Last Thursday, we left Esteli with the Swedes and headed out to Ulrich’s farm, which is located about 30 minutes east of Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

He has a working farm whose main focus is cattle. This farm was Nicaraguan style where the animals and humans coexist. The main farmhouse was a simple wooden structure with no electricity and minimal plumbing. The animals were welcome on the first floor and I had never been to a farm with so much activity. Chickens, dogs, puppies, cats, turkeys, pigs, cows, they were everywhere and they were always talking their animal languages about God knows what. So much for a peaceful time at the farm since these guys were always talking, crowing, fighting, or eating together. It was nuts. You’d sit in one place and see all sorts of animals just meander and pass by doing what animals do. Puppies would tear at your socks, then wrestle each other, if one got too close to a hen and her chicks she would peck him on the nose. It was straight comedy sometimes and as Ulrich says, “It was kind of fun”.

The only quiet time we had was at night when we sat atop Ulrich’s unfinished concrete home atop a small hill and had some beers. We spent the night on hard beds on an open air balcony and woke up with the animals (how can you not?) at about 6 am.

We left the farm to do some riding on some pretty cool dirt tracks that Ulrich knew. Roar had his first river crossing and almost lost it. He hit the throttle a little too hard and had water splashing over his helmet. I almost lost it, too, but Roar’s crossing was much more spectacular.

We found a spot to stop so that we could do a little hiking in the rainforest. I can’t remember if we spotted some monkeys on this hike or not but we saw howler monkeys and spider monkeys by a river on the farm the day before.

Some more challenging dirt riding and another river crossing, which Roar and I aced and we left the jungle.

We headed with the Swedes to Managua and had a great weekend. The nightlife was a lot of fun.

On Sunday, Roar and I headed out to a well known toursty town called Granada on Lake Nicaragua. It was great to go for a ride on the bikes without any bags and with only tshirts and jeans.

I made a friend named Raquel through MySpace. On Sunday, Raquel and her friend showed us a nice little ride to Los Cruceros. At the top we could view the Pacific Ocean but it was windy as hell and reminded me of Baja California. On the way back we got a great view of Lake Nicaragua….

The popular border crossing to Costa Rica is on the Pan Am highway which runs along the west side of Lake Nicaragua. Looking for a little adventure and wanting to get off the beaten path  we headed on monday morning to San Carlos. The first part of the ride reminded me of Baja again. Kinda brown, dry vegetation, a lot of wind, and nice curvy asphalt. That changed when we turned south towards San Carlos. Bumpy, hard, rocky, dirt road for a hundred miles…..

Sometimes our maps are way off. A red line turns out to be a beautifully paved road. Other times a red line is this crap. Actually, I loved it. It was the California desert with whoopties but boring because it was so straight. There’s a little more to tell on this part but I’ll leave it for next time.