C2C Day 5

For the first half of our bike trip we had people taking turns being what we called the 'sweeper'. The sweepers for the day had to be at the very back of the pack so that when the support crew came by and saw them they knew these were the last bikers. Well today Carey and I took our turn. We thought that after our day yesterday with extra kilometers we could use a slower paced day. It so happened that we weren't even out of Siuna when someone had a flat tire. The day sort of progressed that way with more bike problems. It was a couple days into the trip and the bikes had taken a beating. Our ride today took us about 70km from Siuna to Mulukuku. This was definitely one of my favorite towns to say: Mulukuku (Where do they come up with these names?).

The slower pace allowed us to take in everything and little more. On this day we started to leave the forests behind and saw more grassland (or rather forest that had been cleared) and farming areas used for cattle raising. There are some laws in Nicaragua to regulate logging and land management but like most other things they don't get enforced.

Me on the left.

This was what one of our typical rest stops looked like. The tables and chairs would be set up and taken down each time. We often had buns for peanut butter and honey, powerbars, fruit, Gatorade, and water. This would serve as our lunch for the day as well. Breakfast and dinner was served in the towns we stayed and was typically a lot of rice and beans with either chicken or beef and always fresh cheese and eggs in the morning.

I had to chuckle a couple times at the things we passed along the way. One time we saw two women on horses and both women were holding a bag in front of them with squealing pigs. We also started seeing the old milk canisters along the road filled with milk. A milk truck comes to pick up the milk and they deliver it to a cooler; we saw several along the way. Some of the smaller milk cans held the watery liquid that was separated from the cream which would be fed to the pigs. There seemed to be more and more chickens, cows, and horses along the road today. We passed through several towns that reminded me of pictures of movies of the Wild West. The homes were very primitive in this area. Most homes were wooden and when you looked inside there was very little to be seen. Maybe a table with a few plastic pots on it. Life was much more community based here and very simple.

We definitely could tell that we were reaching bigger towns and cities when several people along the way asked us if we had gifts or money for them. Often organizations or even the government will just hand things out to people along the road.

By this point on the trip our backpacks were getting rather stinky with dirty cloths. We sent our dirty laundry on ahead to get washed. The cloths were actually washed in the river for us and then we hung them up to dry at our hotel. It didn't always get dry on time so we would either pack wet laundry and try again the next evening or we would just wear it wet. It was also at about this point in the trip that some of us started to get really sore bums. There's a secret to this problem and its bag balm; it worked wonderfully and I was good to go for the rest of the trip.

Women and girls washing cloths in the river