Masaya and Granada

April 17th to 21st

20 kilometres outside Managua, the town of Masaya is the centre of the Nicaraguan arts and crafts trade. The old market is home to thousands of artists famous for a quality hammocks, geometrically decorated gourds and pottery plus a wealth of leatherwork and basketry.

But thats not why we're going there.

Like the face of a pimply teenager, Nicaragua is dotted with an impressive 21 volcanoes. The statistic is all the more impressive considering the country is about the size of New York State.They stretch in a south easterly line from the Honduran border, across to Costa Rica and the volcano here at Masaya is the most active of them all. Just outside the town we pass the giant crater lake created in a huge explosion around 6000 years ago. Drinks are outrageously overpriced at a beautiful restaurant overlook, but the view is well worth the money....

We plan to head to Masaya town, drop off our bags in a hotel and ride back to climb the volcano but just as we arrive, we bump into another laden touring bike and stop for a chat. Sean and Ingrid, a British couple are travelling south from Alaska, nothing that unusual so far, but they are doing it on a tandem so they can bring their eight year old daughter Kate along with them. Sean does the steering while Kate does the pedaling from the back of the tandem. In order to carry all their gear including books for Kate's schooling, both the tandem and Ingrid's bike tow trailers making them about the longest bicycling convoy I have ever seen....

They were just heading out of Masaya after debating whether to visit the volcano or not but change their plans when we say we are going. So we return to the hotel they checked out of just 20 minutes earlier, dump our gear and head back to the 'Parque Nacional Vulcan Masaya'. Like them we had debated about visiting after a less than inspiring write up in guide books, but our arrival reveals an absolute gem of a visitors centre. One of the guides explains the area's geology over a 3D map showing the complex of craters and mini lakes and there are other models and exhibits on all things volcanic. It's probably one of the best educational centres I have been to anywhere in the world. It's also a safe haven to kill an hour or two when the clouds burst in an unexpected deluge that changes the placid skies to a rampant waterfall.

When the air becomes dry and see-through once again, we venture out and ride a steep track up to the volcano's rim. The air is thick with throat stinging sulphurous gases and guides have supplies of gas masks they can dole out should the volcano belch back into life or the wind change direction. Looking at the scene it's no wonder Spanish priests used to believe this was The Gate to Hell itself and they would come here in the 16th to prevent Satan from escaping. One priest allegedly mistook the glowing lava for molten gold and set off to collect some. Maybe God does indeed protect the weak and foolish as he apparently survived this misguided attempt at riches.

It's hard to judge scale, but this is a whopper....

This whole area used to be one gargantuan volcano which covered several square miles, the cone soaring nearly 3 miles (14500 feet) in height. Then, 6000 years ago there was a massive explosion which blew the mountain away and flattening the entire area. Now there are several smaller craters where the land still boils and erupts and also the huge Lake Masaya sitting within the rim of the original volcano. Ingrid, Sean Sue and Kate set against one of the newer (much smaller) crater rims...

After a night in Masaya, we set out as a convoy to cover the 10 miles or so to Granada. Normally we get enough attention riding just as a couple - riding with guys on a tandem hauling trailers, especially with the diminutive figure of Kate on the back.... well that just floors people.

Founded in 1524, Granada rapidly prospered as a rich trade centre due to it's location on Lake Nicaragua. Whilst seemingly land locked, this enormous lake has an outflow to the Caribbean Sea via the San Juan river allowing huge cargoes to be transported by ship. It's rivalry with Leon erupted into full blown civil war in the 1850's whereupon Leon enlisted an American adventurer, William Walker to help out against Granada. He duly took the city, betrayed Leon and then set himself up as president of the entire country. After reintroducing slavery, changing the official language to English, mortgaging half the country for his own personal gain he then set about invading Costa Rica. At that point people got tetchy and kicked him out, but not before he managed to burn the city to the ground.

Today Granada is a striking collection of restored colonial buildings and more modern copies like the central cathedral....

As Nicaragua's premier tourist town, the main streets are pedestrianised which is unusual in Central America - doesn't stop people of bikes though....

The touristic centre is colourful, the lively plaza hosting a band whilst locals and travelers alike watch and dance. Bars and restaurants compete along traffic free streets, outdoor tables and chairs a haven for diners and people watchers. It's lively and colourful...

Old doorways, modern business....

Strolls through back streets take you past old churches and single story adobe houses, the mountains and cathedral dome an ever present backdrop....

During the heat of the day, Kate catches up on her school work and Sue just cannot help the maths teacher in her coming out to torture the poor girl. She inflicts a couple of hours of fractions and decimal sums on her before we head out for a Chinese in the cheaper streets away from the tourist trap.

Sean, Ingrid and Kate bid us farewell and head off the next day, but we stay to explore a bit more. Nice meeting you guys and hope we can catch up somewhere south of here...

Walking out of town, the mile or so to the lake reveals a rougher edge behind the freshly painted facade. Open sewers cause the nose to crinkle and instead of high price bars; beggars and rubbish now compete to line the streets. The malecon or walkway along the lake shore could be amazing, but the park and restaurants are showing signs of neglect and a lack of maintenance as they slowly slip into disrepair.

Back in town there is a real mix of the old and the new and some of the back streets are just beautiful.

It really is a mix though. Nicaragua after all the troubles of recent times has over 50% unemployment. There is state provided education, but it can be sketchy in places and poorer families often send their children out to beg to provide money where parents cannot find work. Granada with it's fat wallet carrying gringos acts like a magnet and having a white face paints you with a target.

We are really torn. Hearing their stories is heart rending. Some are genuinely sad cases, others are patently just fronts to garner easy money from rich westerners. By comparison, we are massively wealthy and it is easy to appease your conscience and just give to them all. But underneath that there is always the nagging doubt that by giving, you just encourage parents to keep children out of school and to squander their one chance to a better life. It is a tough question, particularly in a country where an education doesn't easily lead to a job in a place where half the people cannot find work.

In the last couple of years the EU and the US has withheld over $200 million in aid due to irregularities at the last election. Even Oxfam has pulled out of Nicaragua because corruption meant that aid was not getting through to the people that needed it. The current president Daniel Ortega was supposed to be the saviour of the people - a new dawn, but one man we speak to talks of more revolution if he were re-elected after changing the constitution to allow him to run again.

You just can't help feeling this is a country just struggling back from the brink after the last few decades, but whether it follows countries like Costa Rica to a better future is still open to debate...

The sun sets over this beautiful old historic city and tomorrow we leave it behind and head down the lake shore. We've a ferry to catch to the Volcanic island of Ometepe....

April 15th and 16th

We battle our way through the chaos of Managua's congested streets heading West....

Unusually, there are two major routes between the new capital and Leon, the old one. We had intended to take the new road as the old one climbs directly over a 600 meter hill that the other route circumnavigates. Either there is a complete lack of signs or we just missed them, distracted as we were by cars coming from all directions, dodging the hand carts and ox driven wains. So we take the old road.... and climb.

It's a dull brown barren landscape reminiscent of the semi desert highlands of Mexico and we stop frequently to cool off in the blistering heat. Briefly the air freshens as we top 2000 feet before dropping back to the plains at sea level.

The land is given over to sugar once more and heat hazed, arrow straight tarmac speeds the crop to market like some giant mechanised hedgehog....

40 kilometres out from Leon the road starts to degrade and then becomes interspersed with dirt sections where the blacktop disappears completely. It slows us down considerably and passing trucks now raise great plumes of dust which forms a kind of paste as it clings to sweaty faces....

Leon, a city formed in 1524, was originally sited further east at the foot of the Momotombo Volcano. It had to be moved to it's current location after being destroyed in 1610 when said volcano first erupted, and then finished the job off with a massive earthquake. Leon then enjoyed 247 years as the nations capital before internecine squabbling caused it to lose that honour to the then fishing village at Managua. As a consequence the modern day city is a much smaller, more accessible place with some stunning colonial relics. The beautiful Iglesia de la Recoleccion....

The cathedral in the central plaza is the largest in all of Central America and took over 100 years to build. Blueprints for it's design had to be ratified by Spanish authorities and the town's leadership were not convinced a plan on such a grand scale would pass scrutiny.

So they lied.

By submitting a more modest proposal, they could receive Spain's blessing - and then just get on with this colossal structure behind their backs....

Many of the fine buildings are now pock marked and fading, their crumbling facades reflecting Leon's recent change of status. Where they have been restored, however, it is easy to see just how beautiful this place must have been in it's heyday. The municipal theatre....

Leon has always taken it's politics seriously. During the revolution almost the entire population rebelled against the Somoza dictatorship and fought with the Sandinistas to topple the government and the US funded Contras. Buildings throughout the city display giant murals commemorating these troubled times as people fought for their liberty....

A grim reminder of the struggle is the 'Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs' where pictures of over 300 victims are on display. It is run by the mothers of these former Sandinista veterans who are willing to talk about their memories and experiences. It is chilling to note the number of women amongst those remembered who fought alongside the men and also the young age of all faces staring back at you.

It's not all about the struggles of the past though and Leon is also home to art galleries such as the 'Fundacion Ortiz'.

Now a visit to an art gallery can go one of two ways, especially when it's so-called 'contemporary art'. Contemporary art is just that where people haven't had enough time to decide what is rubbish yet so they can throw it away. It is something of a surprise then, when Fundacion Ortiz turns out to be pretty amazing! Set in two incredibly fine old colonial houses complete with open courtyards and gardens, it's a fantastic collection of paintings and sculpture from all around the Latin world....

After the sprawling immensity of Managua, Leon is a much more accessible city. It's small enough to walk around and safe enough that doing so is unlikely to ruin your day. It's firmly on the gringo trail and white faces intermingle with the locals, but at it's heart it still retains an authentic feel with a bustling market at the centre and unexplored back-streets to lose yourself in. We're both pretty glad we extended our time in Nicaragua and made a detour to come here.

Retracing our steps (or tyre tracks) back to Managua, we take the new road. It's a decision taken by the majority and we now swap the rock and dirt surface of the old for a massive increase in traffic. Brief gaps in the cloud cover allow brief glimpses of the behemoth that was responsible for Leon's retreat to a safe distance. Vulcan Momotombo rises perfect and conical from an otherwise unblemished strip of flat-land. From a standing start at sea level it thrusts abruptly 1280 metres (4200 ft) into the clouds on the edge of Lake Managua....

It makes a fairly spectacular backdrop as we skirt the lake back to Managua....

Managua

April 8th to 14th

As we approach the capital, the landscape becomes all too depressingly affected by man's inability to solve the problem of waste....

After the neatness of the highlands of Nicaragua, it's an even sadder sight, the trees stunted and denuded under the weight of suffocating plastic.

The ride through the streets of Managua is similarly disturbing as city parks are given over to rows of board and tarpaulin built shanty houses....

Managua is a city of extremes as executive cars whisk their cargoes of high powered business men past the ranks of tumbledown hovels. The main plaza swarms with bare-footed urchins begging from well dressed urbanites under the shadow of grand old buildings. All major cities tussle with these kind of issues but here it is very much in your face, like an open sore that cannot be ignored.

Next day we ride our bikes down to the immigration office on the edge of town to extend our stretched visas. We are fully laden in case bureaucracy defeats us and we are left with just 36 hours to reach Costa Rica. The 'office' turns out to be a huge area more akin to an airport lounge with long glass barriers separating uniformed officials from the milling crowd of applicants, all clutching their documents, forms and hopeful expressions. An incoherent babble fills the air as snaking lines of people fill the gaping space, indolent fans pushing hot sticky air to and fro.

The process turns out to be a five minute formality, unfortunately punctuated by two and a half hours spent in five separate queues. Queue to get receipt for form, line up to pay for form, queue to exchange receipt for form, once more to pay for visa and once again to hand over passport for stamping. It's a test of both my patience and my Spanish as I strain to hear, and be heard against a backdrop of a thousand identical conversations. All in all though, relatively painless and we head back to the centre 30 days richer and just 20 dollars poorer.

Managua, in it's heyday, must have looked like one of the world's great cities! Relatively new, this former fishing village was only established as the nation's capital in 1857 to prevent the constant in-fighting for the title between rival cities Leon and Granada. In 1972 a huge earthquake devastated much of the city centre, and today, like the cathedral many of the formerly impressive buildings stand damaged and decaying....

Walking round the 'Area Monumental' is like being on a post apocalyptic film set like 'I am Legend' or '28 Days Later'. It really is a bit creepy seeing urban decay on this scale in the complete absence of other human beings. Wide boulevards are totally deserted and the only sounds are the bird calls set against the background of an inhuman insect murmur. It sends a tingle down the spine.

The cracks from the earthquake's fury are still evident as the second wave of nature's demolition team moves in in the form of plant roots....

The risk of future quakes has meant this once beautiful centre has been abandoned for good and the city now sprawls with squat, widely spaced buildings spreading for some 25 miles along the southern lake shore. It's like no other major city I have seen with tropical greenery rather than man made high-rise dominating the scene. Down below, streets are largely free from congestion and there is space to breath as overcrowding has flattened and spread out....

The national theatre is hosting a classical concert that evening and not knowing quite what to expect we buy tickets for the princely sum of $2.50.

Walking in Managua is like playing Russian roulette with your safety, so we take a taxi to the venue and, in stark contrast to the feeble huts that line the streets on-route, we enter an auditorium of polished marble hung with dazzling chandeliers dripping opulence. Under the somber gaze of national hero Ruben Dario we hear, with respectful formality an exquisite reproduction of Mozart and Beethoven. Nicaragua's gentry, dressed in their finery greet us, and each other with warm handshakes and radiant smiles and the city's inequalities and problems are forgotten for a while....

Sightseeing here is conducted at a rather pedestrian pace out of respect for temperatures in the high 30's Centigrade or 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Early morning activity is followed by afternoons sweltering back at the hotel taking turns under the fan or cold shower.

A sweaty climb takes us to the top of 'Loma de Tiscapa' a hill overlooking a volcanic crater lake and the old Presidential palace that sits above a notorious prison. This close proximity allowed the dictator to oversee his political prisoners incarcerated until the earthquake that devastated his city cracked the walls. Rising monolithically above it all is the giant steel silhouette of 'Augusto Cesar Sandino'; revolutionary leader and national hero who's legacy is the infamous Sandinista movement....

Conflicts between the Sandinista party and the dictatorial Somoza government were largely responsible for filling the prison before Somoza was overthrown and later assassinated. Now there is a museum here documenting the Sandinista achievements whilst in government as they attempted to educate and provide employment for the people. Nicaragua's turbulent political history does not make for happy reading even before American involvement during and after the 1980's.

Less controversial are a set of ancient footprints left by a group of our ancestors as they migrated along the lake-shore 6000 years ago. One set of tiny prints suddenly peters out and disappears as the larger set next to it deepens - the parent having lifted their exhausted child and carried them along with the other walkers. They were uncovered as building foundations were being dug in 1874....

The next day we visit the National Museum, with it's collection of pre-Hispanic pottery and exhibits on the geological forces that shaped the nation in ancient times, plus the food that has shaped it more recently. It's all interesting stuff, but it's just as nice to while away a morning in the fine and more importantly cool surroundings provided by high ceilings and marble floors.

With visas renewed and with time to kill, we change course tomorrow and head back West away from Costa Rica. 93kms in the wrong direction takes us to the former capital and the 16th century colonial splendour of old Leon reputed to be one of Nicaragua's jewels....

A Love Hate Relationship Building

April 7th

Leaving Esteli, we stop at a petrol station to load up on water and run through the usual conversations with the usual small crowd that gathers to watch our antics. One guy in particular grabs our attention, being unusually enthusiastic and uniquely attired in a crisp white linen suit. It is only after we've been chatting for a couple of minutes that we realise he has a small entourage with him and women are queuing up to have photos taken. Finally he asks us if we know who he is and we have to confess our ignorance, just as a van rolls up to collect him. None other than Octar (the soap guy) he is something of a celebrity throughout the whole of Central America and I am jealous of his affect on the ladies as he does a promotional tour....

The other big guy around here is THE Big Guy. Graffiti and roadside banners proclaim 'Jesus Christ is God the King and The Main Man in Esteli and Nicaragua'.

Nicaragua is an emphatically catholic country with 90% of the population devoutly practicing. Much like the rest of Central America religious festivals are widely celebrated and Sunday is still sacrosanct with most businesses closing to observe the Sabbath.

We ride out and the land changes from green to barren brown as the crop changes from tobacco to sugar. Roads are littered with crushed brown canes that fall from the backs of hugely overladen 34 wheel transporters; Esteli is a major sugar town. Many fields have just been harvested and only the battered and truncated stalks remain in what looks like the aftermath of a biblical locust swarm....

Traffic seems to be lighter than Honduras - people are generally poorer and there are fewer private cars as more people travel by bus. It's easy for them to get about with every town served by several buses every hour costing, say a dollar for a couple of hours ride. Whole families move house and business using these old workhorses more used to carrying American school children in the 1950's....

So - straight road, wide shoulder, clear skies, no worries....

Then.... BANG.... and I'm on the deck, bike scraping along behind me....

There's a man.

I get up and turn to face him, ankle vaguely painful from the crash.

Slowly it dawns on me that he made a grab for my handlebar as I rode past him, and so, in confusion, and also strangely politely I ask him 'Que pasa?' (what's going on?)

He makes a move towards me and instinctively I grab his wrist....

And then I see the knife, silver steel glinting in the sun!

Suddenly angry, still confused; I shove him in the chest.

'Da me su camera!' he shouts - give me your camera!.

It's all happening in a flash and I tell him NO and push him back again.

Then he takes a swipe at me and I just manage to flex and get my stomach out of the arc of the blade as it swishes viciously, slicing air where soft flesh had so recently been.

Then I see Sue run past me out of the corner of my eye, arms frantically waving. Distantly I hear her shouting to the man's accomplice to get away from my bike.

Only then does the first light of awareness filter through the slow fog clouding my brain.

Apparently we're being robbed...

at knife point....

and by not one, but two toe-rags.

It's strange how one minute you are just cruising along, pedals slowly turning over, lazy hazy.... your mind a thousand miles away in it's only little travel trance.... and whooosh - reality suddenly smashes you in the face.

Maybe it would be a good idea to just give the camera away and maybe allow both Sue and I to retain a full gallon of blood each; our precious skin still attached to precious bodies.

Yes - that's a good idea.

So I tell toe-rag number one - 'Here you go' and offer the camera....

But without thinking I suddenly tell him I'm keeping the memory card - I need those photos, and I calmly open up the camera and remove said card before handing it over.

I think he was just too stunned to object, and in any case Sue had managed to stop a couple of cars by now so toe-rag is losing confidence. He takes the camera and melts into some trees by the road side.

I guess Sue and I are too stunned to realise we should be afraid, worried, angry or maybe shocked. We're just both a bit bemused as we continue to watch this guy slip in and out of the tree cover for a couple of minutes as he fades into the distance. Bizarrely his accomplice hangs around, so we tell him we're going to the police and he tells us he was nothing to do with it and even offers to help by telling us where the other guy lives.

Finally we ride on and by chance, a kilometer or so down the road, we see a police car. Flagging it down, I explain to the driver what has happened and he jumps into rapid response mode. Telling Sue to look after the bikes at the roadside, the three police policemen in the car make space for me in the back and we set off in hot pursuit.

We were robbed on the main road at a point where two dirt roads intersect heading off in opposite directions. We hit the first at 50mph, dust flying, car careening and bouncing on the broken surface. It's all gone very Starsky and Hutch!

A shotgun emerges from under the back seat, a rifle from under the front, and I'm trying to offer a description as I bounce around in the back. Under the circumstances I just can't remember the Spanish for 'purple and white striped T-shirt'....

It's just a warren of tracks disappearing off from the dirt 'road' terminating in wooden shacks finished with plastic sheeting and you can almost taste the atmosphere of suspicion at the unexpected intrusion of a speeding police car with it's out-of-place gringo cargo. People stare blankly and understandably, they have seen nothing.

We try the dirt road in the opposite direction, and amazingly, the knife-man's accomplice is calmly strolling along listening to his (or recently, someone else's) Mp3 player. Parking the car across his path, all three armed cops get out and invite him to get in.

It's a short ride back to Sue and our bikes and we set up an altogether slower procession back to the police station, Sue and I leading on bikes, police car and prisoner following on behind.

Interviews, statements, cross examinations.... passports are checked, forms are duly filled in. Toe rag sticks to his story - what me guv? Dunno wot you're on about.... and we kiss the camera goodbye thanking our lucky stars the cost was so low.

And I've got a cheap, spare camera - so here's the police station where it all happened....

But the day has changed for us and indeed, sadly, so has Nicaragua. It's like riding out into a new world....

It is not the loss of the camera - who cares about that. We could have lost so much more - and not just stuff. No, in many ways it was a lucky escape, but the next 30 miles pass in a blur as your mind replays the incident and suddenly you start to look at people differently.

It occurs to me I had seen those guys before, earlier on the road. They were walking towards us as we rode past. Then I saw them again, overtaking us in the back of a pick up truck. Obviously they had seen the opportunity and hitched a ride to get ahead of us so as to carry out their premeditated plan.

I am angry.

Central America had worked so hard to dispel what really is a myth about the level of danger and violence here. In some ways we were becoming complacent in our trust, but that is to be expected after hundreds of good deeds verses none of the bad variety. I did notice something not-quite-right about that guy as we passed him the first time. Something subtle, a glance maybe, or just a slight movement towards the bike rather than away as we passed by. But I thought nothing of it after so much good will. Now I am looking at people walking at the road side differently. It's understandable, but it is not their fault and they have no awareness of what happened further up the trail. They don't know why I'm so angry. People continue to wave greetings of friendliness, but now I distrust them all.

The land blurs and some distance passes. I see nothing but a purple and white shirt and a knife. I wonder what could have been....

Eventually we reach San Benito and enquire about a room. The only hostel in town has an amusing owner who wants 200 for a room not worth a hundred and I am in no mood to be robbed twice in one day. I let him know about that and explain to Sue we will be riding to the next town.

We post 135kms (85 miles) for the day, despite losing a good three hours. Anger makes good fuel for the pedals it would seem.

We hole up for the night and reflect on the next day's ride to Managua lying just 15 miles ahead of us. There we had planned to extend our visas for another 30 days to allow time to explore Nicaragua more fully. After consideration, we both agree it would be churlish to change our plans now and head directly to Costa Rica. You can't judge an entire nation based on the actions of one individual, no matter how much of a scumbag he was. We have to give Nicaragua more time. It is easy to balance this one bad incident off against the driver who stopped to offer us assistance and then gave us his last money 'for luck', plus all the other acts of friendliness we have seen here already.

So tomorrow; the capital, and another 30 days here hopefully. We try to forget this incident and reset our expectations so as not to prejudice our opinions of Nicaragua and it's people.

And anyway - you can't ride through the whole of Central America and not have a good knife story....

Nicaragua

April 5th and 6th

We leave the flat agricultural plains under their leaden skies and begin to climb the last 20 miles or so to the border crossing into Nicaragua.

As we do so, the intensive factory farming diminishes and we move back to a more natural setting as the land rises and folds upon itself. Exclusive Fincas set back from the main road behind imposing gate and fence are now replaced by smallholdings hidden amongst banana and coconut....

As we pass the patient ranks of haulage trucks queued at the roadside, the grey skies begin to spit at us once more and we run the gauntlet of hyperactive money changers to the frontier. We had hoped to extend our rapidly expiring visas here, but officials explain that is not possible. We must now get to the immigration office in the capital Managua; or we could simply leave Nicaragua for Costa Rica - we have 4 days left.

Two other cyclists are embroiled in the border crossing formalities and we join up to enter our eighth country of the tour with German cyclists Nils and Caroline riding from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego....

Having climbed to yet another invisible line drawn in the sand to demarcate nation states, we fall down the mountainside into Nicaragua. Nicaragua has a sad reputation for being, by some distance, the poorest country in the region. First impressions, however are of well kept, cheerful little mountain towns; their plazas heavily planted and brimming with colourful blooms. The road condition improves markedly leaving Honduras and we see road signs with place names marked at road junctions. If that is unusual in Central America what is almost unique are the well maintained Armco barriers and warning signs on the tighter bends. Even the weather begins to improves as heavy skies lift to reveal blue behind the grey....

No idea what this little fellow is hitching a ride on my shirt, but a close up of his tiny fingernail size body reveals a world of colour - and the fact that he is taking a leak on said shirt....

Toilet break over, we cruise the 20 odd kilometers, all downhill to our first overnight stop at Ocotal where our good first impressions continue. Booking into Hotel San Martin, the owner just could not be happier we are staying with him and the fact that I share a name with the hotel just pushes him into a contented delight. Given that we eat at a local BBQ cafe and have a room for two for less than $11 US, we are pretty happy too.

After the initial drop to Ocotal, the land flattens off once more and again, industrial farming begins to dominate the landscape. This time the crop in question is tobacco and massive swathes of land are given over to the raw material for Nicaragua's high quality cigar business....

Where the earth is not carpeted in these most valuable of green leaves, it sprouts huge clapboard sheds - the drying rooms where the harvest is brought for those leaves to fade and take on their more familiar colour....

Set against the backdrop of immense wealth generated from cash crops, Nicaragua is also a country of intense poverty and it is hard to forget that as we travel past some very obvious signs....

Where people have a scrap of land, they too grow tobacco rather than vegetables for food. There is a well defined hierarchy of growers, buyers and processors set up to turn leaf into finished product and we are passed by trucks creaking under the weight of impossible loads....

We continue to get a very positive feel for the place though when we pause to take a water break and an old rusting hulk of a pick up truck stops and reverses back to our spot so the driver can enquire if we are OK. I am busy digging a stone out of my tyre and he asks if he can help. I refuse, so he wonders if he can give us a ride to the next town for repairs and I again refuse as there is no need. Casting about blindly now for something he can do to assist us, his eyes settle on a 10 Cordoba note wedged into a gap in the otherwise empty expanse of his dashboard. He has no radio, no central console of switches, he doesn't even have clocks for speed and distance, but he does have 10 Cordobas (about half a dollar) and insists I take it. It is nothing to me and probably a great deal more to him so again I refuse, but he forces it on me 'for luck'. I take it and put it away to keep - I will not be spending that one and keep it as a symbol of his generosity.

The land is lower lying now and sweltering. Nicaragua is a mostly uncharted jungle wilderness for two thirds of it's landmass to the north, all the way to the Mosquito Coast on the Caribbean Sea. The population of around seven million is squeezed into the southern third of the country and then further squeezed in between two mountain ranges rising towards Honduras in the West and up to Costa Rica in the East. This leaves a narrow strip of land looking like the profile of a bath tub - flat in the middle and steeply rising at either end dotted with towns and cities that share space with volcanoes and lakes. The whole lot sits just above sea level and at this latitude, temperatures hover in the 90's and above all year round.

The natives take a bath and cool off....

On reaching Esteli - the first city of any size we are reminded that the rainy season is not too far away now as the skies suddenly turn slate grey and ominous above a street murals caught in the last rays of evening sun....

Our original plan was to leave our bikes in Esteli and get a bus into the capital; 'Managua' to extend our visas before returning to collect them and ride on. Now we are at the point of decision, this just seems wrong and we cannot bring ourselves to leave our trusty steeds behind even if it would save us time. Now we reason that it would be better to ride to Managua just in case there is a problem and we cannot obtain an extension, where we would then be with the bikes and we could make a mad dash for the Costa Rican border. We decide to ride the 100 miles or so to Managua the next day and it turns out to be a portentous decision....