RTW North to South: Nicaragua layover

KS- Sunday

Yesterday we started out in Chinandega, a town in north west Nicaragua. Moved our bikes out of the secure parking we had to convince the hotel person to let us use. She kept saying they had security guard and we could leave our bikes on the street. We kept insisting on the gated spot, and finally either we won, or they gave up. Either way, it worked, which made me smile, as I walked outside for the last look at the bikes before going to bed, and found the security guard, soundly asleep in his chair on the sidewalk, gentle Spanish music playing on the nearby radio. It my sound like were overprotective of the motorcycles, since they're the last thing I check before going to bed, and the first thing I check when I get up, but with this being a motorcycle trip, the motorcycle is 3rd in line of importance, behind Passport and Wallet. After fresh tanks of their finest gas, we were happily on our way south through the beautiful countryside of Nicaragua, passing volcanoes and sugar cane fields. The roads here are some of the nicest we've had yet, but with that luxury comes a price, police enforcement of speed and passing zones. Luckily we have not had first hand experience of either of these infractions, but we are trying to be on our "better" behavior. Roadsides are much more green, being manicured by large groups of workers with weedeaters, and horses tied to fencelines with just enough rope to keep their heads out of the main traffic lanes. There is still some trash present, but very little compared to previous areas, it seems that in a couple of the countries north of here, standard waste disposal procedure is to throw all your trash in a pile along the side of the road, toss a lit match at the pile, then drive away. I'll admit that Ive never been a big fan of vehicle emission regulations and EPA pollution control measures, but I'm starting to warm up to them now after some of the smoke clouds and practices Ive seen.

We arrived at New Day Ministries around lunch time. Its a Christian outreach to the schools and people around the community of Los Cedros, about 45 minutes outside of the capitol city of Managua. Glen and Janna Kauffman, who are originally from the U.S. have been here for about 6 years so far, working in the communities in the area. As a good habit to develop as a traveler, show up around meal times. After a warm welcome from our hosts, we settled in to our new surroundings, and were presented with a Thanksgiving casserole. It gives you an idea of how long you've been gone when you're eating a wonderful meal after the holiday, all your surrounds are green and lush, and its warm. Being served homecooked meals is a great experience, after almost a month of living on the road we have eaten many things, but these have been some of the best meals yet.

Today we are relaxing and tinkering with some small projects. Chip is filling out forms and doing pictures to attempt to get another passport in the near future, Since we have about 8 more countries to go, and his passport only has about 7 available spaces. Some countries use large stamps, for both entry and exit of their country, so its very likely he won't be able to finish the trip without a new passport, or lots of "extra cash payments". We also did a little work on the bikes yesterday, I modified my shift lever to allow it to clamp down tighter on the shaft (which is slightly bent from previous owner), I'm hoping to avoid the next step, which would be to weld them both together, a great fix, until you need to remove the shifter, or disassemble the engine. In the never ending quest for running perfection in Chip's bike, we adjusted the fuel float height to richen up the fuel curve slightly. Its a tough fight for fine tuning, when a riding day can take you from sea level, to over 10,000ft. We then replaced a leaky seal with the spare that had been brought along. And finally washed our complete riding gear yesterday, the black water we dumped out of the wash bin was a bit scary, and probably toxic to small animals. I removed the BMW Roundel from my jacket sleeves in an attempt to keep a little more money in my pockets at borders, worth a shot anyways. Tomorrow we will probably head south again in an attempt to cross the border into Costa Rica, where we plan to hang out for a bit, and start looking at our next moves south. Not much of a actual ride report today, since we'll have only ridden about 60 miles this weekend. But anyways, here are some pictures.