Tegucigalpa, Honduras to Ocotal, Nicaragua (155 km/96 miles)

View from the top of the first mountain pass outside Tegucigalpa

Pine forests along the way to Danli

The road I almost fell off of

Billboards are painted on cliffs all over down here, kinda annoys me.

Scenery coming into Nicaragua

Biking Day 1: Tegucigalpa to Danli (105 km)

We have been threatening for awhile now to start our bike days at 4 am, and on this day it actually happened.  We got going at 4:15 knowing we had a tough day of mountains and hills ahead of us.  We had a mountain pass to go over to get out of Tegucigalpa in addition to an hour of riding through the city just to get to the base of the mountain.  It was actually rather cold out, but the uphill riding made a jacket not necessary.  The cool temperature also made it possible for me to make it up and over the mountain pass without having to get off and push once, woohoo!  Our scenery was almost entirely pine forest.  You would never expect to see pines in Central America, but we have seen them in every country so far and they are even the national tree in Honduras.  I never noticed them on previous trips but I wasnt interested in plants before!  The mountain pass was surprisingly not all that difficult, but it was still early and I had lots of energy!  The sun was barely up when we made it to the top and it was freezing!  I had to put on my jacket and dream of leg warmers!  We were rewarded with the longest lovliest downhill we have ever had!  It was awesome.  We had a few more rolling hills then took a long stop at a road side restaurant for breakfast, it was still only 9:30. :)  We were at the halfway point at the restaurant and were told that we would only have one more hill to go over the get to Danli.  That was definitely not true and I began to lose energy quickly.  We had lots of rolling hills and another area of mountain pass.  I began having to get off the bike and push.  The road turned to crap and there wasnt much shoulder for us to ride on.  At one point the road just crumbled away off a cliff, narrowing the road to one lane.  As I was right next to the drop off, a semi came barreling by me giving me very little space between it and the edge of the road.  I freaked out and slammed on my breaks and skidded and fell off my bike.  I really wasnt hurt, just scared.  One of my bags had popped off and was hanging over the edge of the drop off, and my bike was not far from it. Had I kept going, I am pretty sure that that the tail wind of the truck would have knocked me off the road.  It wasnt a huge drop off, but still not somewhere I wanted to be. So the uphills continued and I got more and more tired to the point where I was beginning to feel disabled.  Luckily the cool weather continued, and we even got rained on a little bit.  I am sure if it had been hot, I would have collapsed.  We made it out of the second large mountain pass and decided we would stop for the night in the next town, Jacaleapa, since I was so exhauted. It was like heaven seeing the welcome to Jacaleapa sign, but it was short lived, the town was too small and had not hotels. So we trudged on the final 10 km, over another pretty big hill to Danli.  We made it just before 5 and went to bed at 7!

Biking Day 2: Danli to Ocotal (50km)

We had ambitions of starting early again, but when 5 am rolled around we were nowhere near ready to get out of bed.  It didnt help that the bed caved in towards the middle and we didnt sleep all that well that night.  We slept in til after 8, bringing our sleep total to 13 hours! And we decided to get a real breakfast, so didnt get going until 9am.  It was somewhat hot out, but not to bad cause the wind was blowing.  It was only 50 km to Ocotal, but we knew we had a mountainous area to go over to get to the border station of Las Manos.  Except for the final 4 or so km of continous rather steep uphill to Las Manos, it was not as bad a we thought it would be.  I pushed my bike almost the whole way up the hill, Craig was able to ride the whole thing, I am envious!  It was gorgeous scenery at the higher elevations, coffee fields with banana trees mixed in, large tropical trees of varying colors, and the road sides were lined with flowers, bouganvilleas, hibiscus and even foxtail chenille.  The border crossing was easy.  We had to pay $12 each to enter Nicaragua, which was annoying.  Then the downhill from there was absolutely spectacular!  It was gorgeous, we still had the breeze, (which was warm like the Santa Anas we get in San Diego) beautiful clear skies and a downhill that went almost the whole remaining 20km to Ocotal.  As we came down in elevation we got into dry desert like landscape.

Once in Ocotal, we found a nice family run hotel on the main road, Hotelito San Martin, and relaxed for the night.  The owner of the  hotel was nice enough to let us store our bikes and bags there.  Yesterday took a 3 1/2 hour bus ride over dusty mountain roads to small town of Quilali.  We are here visiting some Peace Corps volunteers who Craig met in Alaska a few years ago.  I was nervous about spending time with people I didnt know since I can be shy, but they are great people and I have had a lot of fun and learned a lot about the Peace Corps.  They are a married couple that are teaching English classes, and also working on building a classroom out of plastic bottles! They are excited to have us, as they have not had any visitors the whole time they´ve been here, since the town is such a pain to get to.  Tonight we get to meet the host family they lived with for their first few months after being placed in this town .  They are making us a traditional Nicaraguan dinner! We got here yesterday afternoon and will leave tomorrow.

The biking continues to Esteli from Ocotal on Tuesday.  In Esteli we will store our bikes and take a bus to the highland town of Matagalpa to visit Selva Negra (eco-lodge) and El Castillo del Cacao, chocolate farm!  We have 760 miles down and 910 miles to go!  And it looks like mostly flat terrain for us the rest of the way on the interamericana!