Worn thin on many levels.
We left Leon to ride to the Pacific Coast and it was a mistake AGAIN. James had developed a cold and was feeling "under the weather", but the day we were leaving we both felt ok, especially because we were planning to ride only 20km to the coast, to the beach to the idea of another couple of days off in the sunshine......
I noticed that I had started to become easily irritated with people and situations. I swallowed my moods or tried to keep them in check, but they kept bubbling up ...just being on a negative track.....seemingly when already on that track, things tend to go wrong automatically. One thing after another....starting with the paved road ending, soon after we turned off the main road to Managua. Leon had plenty of food - roadside fruits and goodies. Somehow, I don't know why I thought we had it made- we are out of the woods, out of the mountains, we are close to the year's goal, what could possibly happen to us? Well, no food was one thing, but no place to rest another.....after already playing with the edge every little thing would put me over....increased hot flashes is one sign.
We rode the dirt found a half fallen down building at the beach with a sign: Hotel and decided to camp next to it - the beach was actually pretty nice and the sunset was coming up in a nice way too. A lady walked up to us and asked us for $20 to camp. We smiled at her, but didn't give her any money (nice try, I thought). We made a dinner from the last scraps of food we could find in our bags and right before retiring a big truck pulled up about 20 meters next to us- a bunch of guys jumped out and started fishing - fine, I thought, it's sunset, must be a good time to fish.....
I fell asleep pretty fast, but woke up - don't really know how long I actually slept- to a bunch of voices and seemingly the tent on fire!
The fisherman decided to party and make a big bonfire, using material off the half broken palapa RIGHT NEXT TO THE TENT. They ignored us and I was thankful, but ignored us to the point of carelessness. WE WERE RIGHT THERE and the sparks were flying everywhere. How to deal with a situation like that? Neither James nor I really knew what to do, but just hoped for the best and lay still. I had my "hornet spray" (cheaper than bear spray) right next to me, though it did little to make me feel any safer/better. Call me naive, but the interesting part was, that those young men didn't seem to really wanna bother us, they were all wrapped up in what they were doing. I was trying to find a connection, a provocation, but it was ignorance for all I could tell.......Could be, though, that I am really off, but I sensed absolutely no belligerence, just ignorance and .....hhmmmm....... maybe stupidity?
This was not aggressive, but the carelessness and ignorance didn't make the situation any less dangerous. The night was spend in a state of stress, of course and we got only a couple of hours of sleep after the last rowdy left in the wee morning hours.
We left and found ourselves back on the dirt road another 13 km to go. Dust, heat, steep hills and rocky downhills made the 13 km feel like 50. When we hit the paved road, it wasn't a whole lot better either: one of the worst "paved" roads we have been riding on this trip. Well, so much for our "time off" and by the afternoon James was sick coughing with chest pain - we wound up hitchhiking the last 26 km to Managua.
