14359 km Balgue on Ometepe Nicaragua

Hi everyone,

First of all best wishes for the new year to all of you. As you probably guessed my new year will bring me a bit more of cycling. I left Panama City about two weeks ago. When I left the city I took a small detour to bahia de Panama for some final skyline shots of the city. After that I was on my way accross the puente de Americas following the Panamerica towards Costa Rica. The first two days were not to much fun due to the heavy traffic and crazy driving of the locals. Luckily circumstances got better once I put some distance between me and the city.

Panama is a very green and beautifull country and it was crazy hot as well. I’ve been drinking close to 10 liters of water a day. There was also not to much to be found in terms of accomodation especially on the 250km or so before David. Luckily I met a very nice family on the way that allowed me in for the night. The family had two kids and one of them told me it was his birthday the day before. There was a pizzaplace accross the road so I decided to take them out for a pizza to celebrate. The next morning I left and put in a long day to reach David, where I found a little gem of a hostel. I spend the night in a treehouse and there were coaty and a group of monkeys nearby. I bought way to much papaya at the supermarket earlier, but luckily my new friends could help me getting rid of the excess food. After David it was onwards to Costa Rica. I’ve been riding there allong the coast untill Dominical where I made a stop to celebrate Christmas. Quite a nice place to be for the holidays with a beach, cocktails and surfing on the doorstep. I left again the day after to Jaco a very touristy place which was not really to my liking. Then the easy beachlife was over for a bit because I headed up into the mountains to make my way La Fortuna. Not an easy ride, but after Peruvian mountains these little hills don’t scare me anymore.

In La Fortuna I spend 3 days enjoying some hikes over hanging bridges and I made a nice tour by boat to the nature reserve of Cano Negro. We spotted cayman, howler monkeys and many birds there. It was a great daytrip. After new years and a few to many Cuba Libres it was time to set course to Nicaragua. As you can see by the header on this blog I made it there. 

Today I spend a fair amount of my time on a game I play when entering new countries. I call it bankroulette. 2 bankcards and a creditcard and many different atm’s to go out and play with. I had my fair share of non-functioning machines, weird reasons to refuse my cards before. But Nicaragua is the winner of this game by a long shot. On my 18th!!!! attempt I finaly managed to get some cash. But I’m all set now for the next 10 days or so. Then it will be time for Honduran bankroulette. 

I’m doing great here all. Take care everyone. Enjoy the pictures and I’ll see you on the next update!