Ok, after I finally got my ass out of the hammock in Léon
it was time to move on to Matagalpa in the mountains of the North of
Nicaragua. I'm trying not to use the road map and figure out if my Spanish is good
enough to at least get to where I want to go, vamos a ver... :-) It was going to be a three hour drive on the bike and the
weather looked clear and sunny. I left Léon at 10am and the
road up to Matagalpa wasn´t that interesting; long stretches of
asphalt and little curves, but very decend without too much putholes.
The last part of the road became better because I was entering
the mountain area, more curves so more fun. However I spotted some
dark clouds on the horizon and it looked like it would be a downpoor.
No matter which way I turned on the roads, the clouds seemed to be
aiming for me... It was only 8 kilometers to Matagalpa when the first
drops hit my helmet and shortly after the cloud got me, but luckily
no downpoor, so I kept driving and didn't need to stop to put on my
rain gear.
I entered Matagalpa and ha d no clue where to go. I was meeting
Arjen, a friend of a friend of mine and he was located in the center
of town with his touroperation called 'Matagalpa Tours'. That
shouldn't be too hard to find so I started to follow the cars
entering in town. After the first traffic light I had a close
encounter with an old lady crossing the street. I had a green light
and she forgot to look over her right shoulder. i honked my horn, but
I think she was deaf (or just not interested in what was coming). So
I had to brake hard on the wet road and my front wheel was sliding
away underneeth me. Quickly let go of the brake and while swerving
around the lady I tried not to hit the side curbes... Luckely nobody
got into too much of trouble, the old lasy followed her way and I
stil had the shiny side of the bike facing the sky. I guess this was
my welcome to Matagalpa.
The town was small enough to find Matagalpa Tours fairly
quickly and I parked my bike in front of the office around 1pm. Arjen
was out for lunch so I did the same and went back to his place after
2pm. Arjen's a very nice guy, my age and living in Matagalpa for the
last ten years. I actually met him during the Queensday party in
Managua two weeks ago.
Arjen invited me to stay in his house where he lived with his
wife and daughter. Gladly accepting the offer we headed to his house
where I got my own room, which was a nice treat after three weeks of
dorm rooms and bunk beds. Arjen is a touropertator / language school
and also ride a motorcycle, so I wasnt going to get bored here.
After one day of chilling we went to the office where I met
Daniel, a student and his teacher Yessica. Arjen and I were on our
way to his coffee farm up in the mountains and Daniel really wanted
to join us but had classes that morning. Flexible as Arjen is, he
decided that his classes would be just as good at the coffee farm. So
Daniel hopped on the back of my bike and Yessica on Arjen's bike and
we drove to his farm which was around half an hour from town. It was
a very nice ride up there, first part asphalt and than a dirt road
for about 15 minutes. Lot of curves, lot of bumps, the occassional
river that needed crossing with the legs up in the air to keep them
from getting wet so we had a blast just going up there!
Arjen had a couple of acres of land and a little wooden cabine
for his weekend get aways. There was a Nicaraguan family living next
door taking care of the property and all of the vegetation. Besides
his coffee there was corn growing as well as potatoes, sugar cane,
flours and bananas, and the mysterious other plants and vegetables
who've I never seen before. Daniel got his classes by learning all
the new words for all the plants and general conversation. Yessica
had a blast because she didnt need to be in the office and I was
enjoying everything aound me. Cool to be here and great to be in the
middle of nature.
Arjen needed to check up on his water wells (three in total)
as one of them was leaking. These wells were the only way of getting
water to his vegetation and house, so we hiked up to all three of
them up the mountain and check them out. During this walk Arjen
explained all about what we came across, the weather was great and
everybody had fun. The wells all looked good and the guy taking care
of the property had repaired the well that was leaking but the
concrete was still drying. The work he did looked very good and Arjen
was happy that his well would be up and running within a day.
After that Arjen needed to do some work at the cabine so Daniel,
Yessica and myself roamed around the area, taking some picture and
enjoying the fresh air of the mountains. Daniel was very very excited
about this whole trip and I think he said 'wauw' about every two
minutes :-). Daniel happend to be professional photographer and he
shot some footage for the website of Matagalpa Tours while walking
around. During our walks we came across one of the locals and we
started little conversation. He happend to have just chopped some
sugar cane and offered us to try it. That sounded like a very good
plan as we were just talking about beeing hungry. So he skinned the
cane and than sliced them in four peices over the lenghts of the
cane. we all got a hand full of fresh cane and started eating it. It
was a tuff tecture with a lot of fibres and just by chewing on it the
sugary juice ran into your mouth and chin. Great way to enjoy nature
to the max while getting some nutrician as well.
Around 3pm it was time to head back to town and we hopped on
the bikes and since we didn't had a real lunch yet, we followed Arjen
to a local restaurant. The road leading there was just perfect, the
asphalt was literally just laid there a week ago...! swerving
mountain roads followed by lots of hair-pin curves and the sun
shining bright. This was just one of those perfect days which we
ended with a delicious local lunch. Bean soup, Guahara cheese, sour
cream and tortillas together with some vegetables and a locat fresh
drink just hit the spot after a day of riding and hiking. Good times
in Nacaragua!
