Sunday August 6th, 2006
Sill picking at our large mini-stalk of bananas from the previous day, we headed south from Tegucigalpa along windy roads leading us to the coast. The geography was quite similar to that of northern California. As has seemed to be the trend for many central american countries, lots of political propaganda preparing for the upcoming elections has been painted on many of the walls of the cliffs. Passing San Lorenzo and Choluteca and brought us the the border with Nicaragua.
The border crossing was relatively uneventful (ie 2 hours and tons of paperwork) and upon arrival in Nicaragua, the roads immediately went to crap - 1.5 potholes per square meter. We purchased car insurance from a twelve year old boy operating out of a strange wooden shack (see picture) which came in handy when ...
... we were immediately pulled over by a cop in Leon not 40km later. The alleged infraction was a right turn onto a two way street which had a red construction cone five feet from the curb. This crooked cop insulted Joses driving ability (which, as we have learned long ago is sensitive territory for all three drivers in the triad) and moved immediately towards a hard stance setting himself up for the easy bribe. Not taking the bait, Jose opted for the "Take me the to US Embassy, in Managua and I will be back here tomorrow" stance, which worked okay. But thrown in with the ole - writing down badge ID number at photograph of the cop (which is illegal fyi) we suddenly had more bargaining chips. After a few more questions and 15 more minutes of arguing we were on our way.
Leon is a beautiful colonial town which is not too gringofied. Similar to Honduras in nature, the town felt a little sleepy and the locals were quite friendly. After a nice buffet-over-a-womans-stove type meal, we explored the town a bit. There seem to be a lot of young Nicaraguans which we are attributing to the post war baby boom. We decided to head to Esteli, site of a cigar factory for tomorrows tour.
The Nicaraguan landscape is spectacular! There are literally TONS of volcanos which litter the landscape from the flats alone the coast to the mountains of the center. We took some fairly country road (1.7 potholes per sqmeter) through some very interesting farmland. All of the towns we went through were brandishing the black and red Flag of the Sandinista party FSLN - with the elections coming up in October-November, things were getting into high gear. Flags were on trees, trees trunks were painted, it was pretty impressive. After reading nicaraguan history en route, it was clear that this country has had its fair share of politics - election turnouts are in the high 90s %.
As the sun was setting we were thankful to make it off the country road which we dubbed as "quite a good car jacking road" ... we of course had to snarl our way through some extremely intense mosquito clouds and through another police checkpoint. This time we faced fines for lacking our front plate. Again, claiming ignorance and that Massachusetts does not issue them, we made it through unscathed after a healthy discussion.
The town of Esteli is was beautiful, we had a nice stroll and were entertained by an intense evangelical church band before bed.
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