(Being written from sick-bed about yesterday’s ride, which became increasingly exhausting as I prematurely ran out of energy, went back to the hotel and threw up. Things have got progressively worse and based on other symptoms it appears I’ve contracted a bug)
But yesterday was brilliant. I decided to combine a ride along the shore with a ride up into the hills northeast of Managua and Granada. The track, at the end of the day looked like this, nicely between both giant lakes, only 118 miles, but some hard earned
It started on a small road that ran along the shoreline
Cows out walking the beach
It turned to dirt. Lucinda resting in the shade in a small village
and passed
The road went inland a mile or so and the riding was good
Then we came to a big river with egrets
And, perfectly, a small ferry
Which we shared with a bike and a pick-up
The works were carefully supervised by the mechanic
When we rode off, a truck with a couple of cows rolled on
Then about 10 miles later we came to a river and the dirt road ran out. i had been wondering why there was no road shown on either Garmin’s Central America or my open source map, but a dirt road was shown on my paper map. I drove up and own the river and this was the only crossing I could find. No problem, obviously, but no way is this a car bridge, which made me wonder about what was ahead
Crossing the bridge, which was made of salvaged iron plate, watched by some boys who looked like they’d never seen a bike like Lucinda before, which I guess they hadn’t
There were tracks on the other side which surprised me. Maybe the ubiquitous car-wheeled, cow-pulled rigs…
Then our first water crossing. I walked it to check depth and the bottom surface. Slippery
Then after another few miles a much bigger water problem. This time a small lake.
The rain the previous night had flooded the area out. Only three steps in and the water was over my boots, another couple and above the height of Lucinda’s air intake (three inches above my knee) and I though oh shit, we’re stuck. After exploring a bit we found a good route around the edge with only one deep bit at the end. Deep enough to be over the cylinder heads. Very slippery with rocks so we crawled and zen’d our way across. No way did I want to go down
Later, a farmer very nicely showed me how to navigate cows
Then later we met the main road, rode up in a loop through some hills, then back
