Rode into (and half way through as well) Nicaragua today. There was relatively little trauma or cost at the boarder so that was good.
Initial impressions are that there are significantly fewer people here and that the country seems drier (even more like Mexico than Honduras was). It does however seem a little more friendly than Honduras was.
We rode South after the boarder, aiming to get to the central tourist destination in the country, a colonial city on a lake shore called Granada. On the way there we rode along a very nice highway and there were the usual occasional groupings of roadside vendors. However on one particular section of the highway there were at least a dozen people with assorted tropical parrots for sale. They were tied onto sticks that the people were waving about with abandon - much to the parrots dismay!
There were small green and yellow ones (probably lorrokeets of some sort) but I figured they probably weren't ripe yet. One guy had a nice ripe one though, it was a huge red Macaw. I didn´t stop to take pictures because I was caught up thinking about the moral implications - am I encouraging them by taking pictures? but I think I wont make a difference to any of it, so next time I see this sort of thing I will stop and have a closer look.
So I rode on toward Granada. When I was almost there though, I managed to attract the attention of the local police and got pulled over for some sort of local infraction. The officer in question seemed quite sincere and did not try to get me to bribe him, but there was no infraction I could justify with the ticket I got (tax collection from foreigners?) He gave me a ticket and kept my licence but I was smart enough to give him an old copy so I don´t really need it back. Not sure what I will decide to do about the ticket since I am probably only in the country for one more day. Oh well, I rode on again into the city as the day started to close and commenced the usual hunt for a "cheap but not too cheap" hotel.
Some good, some bad, An average day.
