being taken cared of. Her son was fifteen when he first crossed illegally to the US. He managed to qualify in later years for naturalization under the asylum programme but in the end a divorce, the economic downturn and the cold weather drove him back south where he has remarried and has a couple of young children. Already he plans to return for seasonal work in the construction industry. Antonio was very curious about the trip, how could such things be paid for and the countries we'd come through and as I declined another beer he promised us a place to pitch our tents and as many tortillas as we could eat. As we left I couldn´t help wondering if a teenage Jeremy Clarkson had ever been in the position of having to leave family behind and cross illegally into another country in search of work. I doubt it.

Cuernavaca, Mexico

Trip distance: 41,752 km

61. Across the Cuchumatanes

Westbound on Highway 7

After crossing the River Motagua and leaving behind the busy east-west highway that links the western Guatemalan metropolis' with the east of the country and the Caribbean, we began climbing into the Verapaces. The department of Alta Verapaz has been making the news recently when the Guatemalan government gave extensive powers to the police and military there a couple of months ago to combat the influx of the Mexican Los Zetas drugs cartel, who have been infiltrating the department to establish new smuggling routes from central America into Mexico. We didn't see much signs of this extra activity, nor did we see the resplendent quetzal, the region's famed bird that lends its name to the national currency.

Crossing the River Chixoy

The further we entered the highlands, in fact, the less shotgun toting security guards we came across and instead found quiet mountain towns where indigenous languages still predominate, and traditional costumes still worn daily as a symbol of the highlander's independence and determination to preserve their culture. Many of the highland areas in El Quiche and Huehuetenango departments suffered terribly at the hands of State forces and paramilitaries during the civil war in the 1980s and early 90s, with over 450 villages being destroyed and 200,000 people killed. These days there's little sign of the past conflicts as farmers harvest their potatos and maize crops.

Market day in Todos Santos

Pedaling through the highlands involved some of the hardest cycling conditions encountered since Bolivia and the high Andean passes with relentless, inhuman grades and rough tracks that are regularly obliterated by landslides. Most days involved a gain in altitude of about 1200 metres as the roads weaved their way up to over 3300 metres and back down to several hundred metres when crossing rivers. While the going was slow,  we enjoyed the friendly villages and towns where we passed through and as well as countless cups of arroz con leche (hot milk and rice) and enough beans to make a sizeable contribution to the region's greenhouse gas emissions quota.

Market day in Todos Santos

Following a couple of day's off in the chilly highland town of Todos Santos, we bumped our way slowly down out of the Cuchumatanes onto the relatively flatter limestone plateau that stretches northwards from the base of the mountains and marks the border with Mexico. The recent establishment of additional official border posts along many parts of the Guatemala/Mexico border has ensured that small towns such as Gracias a Dios, from where we crossed into Chiapas province in southern Mexico, are booming from the resulting trade. Our two-year old map was already out-of-date and the horrendous dirt roads that I was expecting materialised into newly paved roads.

Heading for Mexico

We changed the last of our quetzales and some dollars into Mexican pesos in Gracias a Dios, under the watchful eye of the scar-faced chubby moneychanger who eventually agreed to give us eleven pesos to the dollar. His friend leant against the hood of a pimped pickup and sported a ivory-handled revolver out of the front of his jeans. Crossing the border we were greeted by friendly Mexican officials who carefully examined our passports before giving us a very generous 180-day tourist visa as well as directions to the national park at Montebello lakes. We spent our first night at the lakes, camped inside the kitchen of the park guards and listening to the rain all night. The following morning we donned the wet gear and piled on the plastic bags and visited the disappointingly cold and misty lakes before heading up to Comitan de Dominguez. The following day we rode the 95 kilometres and 1200 metre climb up to San Cristobal de las Casas, where we've just taken a week off the bikes, visiting the city and surrounding area and catching up with my Scottish friend Kirsty with whom I'd cycled across northern Spain in 2008. 

Last Tuesday we were all sitting up at one of the viewpoints looking down on the city and wondering why two Humvee loads of soldiers had chosen the same spot to take some air. Later we found out that the high profile security was for President Felipe Calderon, who had been visiting the city to pay his respects to the late Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who had died the previous week and who had played an important part in the peace process between Zapatista paramilitaries and the Government in the mid-1990s.

San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico

Pedalled: 40,650 km

60. Men of maize

 Enchilada time

As we climb up to Perquin in the rugged, pine-covered mountains of eastern El Salvador, it is easy to see how the town became a natural fortress during the civil war in the 1980s. For over a decade, the town was a stronghold of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion (FMLN) guerrillas, who like their Sandinista comrades in Nicaragua, were waging war against a US-funded dictatorship. In the three-roomed museum at the top of the town, the former studio for the guerrillas' Radio Venceremos, an assemblage of photographs, weapons and copies of foreign press coverage of the civil war, detail the struggle from the FMLNs perspective. Our guide, a former guerilla himself, mentions the importance of the foreign coverage and support. Amongst the posters depicting effigies of Reagan and calling for support for the people of El Salvador, I spot a faded yellow card and a typed message in Irish from the Irish El Salvador Support Committee, with a contact name and address in Swords, Co.Dublin. Written in the aftermath of the massacre in the neighbouring village of El Mozote, where over one thousand villages of all ages and both genders were killed in December 1981 by the US-trained Atlacatl battalion and government forces. Over 75,000 people are estimated to have been killed during the 12-year long conflict.

Mural in Perquin

Investment in tourism infrastructure has been part of the rebuilding programme to improve the economy of the Morazon region in the years after the signing of the peace accords in 1992. Perquin is promoted as a highlight on the so-called Road of Peace, a crossborder iniative with neighbouring Honduras. Ironically it is the same US government, albeit a very different administration, that is now financing the rebuilding process through such channels as the Millenium Challenge Corporation, that financed the arnaments and training of government forces during the war. Outside the museum, a crater marks the destruction of the first aerial bombing of the town by government forces and beside the hole is a replica of the 500lb bomb that caused it along with a sign reading "Made in USA".

Early morning enroute to Honduras from El Salvador

From Perquin we climb further up through the dusty dirt track that leads to the Honduran province of La Paz. A closed immigration office apparently being no barrier to entry as a bored police officer waves us through without requesting even a peek at our documents. We arrive in Marcala later in the afternoon, as New Year´s Eve celebrations are getting underway, some people clearly having started earlier than others as they sway erratically through the crowded streets. Explosions of fireworks that have continued unabated since Christmas erupted around us. Outside the half-built police station we meet Dubai-born Shabeer and his Honduran wife and despite our shabby appearance we´re invited to their dinner party to welcome in the New Year. We turn up at the appointed hour to find a table set as we look through the window but an otherwise empty house. Finally our hunger gets the better of us and we go scavenging through the poorly lit town, only managing to find a plastic burger and a couple of bottles of beer before the power goes down in the town. We find our way back through the quiet streets to our bed. It´s only ten o´clock. A midnight artillery barrage of fire crackers brings us briefly to our senses - happy New Year!

Bumpy descent into La Esperanza

From Marcala we work our way northwestwards, through the towns of La Esperanza, San Juan, Gracias and Santa Rosa de Copan. Lenca people make up the indigenous majority in this highland region. Markets are well-stocked with fruit and vegetables and dairy farming ensures plentiful supplies of cheese, milk and sour cream. From San Juan, pine forests give way to coffee plantations. The price is good we´re told at the moment, business is booming. Yet for most Hondurans, work isn´t easy to come by at home. Everyday someone yells "Hey buddy!" as we pass by, having picked up English in New Jersey, North Carolina, Miami or Los Angeles. Everyday we meet young men who´ve worked in Los Estados, four years seems to be the average. Over one in seven Honduran´s are now living abroad, the majority working as illegal migrants in the US. Busy Western Union offices in even the smallest towns are testament to the importance of remittances.

La Esperanza

More unrelenting hills bring us from Santa Rosa de Copan to the Mayan ruins at Copan. Away now from the more remote and peaceful mountain towns, we move into cattle country and cowboy culture, where big hats, big boots and big guns become more prominent. As Ellie and I eat our lunch of beef, beans and tortillas at a comedor near La Entrada, a friendly and helpful builder on his lunch break gives us details about the route ahead. His companion notices how our gaze keeps coming back to the young builder's hips and explains, almost apologetically it seems, about the crime and la delincuencia. The seven-year old daughter of the proprietor asks him what he would do if a robber came and he instantly snaps the safety catch on his plastic hip holster and pulls out his gun, mimicking a firefight where he is the victor. Then he holsters the gun, turns and smiles and walks outside.

The Copan ruins mark our entry into the southernmost point of the ancient Mayan empire that flourished between today´s western Honduras and southern Mexico between 2000 BC and 850 AD. Copan was one of the four royal cities in the empire and today, after reconstruction in the early twentieth century when the ruins were reclaimed from the jungle, it is now possible to walk through the former royal quarters, acropolis and the plazas that formed the core of the city. After a couple of days spent at the ruins and at the nearby town of Copan Ruinas, we fixed some punctures and pedaled the final 12 kilometres, up one big last Honduran hill and down to the border at El Florido. Our lack of entry stamps into Honduras not fazing the friendly immigration official, we were stamped out of Honduras and into Guatemala.

Chiquimula, Guatemala
Trip distance: 39,932 km

59. Happy New Year from El Salvador

Happy New Year from El Salvador! Border crossings are becoming an almost daily occurence lately, having pedalled through southern Honduras after Nicaragua and following a quick foray across eastern El Salvador we'll cross into the western highlands of Honduras. Christmas was spent in the southern Honduran city of Choluteca, where Ellie nursed a throat infection for a couple of days and we got in our full quota of TV for the coming year in one weekend. Christmas lunch was a mountain of chow mein and fried noddles from the only person in town not celebrating Christmas and open for business. At midnight on Christmas eve, Choluteca rocked with explosions as hundreds of homemade fireworks were set alright in the streets. In fact they've been blasting away all week and I've been waiting to see someone drop a cigarette into the stacks of fireworks they're selling at the side of the road.

Crossing the border yesterday between Honduras and El Salvador at hot and dusty El Amatillo, we headed for the bustling market town of Santa Rosa de Lima before turning north into the Morazon department and the mountains. Tomorrow morning we'll finish the 20km climb to Perquin, a town that was one of  the strongholds of the FMLN guerillas during the civil war in the 1980s. We've found people very friendly as usual and today the police drove past as we were climbing up to Osicala and then reversed back with the lights flashing to ask us about the trip. Better than my last encounter with a Honduran policeman yesterday who was adamant I should be giving him a late Christmas present.

Wishing everyone tailwinds and downhills for 2011!

Osicala, El Salvador
Trip distance: 39,493 km

58. Trying to fletcherise in Nicaragua

We´ve spent the past ten days meandering up through western Nicaragua. Off the main roads, the pace of traffic has slowed down, with less cars, more bicycles, horses and ox-carts trundling along beside us. The rainy days of Costa Rica and Panama are behind us and we´re back camping under the filling moon. I´ve lots to write but I´m also hungry and tomorrow we leave for the Honduras border, so instead I´ll cheat and cut and paste a poem by the national bard, Rubén Darío, founder of Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo in the late 19th century. The poem was a reaction to the involvement of the United States in the separation of Panama and Colombia that subsequently allowed the US to construct the Panama canal and retain jurisdiction over the Canal Zone until the last decade.

To Roosevelt by Rubén Darío (translated by L. Kemp)

The voice that would reach you, Hunter, must speak
in Biblical tones, or in the poetry of Walt Whitman.
You are primitive and modern, simple and complex;
you are one part George Washington and one part Nimrod.
You are the United States,
future invader of our naive America
with its Indian blood, an America
that still prays to Christ and still speaks Spanish.

You are strong, proud model of your race;
you are cultured and able; you oppose Tolstoy.
You are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar,
breaking horses and murdering tigers.
(You are a Professor of Energy,
as current lunatics say).

You think that life is a fire,
that progress is an irruption,
that the future is wherever
your bullet strikes.
No.

The United States is grand and powerful.
Whenever it trembles, a profound shudder
runs down the enormous backbone of the Andes.
If it shouts, the sound is like the roar of a lion.
And Hugo said to Grant: "The stars are yours."
(The dawning sun of the Argentine barely shines;
the star of Chile is rising..) A wealthy country,
joining the cult of Mammon to the cult of Hercules;
while Liberty, lighting the path
to easy conquest, raises her torch in New York.

But our own America, which has had poets
since the ancient times of Nezahualcóyolt;
which preserved the footprint of great Bacchus,
and learned the Panic alphabet once,
and consulted the stars; which also knew Atlantic
(whose name comes ringing down to us in Plato)
and has lived, since the earliest moments of its life,
in light, in fire, in fragrance, and in love--
the America of Moctezuma and Atahualpa,
the aromatic America of Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
the America where noble Cuauthémoc said:
"I am not in a bed of roses"--our America,
trembling with hurricanes, trembling with Love:
O men with Saxon eyes and barbarous souls,
our America lives. And dreams. And loves.
And it is the daughter of the Sun. Be careful.
Long live Spanish America!
A thousand cubs of the Spanish lion are roaming free.
Roosevelt, you must become, by God's own will,
the deadly Rifleman and the dreadful Hunter
before you can clutch us in your iron claws.

And though you have everything, you are lacking one thing:
God! 

 On Ometepe island

 

Preparations are underway for next year´s presidential election. This poster is for incumbent Daniel Ortega of the FSLN (Sandinista), most of them are.

At the market in Granada

 

Mural painter in Granada

Morning time in the central highlands

Watering cans

Ellie crossing a stream near Ciudad Dario

A christmas tree in front of Leon´s cathedral

Portrait of General Sandino at the monument to the Nicaraguan revolution in Leon

Leon, Nicaragua
Pedaled: 39,146 km

57. Cruising through Costa Rica

Palmar Norte

Eight days of cycling brought us north from the Paso Canoas borderpost, along the steamy Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The busy, shoulderless Pan-Americana gave way to smaller coastal roads through the Ballena national park and up to the resort of Jaco.  Much of the property on the coast has been bought up by North Americans and large billboards advertise new gated communities with a choice of either ocean or forest views.  Those engaged in the tourist trade are gearing up for the holidays when wealthy Josefinos and foreigners descend on Costa Rica's coast. Others, who live in the wooden shacks on the floodplains on the periphery of these resorts were still cleaning up the damage that had been caused a month ago when the tailend of Hurricane Tomas resulted in severe flooding and a declared state of national emergency. Hospitality at tico firestations has been as exemplary as their Panamanian counterparts and we were always able to pitch our tent, often amid the relief supplies that had been sent in for the floods.

Racing the tortoise

Before continuing up to Guanacaste province and the border with Nicaragua, we take a detour on some steep gravel roads up to the cooler heights of Monteverde on the westward side of the Cordillera de Tilaran, home to a Quaker settlement since the 1950s when they moved from Alabama to avoid being conscripted to fight in the Korean War. The area is also home the Monteverde Cloudforest Preserve, a ten and a half thousand hectare reserve of tropical rainforest of immense biological diversity.

Near Ballena national park 

Climbing up to Santa Elena at 1400 metres 

Hummingbird at Monteverde Cloudforest Preserve

Santa Elena, Costa Rica

Trip distance: 38,535 km