Diriamba

So much to write about. After arriving here in the afternoon, I had the choice between a hotel with (sort of) Wi-Fi and no pool and one without Wi-Fi but a gorgeous pool area with restaurant. I opted for the latter. This turned out to give me a chance to finally catch a ride in those ubiquitious mototaxis to get to the internet place I am writing this from. Riding in that mototaxi, bicycling suddenly felt incredibly safe. By the way, the mototaxis are, unlike what one would suspect, typically propelled with four-stroke engines.

Yesterday I had an extremely pleasant and relaxing day in Leon. I spent a couple of hours strolling through Leon, then went back to the Hotel to take a dip in the pool, then again to the main plaza by the cathedral (the largest in Central America).

Back to the hotel for a nap and then to the plaza for some coffee and people watching. On Christmas Eve, I was not surprised to see the city center packed with people, but yesterday, there was also a lot of life in the streets, which came as a surprise. Even many stores were open and numerous stands were selling all kind of things from pirated DVDs to sofas.

The surprises continued today. After about 50 miles of riding, I managed to bypass Managua without getting into too much traffic and then started heading south from Managua pedalling uphill on a road that was clearly going through a better part of town, with residences of diplomats - and lots of barbed wire and security cameras. There was also an office of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (a German foundation associated with the Christian Democratic Party) and a German school. Maybe this explains the Bavarian Delikatessen store I saw and tried to use for a photo shoot. Unfortunately, the photographer (Frau Metzgerin) was having problems operating my camera, so it's a bit fuzzy, but you'll get the idea:

So that you can see what I was resting on, I took the following picture:

I was quite impressed by the meat selection and was very tempted to sample some of the beer - even though in Germany Oettinger is not exactly considered one of the best, more like Busch in the US - along with some Leberkaese or Weisswurst. However I remembered I was about to start a lengthy climb and I was afraid after that kind of lunch I would probably roll backwards right into Lake Managua. Fresh fruit was a much wiser choice.

Tomorrow I may be able to make it to Costa Rica!