A very warm welcome in Nicaragua

It took us a whole day and a little more to do the motorcycle maintenance. Indeed, the regular maintenance went pretty fast, changing the oil and oil filter, changing the spar plugs, adjusting the chains and clutch and cleaning the air filters. What took much more time was to troubleshoot an electrical problem on Caroline's bike. Lately, the clock had been resetting itself and sometime too, the instrument panel was losing power. With the help from a women from Alaska who happened to stay at the Brewery too and knew a lot about motorcycles, Chad tested the different wires to see what was wrong. Unfortunately, the problem was not found but at least he got a good education on how to troubleshoot electrical problems. Hopefully, the bike will be fine. In any case, the bikes sound great with all the regular maintenance completed.

Back to the old look to cross the border

While Chad was putting the bike back together, Caroline decided that it was time for her to remove her Garifuna braids and go back to her old hair to enter a new country. After almost two weeks of braided hair, once they were all removed, her head was full of tight little curls. No a bad look but a shampooing was much needed. It just looked like before once the hair washed:)
It took us a full day of riding to come close to the border. Unfortunately, we had to go through the capital city, Tegucigalpa, which represented two major inconvenience: first, we had to go through really bad traffic surrounded by crazy drivers who follow no rules (but all went well, no accident to report) and second, we got pulled over by the national police who wanted a bride on the pretense that we were traveling without a security triangle on our bikes. After long negotiations, lots of patience and talk, we ended up having to pay but only $2.20 for both. Not too bad but Chad was pissed that we had to pay something since the “infraction” was all bogus. Time for us to leave the capital as soon as possible.

Early morning the next we were at the “El Paraiso” border. As soon as we set foot close to the gate, we had multiple “helpers” coming to talk to us. We decided we could do without them but one still followed us. The formalities on the Honduras side were fast and easy: check ourselves and the bikes out of the country. Then, we went to the Nicaragua immigration, still followed by our helper, got the passports inspected and paid the $7 entry fee each. At this point, Chad stopped ignoring the “helper” and told him to leave us alone because he would get nothing from us. He hesitated and finally left us alone after a few minutes; we could finally enjoy our space. Now the custom to import the bikes: title and drivers' license only were needed and 30 minutes later, we both had our forms and were good to go. That was easy! We jumped on the bikes, ready to enter Nicaragua when the National Police stopped us: paper control and we needed to buy insurance. The control went well but we still had to buy insurance since it is mandatory ($12 per bike for a month) and surprisingly a special "local tax" of $1 each. At this point, we were so eager to go that we did not even question the last tax. Nice, they finally let us cross the border after checking our papers once last time before opening the game. It took us all together a little less than two hours.

The most friendly and hospitable people
We stopped in the first town after the border to get some cash. As it was Sunday, our only option was finding an ATM but unfortunately, none of the three ATMs in town would give us money (either it was broken or would only accept Visa and we could only remember the PINs of our MasterCards!). As we were going from ATM to ATM, we had a security guy and two army guys stop to talk to us. They wanted to inquire if we needed anything, what and how the bikes were, where we were traveling.... Just super friendly and engaging, wishing us good luck with our travels. We even had another bikes just pull over and ask if he could take a picture of us and the bikes. It was overwhelming at first to have so many people talk to us but nice to be the center of attention. Our Spanish lessons came in very handy.

Unsuccessful in getting any money, we drove to the next town about 70 Kms south. This time, we got lucky and by the time we had the money, it was about 2:30pm and we still had not eaten lunch. When Caroline came back with the money and the good news that we were no longer without a dime, Chad was chatting with a guy who had a big Honda Shadow 1100. Him and his wife were very nice and they also took pictures of us. After a little while, we told him we had to go as we were getting very hungry (especially Chad). He looked at his wife with a nod and turned back to us telling us it would be their pleasure to invite us for lunch at their house. We were surprised by such kindness and since he insisted, we followed his truck home, with his wife and four little girl. As we enjoyed on his terrace the lunch that his niece had prepared, we were discussing with Jairo the joys of motorcycle riding and how it was in Nicaragua. It was such a relaxed and nice conversation, him and his wife being very patient with our Spanish. We stayed for a couple of hours chatting as if we were all old friends. We saw many riders passing by his house and say hi, we took more pictures again and thanked again for everything before heading out to find a hotel. We told Jairo that one day, we hoped we could invite him as well, either in the USA or in France. He smiled at us and said that regardless if he would be able to travel that far one day, we all had made a new friend today and that this was what matters most.

They say that what makes Nicaragua so special are the people here. It was for sure the warmest welcome we had in any country we entered so far. It seems that everyone here is friendly, helpful and will always make the first step to engage a conversation with you, be it in broken Spanish or English, or sometimes both mixed up. We are looking forward to having more interactions with the locals as we continue our journey in the country.