Sunday, 18th October, Leon: 2 borders, 1 day, 0 chance?
We set off “early”. This means 9.30am. No matter what we do, we don’t seem to be able to get our shit together enough to be able to hit the road. The plan today is to cross from El Salvador briefly into Honduras then out, as soon as possible, into Nicaragua. Honduras, by all accounts, is not a wise place to be at the moment. There are major political rumblings, the ousted president has smuggled himself back into the country in the last few days, and it’s generally not a wise place to be.
As we pull up to the Honduras border, we come up behind a BMW GS1200 Adventure. The bike of the pros (or rather, the people who think they are pros. Wooooooo). The Ewan and Charlies of this world. It’s beautifully rigged with slick Touratech silver panniers, lots of chrome accessories, and a rider in the full, correct kit. I see the Floridian numberplate and the blond hair curling up under the helmet and my heart sinks. Oh God. Some minted Yank.
Hearing English, the rider turns, takes off his helmet and strolls over. Oh God. He flashes a wide smile, and starts yakking with a thick South African accent. We’re ok. He too is heading across two borders to Leon, Nicaragua. He’d been in Honduras before and been mugged, so was happy to have company for the second crossing. Meet Chris. A South African who has been living in the States for the last 18 years. (”I’m a bona fide African American”) He set up a successful construction business, married a US girl and lives in Fort Lauderdale. He somehow managed to convince his wife to come with him on the trip down to Ushaia from Canada. She has rheumatoid arthritis which requires a bi-weekly injection – the medication for which needs to be refrigerated. So Chris set to work in his garage creating a tiny fridge which could be rigged onto the bike. So successfully was his design that Touratech have asked him to create a prototype which they can then look at manufacturing commercially. What a legend.
He and his wife (and I think there’s much to be learned here…) are taking a year to go down to Ushaia then back up through Africa (Mike’s dream!). But, here’s the deal, she does 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off – flying home to Miami (or up to see friends in New York), when she gets fed up, or they get fed up of each other. They are both party-loving, independent individuals, and it seems to be working perfectly.
With Chris, just moments after the fight
I’m left alone guarding the bikes as the boy negotiate the paperwork. I’m in a huge crowd of Hondurans, bustling and trying to sell stuff. After about 20 minutes, a woman walks past and mumbles irritated at me. Another local woman comes to my defence and a fight ensues. My defender is waving a broom at the now spitting and hissing psycho lady. The whole crowd (of maybe 100) is cheering and woooooing at appropriate moments. Finally the “puta” who started the whole thing is shooed away by the jeering crowd and the threat of a broom. I thank my little saviour.
It was the first time we had ridden with another rider, let alone someone on a BMW with an engine nearly twice the size of ours, with half the weight we are carrying. Chris danced in and out of the traffic, smoothly overtaking as the BMW beast acceleration glided him round cars and trucks. We are basically a car. Overtaking is very hard because of the weight that we are carrying and the limited acceleration as a result.
That aside, the ride at dusk into Nicaragua, pink sky throwing the volcano into silhouette, was one of the most spectacular of our trip so far along La Ruta de los Volcanes. Just breathtaking. We have about half an hour of this scene then the lightning starts in the distance. Nearly continuous flashes of light which illuminate the clouds in front of them. It’s now a race against the weather – which we naturally lose. In the tension to beat the weather and keep up with Chris, Mike clunks into a Chicken Bus which stops in front of us, taking out the indicator and light on the sidecar. Another trip to the mechanic… 
The heavens rip open and deposit such volumes of rain that even the pocket of the poncho I am wearing becomes fat with rain (it’s zipped shut with a flap over the top to prevent this from happening); we have to ride through deeps rivers which have appeared on the roads. We were only 10 minutes from our destination in Leon, but in ten minutes everything we own is rendered sodden.
We then go out into town with Chris, once we’re dried off, and head to the backpackers’ bar. Where we naturally meet friends of Chris’ from Antigua (which seems to be the centre of the Central American backpacking world). We sit and do the classic thing where it’s not conversation but people retorting with their own travelling stories, trying to outdo each other. I liken it to the way graphite is formed. Layers that are tightly bonded, but nothing holding those layers together. So the layers slide over each other as the pencil of conversation moves on regardless of what went before. A slightly laboured metaphor, but you get the picture.
