The Motorscooter Diary
I woke up this morning at 730 and headed out promptly on my rented scooter. Nothing quite like waking up whizzing around on third world roadways! Seriously, there is nothing on the planet like tearing ass down the “highway” and seeing a dual oxcart coming the wrong way up the road, in the passing lane. Seriously picture that, you wind a bend and look ahead… What’s that? Why, it’s a pair of oxen pulling a dilapedated wood cart behind it! Hooray! Time to swerve! Oh Carretera Managua: bicyclists pull out on the road at any point, trucks kick up vast clouds of dust, and you occaisionally get to blow through drifting smoke from a nearby intentional field fire.
Seriously, I’m badass. It put some bonus hair on my chest indeed to cover about 60 miles today across such chaotic roadways. I first drove to the city of Masaya to do some shopping- specifically to look for a nice sombrero to replace my perfect hat I lost on the bus to Cerro Negro. The city center was pretty congested; brawling with merging traffic is fun with 2 wheels! The Old Market had nothing that fit me, nothing, I looked for an hour. Then I went to the bigger, sprawling beast that is the New Market. I looked there for an hour, nothing. I hereby declare that Nicaraguans have some small heads, for crying out loud! Granted I have a very big skull, but I know for a fact there are many fitted cap sizes bigger than mine! Sheesh.
Thwarted in my quest for “Hat”, I managed to get some other things to make the shopping adventure worthwhile. I picked up a sweet silk-like Nicaraguan flag and a 3 pack of some Havana Cohibas. They aren’t the greatest, but the flavor of thwarting the dictations of retarded US embargo makes up for any shortcomings. I also got a Nicaragua baseball jersey, it is so sweet it baffles my mind. Fits perfectly, predominately green with yellow stripes, says “Nicaragua” in script across the chest and bears the number 26 on the chest and back… extra fitting because that is the age I will stumble into upon my return to the USA.
Onward! I pressed on towards Managua, to visit the Volcan Masaya. This active crater had more “tourist infrastructure” than all the other Volcanoes I’ve hiked combined. There was a great visitor’s center with all sorts of great historical information. Apparently in the 1700s during the most recent major lava flow, the town of Nindiri was about to be destroyed when the flow of the lava was diverted into the Laguna de Masaya by a vestige of Christ on the cross. Earlier, a cross had been raised at the summit by a European priest who saught to keep “the demons held back at the gates of hell.” Awesome.
The paved road in front of the museum leads right up to the heavily smoking crater rim. I read in the museum that the crater is putting out 400 tons of Sulfur daily, now THAT needs a damned scrubber! A short jaunt up 178 stairs leads to the new cross. Another path leads out of the parking lot up to the top of an extinct branch of the crater. Now this ex-crater is just a bowl of forest, its actually quite cool to see.
After Masaya I went into Managua ON MY MOTO to try and find the factory that makes the certain type of hat I like. I had been given some directions by a vendor in the New Market in Masaya, but I was a fool to think I could find it on my own. Navigation in Managua is STILL impossible, decades after the earthquake that screwed it all up. My time in Managua was basically an ill-advised wild goose chase for which I earned no photographs and felt like I was a few feet away from death most of the time. What a horrible, horrible place to drive anything, let alone mi moto. Sheesh. I learned that lesson fast enough, got my way back to the carretera and just burned rubber all the way back to Granada.
A horrible finish to the day awaited me. If you dont want to get grossed out don’t read this last paragraph. I came home this evening to grab somethings from my bed. I felt a bad little sting, then another, on my hand. A pair of little black ants were biting me. Shit! I looked down at my bed, and it was swarming with them. There was a solid line of them coming down through the cieling in my room. Dis-gusting. What were they doing there you might ask? Well, I got a pretty good sunburn a few days back and was sitting in my bed that afternoon rubbing off peeling skin. Those damned ants were taking away these tiny little pieces of MY SKIN. How raunchy is that! I tore off all the covers and went on an hour long ant genocide. I still don’t think I can sleep in the bed… how awful is that? No one to tell either, its too late at night. Furthermore, I missed any dinner tonight because of my late return. Couldn’t find a place open to eat at. The streets were deserted. What a one-two punch… try and fall asleep in a chair in the general area of the hostel with no food in my stomach.
Yeah, Okay, Goodbye Hostal Mochilas. Dunno where I am going tomorrow, but I’m going somewhere. Sheesh. Hope to stay back in the swing of posting… I really have been leaving out quite a bit!
4 years ago