Southern Exposure

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Knowing it was a short ride down to Granada, we had a leisurely morning and had a big breakfast at the Miraflores co-op cafe from the day before. They had great batidos (like smoothies except without added sugars). We packed up the bikes and were on our way.

The ride down from the highlands was pleasant if uneventful. The wind was gusty, blowing down from the highlands to the west coast. It wasn’t challenging but we had to be mindful of unexpected gusts. The landscape became greener as we descended into view of Lake Nicaragua. We were trying to avoid the capital city of Managua and all of its traffic, so we bid farewell to the lake and went west through Masaya.

It was only a half an hour past Masaya to Granada. It’s very hard to feel like you’re making any progress on the overall journey when you can only ride 150 miles in a day. The countries are so small no place within the country is very far away. The layout of Granada is the classic Spanish grid, so it took little effort to find our hotel. We had picked it because it had a nice rooms with air conditioning at a good price. I don’t think either of us had expected for it to turn into a nightclub at night, but it was called El Club.

We unpacked and met the owner, a Dutch transplant. He was bringing in a DJ from Holland for New Year’s Eve, which sounded good to us as we’re always up for dancing. Once unpacked, we rode the bikes over to the fire station that also served as a parking lot for a small fee of course.

We strolled down to the main plaza, which by now was a familiar site of churches and colonial buildings. Granada was bustling with activity and the hot, humid air was whisked away by a gentle breeze from Lake ???. Both Inna and I felt Granada had a much more vibrant atmosphere than its sister city, Antigua. Locals were out and about instead of hiding behind iron bars.

We walked around, seeing the sites until sunset, and then returned to the hotel for dinner.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

My plan for the morning was bike maintenance. Inna tried to line up a yoga class, but being a holiday, nothing was available. To maximize our afternoon time, she went to find a grocery store to purchase liquor and mixers for out New Year’s night, while I started working on the bikes.

My original plan was to give the bikes a look over for any loose bolts, clean and lube the chains, and then look into Inna’s Starcom. It shorts out constantly, blowing its fuse. Her headset only works in one speaker, but with the power wire running under the gas tank, I was concerned it was being pinched and shorting out against the frame.

With the bikes up on the center stands, I cleaned the chains and then began to take the panniers off of Inna’s bike. The panniers were very loose in the racks, even with the screws fully tightened. This was bad news. While we are riding smooth paved roads, it’s not a big deal, but once we are regularly riding bumpy dirt roads, the loose panniers will destroy themselves and the racks. The tipovers have taken their toll on the boxes.

Inna returned from the chaos of the Granada market streets bearing mana from heaven for me – she had found Dr. Pepper in one of the cafes. Delicious. I took the gas tank off of the red KLR and inspected the wires. The wires for the volt meter had some dents in them, but the Starcom wire looked in pristine condition. This was bad news as far as I was concerned because now I have no idea why it keeps shorting out. It could be the bad headset is causing the short and blowing fuses. I put in a new fuse to buy a few days of radio time and put the gas tank back on.

I inspected my bike, the blue one, and the panniers were loose as well. There was an ancient fire truck that obviously had not run in years parked in the corner with a similarly ancient truck tire tube draped over the rear. We cut strips of rubber out of the tube to use as gaskets between the panniers and the racks. This worked out great as the boxes can now be held tightly against the rack and they don’t move at all.

After putting a second coat of lube on the chains, we were done with the KLRs for the year. Back at the hotel we cleaned up, and headed out for some last minute shopping. We went back to the grocery store and indeed the market street was as busy and chaotic as Inna had told me. We bought some ice for cocktails in the room and treated ourselves to some ice cream.

After an early dinner, we retreated to the room to relax, take a nap, and have a cocktail before the hotel got too busy. They had turned the central open air cafe into a dance floor and had been doing sound checks all afternoon. With our bed only separated by two doors from the dance floor, an early night was not going to be an option.

By 11pm the party was in full swing and we put in some quality time on the dance floor. The house music was a welcome change from the usual latin ballads we’d been hearing. Midnight arrived to great cheers and fireworks shooting up above our heads.

Happy New Year!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

The first day of the new year was a slacker day for us. We slept in and then ate breakfast in the room. The town was dead when we ventured out. The small percentage of the population that owned cars seemed to be staying in on this holiday so a tranquil silence hung in the air. We watched bad movies on cable television in the evening and packed for an early departure for Costa Rica the next day. Now that the holidays were officially over, we were anxious to be back on the road.