Dodging potholes on the road to Rivas, soaking wet and covered in mud, I was concentrating on keeping the little Yamaha upright and considering when I had to be where to get myself to Poneloya before dark. Then I thought, “You're riding a motorcycle across Nicaragua. Smile, you idiot!” Instantly, I forgot my schedule and concentrated on enjoying the trip.
A rain squall had delayed my departure from San Juan by half an hour, but I finally decided to just ride through it. Instead of being floured with dust as before, I was splattered with mud up to the waist, but the sun came out as soon as I was beyond the coastal hills. A short stop in Rivas was followed by a ninety minute ride on empty roads to Granada, the old capital. The oldest and best preserved Spanish colonial city in the Americas, it has many grand cathedrals in amazing pastel colours and huge, stately stone buildings with red tile roofs. I had lunch in the beautiful old quarter, but was too encumbered by luggage to have a good look around. That will have to wait for another day.
After asking at a couple of gas stations and a tourist office for a road map, I realized that they simply don't exist here. There are not many roads in the first place and everyone knows where they go, so maps are redundant for the locals, few of whom own cars anyway. Even if I could find a map, I wouldn't really be able to use it since road signs are a rarity.
Managua turned out to be just as big a headache as I had expected. Until then I had been entirely alone in the northbound lane much of the time, but the manic traffic in the capital elevated my stress level dramatically. I had to skirt the city to get on the highway to Leon and had hoped to avoid the worst of it, but without road signs I had to resort to stopping at gas stations every few kilometres to confirm that I was on course and had not been confounded by the endless series of forks, t-junctions and traffic circles I encountered.
Everyone I had talked with had told me how dangerous Managua is, roamed as it is by violent street gangs. Guidebooks say that statistically it is the safest city in Latin America, so the locals may just be exaggerating the threat out of a sense of concern for visitors. Since I was just passing through I wasn't worried, until I found myself in the midst of a gang fight. I was waiting at a stoplight when two teen aged boys appeared out of nowhere, with three more in hot pursuit. All of them were identically armed with a large knife in the left hand and a fist sized rock in the right. As they ran past, the first two suddenly decided to use me as a shield and in a moment all five were ringed around me, crouched and dancing from side to side, looking for an opening. “Screw this!” I said inside my helmet and revved the engine. Popping the clutch, I launched the bike through the intersection motocross style, chest on the tank to keep the front wheel down and toes dragging for balance as the rear wheel spun and fishtailed. I rocketed across the street, screeching tires behind me signaling my close call with the cross traffic. When I wheeled around and could look back, the boys had disappeared. Kids. After one more stop for directions I saw the outskirts of the city ahead. Drawing in a deep breath, I let it out very slowly and opened the throttle.
Leon looked interesting, but again I was not in a position to explore and made for Poneloya. Oliver, the surfing instructor, had told me that it was eighteen kilometres from Leon to Poneloya, but a forty-five minute drive. That gave me some perspective on the road conditions, but the reality was worse than I imagined. The San Juan road is as smooth as a roller skating rink by comparison. That road is badly potholed, but the Poneloya road is in a much more advance state of entropy and literally breaking up into chunks. The cheap bungee cords that were the best I could find in Rivas gave up even trying to hold my bag in place on the back of the saddle and were lost in the dust behind me. I moved the bag onto the tank, between my knees, and rode on. Even though my wrist compass confirmed that I was heading west towards the coast, I could not be sure I was actually on the right road until I crested a hill and saw the ocean a few kilometres ahead.
Poneloya is a much smaller version of San Juan del Sur, a resort town with a few hotels and restaurants. However, San Juan is a bustling place looking ahead to a bright future, whereas Poneloya is virtually deserted and has the down at heels appearance of a town whose best days are long past. When I found Will, my host's caretaker, he walked me around the corner from his little tienda to the house where I will be staying and showed me around. It has the feel of a big family cottage in Moskoka closed up at the end of the season, albeit one with Mediterranean architecture and a concern for security. There are about four thousand square feet of space spread over two floors. The lower level is a huge enclosed porch with a kitchen and bathroom, its walls made from a lattice of cast concrete blocks to a height of seven feet, with another four feet of horizontal wooden louvers above. The second story has a wrap around balcony with four large, high ceilinged bedrooms in the centre, sharing two spacious bathrooms. Other than the most basic furniture there is absolutely nothing in the house, presumably to give thieves no temptation. I'll have to pick up toilet paper tomorrow. You can easily hear the waves crashing on the beach, something less than a hundred metres from the front door. Similar vacation homes, in widely varying sizes and states of repair, line the beach front for a kilometre and seem to comprise the majority of the town's buildings.
Will recommended supper at the only worthwhile restaurant in the area, in a small hotel down the beach in the little town of Las Peñitas. He strongly and repeatedly advised me to make it back before nightfall and stay in the house at all times after dark. Excepting the Easter and Christmas holidays when it fills with Nicaraguan visitors, Poneloya is nearly empty the rest of the year. Criminal activity appears to be the primary reason. There is a police station in the town, but it is purely a nine to five operation, giving the muggers free reign through the night. This danger may also be exaggerated, but it hardly matters since there is really no nightlife of any kind. Inexplicably, several of the restaurants were open the evening I arrived, completely empty with the few staff members on hand playing music on their sound systems and watching tele-novellas. It looks like I will be getting to know the road to Leon very well.
After an good meal in the beach front restaurant I returned to the house to watch the sun go down. It's many years since I last smoked a cigar, but I am not without a sense of occasion, so I lit up the Cohiba that I had bought on impulse for a buck. Pouring myself a glass of the superb local dark rum, Flor de Cana, I settled into a rocking chair on the balcony to savour the moment. A cigar can last a good long time and before I had finished mine the sun set, the colours faded, the stars came out and night fell. As I took it all in I recalled that it was a month to the day since I left North America.
