West of the moon, East of the sun

I'm in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, meeting point of three tectonic plates and sitting on about fourteen seismic faults. Needless to say, there are many volcanoes :)

I'd had a straight run from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras. The biggest concern really was the driving. Turns out that Mexico and Guatemala are actually just interactive training for the main event, at least they have some form of discipline - in Honduras it is every man for himself. I was almost run off the road by a truck at one point.

When the inevitable happened, just outside the town of Comayagua, the first I knew of it was a huge line of stationary traffic stretching a couple of miles. Of course I trundled down the outside past all the stopped cars until both lanes choked with traffic, the drivers gawking at the accident scene off in the trees about twenty metres from the road. A lorry with the unidentifiable remains of a car embedded in it, still ablaze with a fire crew rushing around it. I shut my eyes and tried not to think about it, but from that point onwards just wanted to be off the road. Tegucigalpa with its heaving traffic and pollution came as something of a relief. I got stopped by the cops again but this time the guy wasn't interested in formalities at all, just wanted to shake my hand (twice). Awesome.

Yesterday I made the run from Tegucigalpa to the border, of which I had vastly underestimated the distance. Instead of an easy 30km it turned out to be 120, maths never was my strong suit. Arriving at the border I was completely surrounded by tramitadors hassling to be the one to take me through the formalities, hands all over the bike, I started to feel uncomfortable pretty quickly. Added to that no one wanted to agree a fee, they kept saying "voluntary" or "propina". In the end I ignored them all and walked over to immigration, that seemed to clear up the issue and one guy offered his services for a fee (about a quarter of what I paid to get IN to Honduras, guess I was done).

The border crossing went smoothly though, I had to pay US$7 to get my stamp from immigration, then I got some third party bike insurance for US$12 and importing the bike didn't cost a bean. In total a little over an hour, most of which was spent trying to teach the customs official how to use a computer. Having entered all my details into the system, painful as my Spanish is so bad, he then pressed Enter, it bombed out asking for a password, and the whole process had to be repeated. Soy Ingles, ah, no Gran Bretana on the database? Try Reino Unidos...

Nicaragua was immediately great. People seem to stare even more than I am used to, they wave, they flash lights and toot horns. Palms and emerald mountains surrounded me, at one point I got off to answer the call of nature (men! the world is our toilet), and it kind of struck me where I was, a fast brown river ran through the centre of the valley, green slopes soared, the only noise was the calling of birds. I was utterly alone.

I decided to get a shift on and head for Managua, the capital. I knew that it would be getting dark around 5.30pm so I had a bit of a race to get off the road. Passing Esteli I came up behind a guy on a dirt bike riding along with his side stand down, and not wishing to have a grandstand view of the grisly outcome at the next left, I pulled alongside him and used universal motorcycle semaphore for "you left the stand down you muppet". He looked down, flicked it up and didn't even look back at me, let alone thank me. Ungrateful git.

Pressing on to Managua turned out to be a great decision though. The weather had been hit and miss all day, but cleared up into a fine evening with somewhat grey clouds all around. The sun began to sink into the Pacific Ocean behind Lake Managua and just got prettier and prettier, pastel reds and fiery oranges clashing with the grey clouds, then finally the moon came out from behind a cloud on my left. It immediately put me in mind of The Lord of the Rings - I was literally taking the hidden paths that run west of the moon, east of the sun. I had to smile.

It was dark when I got to Managua so I pulled into the first decent hotel I saw. When I got up in the morning I was greeted by the blazing sun and almost clear blue sky for the first time since I left the west coast of Mexico. I decided it was too hot for riding and instead got in the pool, at least until the bronzed beautiful people showed up and created a sun lotion oil slick in the shallow end.

Costa Rica next - when I can be bothered :)

Frase.