Merp

Stuff Added!

So, things have indeed changed significantly. After leaving Granada and the comforts of hostel life behind, I am biking again, but this time solo. Right now, Im in the town of Leon in Nicaragua (still), and after leaving here I will be heading north, passing though a chain of volcanoes, to eventually end up in San Rafael del Norte.
I dont have time to add connotations for each photo right now, but.. they´re more or less in chronological order, and Ill hopefully be adding descriptions to them later.

PEace

So, this is the Costa Rican side of the Panamanian Border. This sight made me pretty frickin happy.. was a good time crossing the huge rickty bridge across the river that forms the border here. Kinda scary actually.. because I had a very heavily-laden bike at the time.This is my sister´s tent, looking out towards the beach on the Carribean Coast of Costa Rica, 5km south of Puerto Limon, at Eddie´s house. Harry´s schwanky tent is to the left, with his tarp.This is a grandson of Eddie, nicknamed Chokie, looking back from the same spot towards Eddie´s house, the small shack where a fair portion of his immidiate family lives.A shot on the beach, trying to show how crazily jungly the area was. Many animals were seen and caught, including boa constrictors, posion arrow frogs, scorpions, large toads, large crabs, and... other things.

Below: Random pitstop, first day of group mob-style biking.This is a shot of part of the family who took us in that first night. With Natalie, and the spot where we camped, in the background.Random swerving on a pretty road. A very, very pretty road..Natalie busting up a bad ass salad with my machete while we waited for Harrison to fix his bike again. This time it was legit, you can see his bare rim to the right of the pic, he busted up his tube pretty good. Good enough that we couldnt patch it, and he had to use a pocket knife to widen the valve hole in his rim to change from using a Presta tube to a Schreader tube. For those of you who dont know nuttin, we had to cut away part of his rim to fit the Schreader valve, because its wider.Dangerous pocket snake (large, smilerly werm.)Monkeys who maimed and robbed us on our way out of camp in La Fortuna.Another attempt at catching the "very pretty road" that we road around Lagoon de Fortuna in Costa Rica.AFTER I LEFT GRANADA.. solo riding again. This was a shot from a large hill I climbed, after I reached the town of Masaya, some 18 kilometres away. As I entred the town, I got buzzed by some spandexed-up road biker Nigaraguans, who smiled and waved. I of course gunned it and caught up, being pretty speedy on a relativly gnarly bike. We road through Masaya together, I asked them about a potential place to camp (wanting a different experience than the previous one I had there). I followed them to the base of a large, off-the-beaten-track hill outside of town, they told me it was an easy climb. It was frickin steep.
They told me I might be able to camp on the grounds of the park we had entered, and asked for me about it once we reached the top. Turned out I couldnt, because it was dangerous, so they lead me back down, and eventually to a Nicaraguan Boy Scouts Camp (I didnt know they frickin exsisted..) where I awesomely (but reluctantly by the owner) was able to use a big room for my self complete with a very comfy cot, and a toilet and shower, all to my self.Next day.
From my journal:
Left Managua, after fixing some more spokes with a not-so-good bike mechanic. After a short time of riding, made the turn (or lack of a turn) that determined that I was indeed not going to ride north to San Rafael del Norte, immidiately as I had origionally thought, but west, up the coast of Lago de Managua towards Leon.
I found myself wanting to cover a lot of ground that day. I felt that I wanted to arrive in Leon in one day (120km), even though I knew that it was better if I slept a ways outside of the City. I found myself starting to push myself, as I road hour after hour in the hot sun. I found myself starting to feel pretty shitty, as I started to exaust myself slowly, the sun starting to get to me. Because I was feeling shitty, I started to need to slow down. And because I was starting to slow down, I got pissed off, speeded up, and felt worse.
I found myself partially conciously wanting to arrive in Leon so I could sleep in a hostel, even though I conciously knew that once I arrived there I knew I would not want to pay, and search out somewhere (possibly desperately) to sleep for free. I found myself repulsing the idea of camping in an unknown place and location, in comparison to the comfort of an assured shower and a bed in a hostel.

Basically, it was a hard task, getting myself to accept the necessities of travelling on bicycle.
The above shot is of a spot where I took a dip, to stop and think, in Lago de Managua. Behind my bike (with Natalies fancy saddle bags) are the peaks of Volcan Mombotombo in the distance, and the island of Mombotombito in the lake.
The below shot is from the door of the gate of the amazingly large family I stayed with that night, looking out into their town.

And thats me, in my tent, alone. Perhaps too alone.

Sista's blogg

Check it out. It doesnt have pictures either.

natalive.blogspot.com

Screw you camera. New, very nice, very free camera from my brother.. Screw you.

So... (deep breath)
No photos. Maybe a little later.

We´re biking. And Im biking, again. It hurts. Rain, sun, all of it.. bussing and hostels and clean clothes, life was so easy a little while back.
But, it was also expensive. We´re living a cheaper life now, which is a lot better for my wallet. And, to boot, its a lot better experience..
My brother, Harrison, is rediculosly good at spotting animals. We´ve seen more animals in these days of travelling together than Ive seen in my entire trip.. almost. Well, no.. not even close. But we´ve seen a lot.

Evening Before, and Day One (after several days of hostel hopping, and a 4 day stint with my best bud Eddie, who lives on the carribean coast of Costa Rica):
We bussed to San Jose the night before. Had to ride around the city some with our bikes, as many hostels were full. That night, and including most of the morning of the next day, we discussed our options of departure. It turns out, we are a horribly indesicive bunch (is it just me, or has my spelling been getting progressily worse? Damn you lack of school.. maybe lack of reading books too.). For us, it was a toss up of leaving the country by bus, or leaving by bike, or a combination of the two.
But in the end, we left on bus, for a place called Ciudad Quesada, which is north west of San Jose. From there, we hopped up our hoppy bikes and scoodled down towards a town of La Fortuna. After a withering and breathtaking (literally) 28 ish kilometres, we were nearing La Fortuna, when we noticed a sign saying "Hand Made Guitars" in front of a house.

So to be honest, it was kind of tough, adjusting from riding solo, and comfortably riding for long hours, and not needing to spend any money really on food... to riding with a group of people, and having opinions matter other than my own, and riding with people whos general biking speeds differ from my own.. and, jeepers, spending so much money on food. I feel my dealing with this was showing from time to time, so I said to them:
"Hey, you guys wanna go back there and check out that guitar shop?"
This differed from my earlier postion of thinking, "I think we should ride as long and as fast and as hard as we can because I think we should be riding 70km a day, and not thirty, because I know that I can, why cant you?"

So we stopped. And we went inside, and asked about the guitars.. the fella there said the man would return in the morning, we said that we could come back. He asked us, "You guys are going to sleep in La Fortuna?" I answered, "No, well, perhaps. Were looking for a place to put our tents and camp." And he said, "Well.. you could put them underneith that roof over there. Id be okay with that."

And there we were. Our first group hola-awesome-generosity experience. After talking to the family of them a little more, they offered us the option of showering, which we happily took up, and they offered us dinner, which we politely turned down due to our fooood(Im hungry as Im writing this) laden bags that we carried from a near by store. We set up camp, after they happily weed-wacked us a trail through the shin-deep grass to the roof.
The next day, after they cooked breakfast for the four of us, they took us for a walk around their farm.. describing how it was that they did things.
First off, they cooked with gas, that they created. From cow manure, from the cows that they had there for milk.
The cow waste is mixed with water, and drained into 20 foot plastic tube, which is sitting in the sun. The manure ferments, and as it does, it releases methane. The methane rises to the top, and is extracted by means of a valve connected to the top-most point.
The manure, after fermented, is exactracted at the other end of the tube, mixed with minerals and a few other natural ingredients, and is used to fertilize their crops, some of which are grown purely to feed the cows.
In addion to the large amount of vegetable and fruit crops that they were growing, this family also had crops for medicinal use, and had a special garden for such plants, containing around 10 different plants with different properties.
Their goal is to become self-sufficient, and to encourage others to do the same. They feed themselves almost entirely from their land and animals.

Day 2:
Busted out, crossed La Fortuna. Got rained on. Climbed up part of Volcan Arena, got rained on some more. Climbed some more large hills, got hit with more relentless torrents of rain. Arrived at some hotsprings, tired and needing lunch. These hotsprings were supposedly the only ones in the area accesible by the unpaying public. We discovered them to be a torrent of chocolaty-brown water and debris, due to the intense amount of water that had fallen. We bathed anyways, it was still very warm. Warm, brown, chocolaty water.. kind of like Willy Wonka's house..
After a lunch of tortilla chips, random sweets and bean paste, while being pummelled by yet another monsoon, we started riding again, continuing our awesome trend of climbing.
In the end, we passed by many a mudslide, all of which had happened that day.. lucky that we didnt end up underneith one.
That night, after realizing that our current pace would not get us near a town until late that night, we decided to find a place to camp. It so happened, that amongst all these terrifyingly expensive Costa Rican hotels, there was one family who had a relativly bare concrete building in their yard, which they frequently rented out to budget travellers such as ourselves. We paid 2 dollars a person for the night, in return for a roof, running water, and a toilet.

The following days included more camping, more rain, some sun, Tucans, and a lot of monkeys.

4 or 5 days ago, the lot of us crossed into Nicaragua. It was an emotional moment. The next day, we hopped the ferry to Ometepe, recieved some free beer(!) from some other travellers, and proceeded to throw a camp down on a beach infront of a hotel.
That night was one of the buggiest nights Ive experienced in Central America. The sand we were camping on turned out to be a flowing mass of these small, round, grey insects. They didnt bite, but were really strange none the less. The more memorable ground dwelling insects were those of the ant variaty. There was a variaty, to some extent, but the most present were ants of a small, black, very painful stinging bite variaty. There were numerous encounters, including some very invasive actions by the ants, as they attempted to quickly build homes out of our trash, our backpacks, and Rob's tent.
Another memorable species of insect were of a small, fly type varity, which were very successful at filling all and every crevece on a persons face, and which provided a living, moving coating for any other portion of skin that was not covered by clothing. They did not bite either, and only seemed to be so forward in their actions when you attemped to use a flashlight at night. I lost on of my flashlights in El Salvador, and the other in Panama, so I was in luck.
But all in all, we lived, we managed to outsmart the ants (after some time), and Harrison was subject to a full force monsoon without a fly on his tent (his tarp blew of in the worst part of the storm that night).

Last night we took the middleofthenight boat to Granada, from Ometepe. Slept in some very fishy smelling wet fishish stuff on the cargo deck of the boat.
Yesterday, we arrived at the area to catch the midnight sailing to Granada approximately 12 hours before we needed to. So, after double checking departure times at the dock, we backtracked and headed for a beach with a big Canadian flag painted on a sign next to it.
It would turn out that a group of girls from Quebec came, and over a period of 3 months, built a large playground next to the beach we were at. That was in 2003.. unfortunately, now the playground is beginning to be overgrown, and the only creatures that play on it are the monkeys that live by (according to the woman that lives near by).
More on that woman.. an old woman called Natalie over to her, as Natalie was wrestling with her bicycle on the beach. I came over to say hi aswell, and translate (as I usually do). After helping her carry some things to her home (which was about 20 feet away from the beach), and meeting her family, they spontaneously invited us into their home, to wait out the hours until the ferry.
That evening, we watched two movies with them, made an enourmous dinner (the family was 11 people strong BEFORE we showed up), and had somewhat of a party, all talking and laughing, taking turns telling stories, and comparing the qualities of Nicaragua and Canada. This family had previously housed two of the volunteers from Quebec.
They also had a pet parrot, who yammered at us continuously in spanish. I could only understand a little bit. But he liked being on the heads of people, so that is where he stayed for some time.

So, that is the past. We are now staying in a relativly cheap hostel in Granada. The next weeks will unfortunatly be different than the past weeks, as time constraints and wishes to do and see certain things have put a limit on the amount of biking that may take place. For part of our group, I believe that it may just end here in Granada. But thats life.
For me, I will be riding for perhaps one or two more weeks, thanI will be bussing my last stretch back into Guatemala, to ensure that I once again can volunteer at Maya Pedal, before we all fly home.

Sorry for the delay. Take care all.

Tyler

Brazil

So, once apon a time. A time that was really a long time ago, almost 4 or 5 days long. Well, less.

Kristy, my partner in awesome adventure making. Yes, hes holding a machette. Our guide, hacking away like a mad man, and cutting us a trail. While standing in a canoe.A beautiful and large spider.A shelter that was built by our guide, in about half an hour... we slept in hammocks in the middle of the amazon. These branches that are leaning over our hammocks are actually the "leaves" of the trees we cut them off.. I think.. Manaus, Brazil. Headquarters for all that is the Brazillian Jungle Amazon Experience.. according to our guide books.

So, yes, we went to the amazon. It kicked serios hiney. Seriously.
Except for the strange jungle bees, by which we were stung. It felt like a small hole had been drilled into my neck, into the muscle.. Very strong pain. I then learned that the very large bee that stung me (size of an obese horsefly) was actually the small, less dangerous kind.. There is apparently a larger kind, 2 to 3 inches long, capable of giving a person intense fevers and muscle pain for weeks. I felt lucky to be stung by the less serious kind...
And then I learned about a third kind of bee, which will swarm and chase you if you pass through the vacinity of their nest, and follow you for miles. The only way to escape, is reach a body of water, submerge yourself, and wait. But if they catch you, more than 15 stings from these can kill you.
Again, I felt lucky.

Ive decided that the amazon would be an amazing place to grow up. Besides the bees, the dozens of types of highly venomous snakes, frogs, and lizards, and the billions of venomous ants, I believe the overall experience would be an awesome one. Many of the trees are very thin and tall, perfect for building sweet things like forts for battle with said venomous creatures. And then there´s the palm leaves, which are easy to cut down, light enough to drag around, and strong enough to do many things with (like build shelters for hammock sleeping).. the possibilities are truely and utterly (heh.. udder) endless.

The above pictures of the forest filled with water, and us in canoes, are.. cool. The forest is 2/3rds submerged, 2/3rds of the trees are under water. At times, it felt like we were paddling through treetops. Truely awesome.

The night before, we canoed through a portion of that forest aswell, in search for piranas (went fishing with chunks of raw chicken on our hooks.. :D). Got bites, we fed them up good. But they didnt fill up us, we caught none.

my BROTHER AND SISTER AND ROB MADE IT TO COSTA RICA.. my god, I was so happy to see them. Lots of tears. And random huge group hugs. And smiling so much our faces hurt. And random statements of, "Man, I love you. I missed you."
Things are good. Our plans are to bus tomorrow to the place where my buddy Eddie the blackman lives, to chill out with his family and him for a couple days while I retrieve my bicycle from Panama. From there, we ride north to Nicaragua, in search of adventure and cheap spanish school. The next two months are going to be amazing.

Anyways, Im going to take my little brother to a bar. He hasnt been to one before.

Take care family/friends and world.
Love,
Tyler