La Ruta Lenca and the attempted robbery (Honduras)

Its never a good idea to Cross a border in a Sunday. The schedules are more relaxed and the customs can close earlier and without warning, and if the border is busy enough to have a bank, probably it will be closed. Besides that the customs officials will be upset by having to work on the weekends and less inclined to believe my story that I`m cycling for the special children of APPC-Leiria (Portuguese association of cerebral palsy).
But I was already in El Salvador for 9 days and although it seems little time, it was more then enough for that small and not so attractive country.

With the first pedal strokes in Honduras, the country immediately looked different from Neighboring El Salvador. The houses were older and more simple but well kept, the road was in good conditions and without traffic, the valleys more open and the mountains higher.
The road followed a valley where a small river sailed through the pine trees, with green lawns on its edges. Places of picnic colored with the rubbish left by families. The surrounding hills covered with fresh grass from the first rains of the season and cows grazed up in the distance.
For brief moments it seemed that we entered the Swiss Alps. It was only missing the bells!
But that idea vanished in the streets of Nueva Ocotepeque, our first city in the country.

Ocotepeque, as many other border towns was full of activity. Merchandises overflow on to the streets. Piles of chilies share the sidewalk with furniture, imported car parts or cheap "made in china" plastic junk. Men on horses with white cowboy hats trotted along the gravel side roads and bare-footed boys crossed in front of the bicycle. "Gringos, Gringos", the cried out when at a safe distance.
But all the chaos seemed to have a commanded form.

By the time we arrived in Ocotepeque we had made little more then 20 km. It was only 9.30 in the morning but the sun was already high and strongly hot. We thought we could push it to Santa Rosa de Copan that same day, and moved on.
what we didn't know yet, was that in front of us awaited a climb of 1300 metres followed by 1000 drop to climb again 500 meters , down 350 and up yet again another 600 meters before Santa Rosa.

At the end of the second climb already with 1896 meters of accumulated climb and with the sugar levels running low, we decided to pitch our tent in a corner of a soccer field near the village of Ojo de Agua, and spent the night there with Santa Rosa clinging to the mountain on the other side of the valley.

On the following morning we cycled the remaining 16 km to the city.
There was not much to do in Santa Rosa de Copàn. Its only a small pretty colonial town with a relaxing atmosphere, but we spent 2 days there absorbing the smells and sights of the new country culture`s we just entered.
The great attraction of the city seems to be the cigar factory, "La Flor de Copan". The Honduran cigars are considered by the black lungs experts as been of high quality and only surpassed by the Cuban ones. In fact, many are re-packed and sold under the Davidoff brand in the European market.

The following day we leave Santa Rosa on our way to Gracia de Lempira. One of the several villages situated in the southern mountain range of the country and named by the tourism department as "la Ruta Lenca, the verdadera Honduras", the real Honduras.
An region inhabited by the indigenous Lenca already assimilated by the "mestizo" culture of the lowlands and with few characteristic distinctions, at least to the eyes of a traveller on two wheels.

What the government "forgot" to do was to improve the access roads (or road). Between Gracia de Lempira and La Esperança, our next stop on Ruta Lenca, the dirt road varied between bad and worse, hugging the mountains in such up and down that that day I beat a new record on accumulated climb, 2216 meters in 83 km. Mostly on gravel road.

Despite the difficulties, the dubbed Ruta Lenca was without doubts the prettiest part of our 625 km cycled in Honduras. From Siguatepeque until the Nicaragua border the riding was uneventful for cycling even monotonous at times, at least our determination in remaining in altitude provided a ride with pleasant temperatures.

Siguatepeque would have been forgotten on the map of this pan-American journey if it was not for the scare we had there.
That afternoon the tropical downpour made us stop for a couple of hours not far from town. Tired of waiting we put the Gore-Tex on and hit the road. The rain ran down my face and soggy Gore-Tex as we entered the city.
We got into the first hotel we spotted: hospedaje El Nilo.
The cell-box rooms with space for the bed and little more faced a common patio. In one corner of it was the smelly bathrooms. Jeff's room didn't even had a lock on the rooted wood door. In its place it had a twine that was tied between 2 nails, one in the door and another on the door frame.
For 600 lempiras (2.25 euros) it wasn't the Hilton Honduras, but it didn't rain inside and Juan,the Honduran neighbor of room 8 - that had spent 4 years in Tijuana (Mexico) trying to get in the US illegal - offered supper to us.

At 6.30 AM the suspicious steeps of somebody going around the patio and stopping several times in front of the room window, woke me up. I hear the gate closing. When I open the door I faced myself with the vision a touring cyclist most fears: Jeff´s bicycle had disappeared.

"-Someone stole your bile, man!"
I shouted knocking on Jeff`s cell-room.
I mounted my bike and rode down the street, with Lilia - a middle-aged and large hipped lady owner of the lodging - trying to follow me. But giving up shortly afterwards breathless.

On the first corner I asked 4 people seated on the side walk, that by the looks, had slept the night right there. In the beginning they ignored my questions almost in complicity, but perhaps for seeing the panic faced, disheveled and bearded gringo in shorts and slippers, one of them yielded and pointed to the left street.

At the corner of the next block, I look to my left and see the robber pushing Jeff`s bike by his hand up the gravel road.As I came closer the thoughts of him pulling a knife or something else made me tremble. I shout at him and he stops looking backwards. After exchanging some words I pulled the bike of him and run way down the street.

Back in the hospedaje El Nilo, we loaded our panniers and left town. It was only at the exit of town, when we stooped for breakfast at Texaco petrol station that we ponder about what have occurred.
From today on the "burra" will sleep with me!!

During my cycling in Honduras I had came across many smily faces of kids on the side of the road, friendly looks or the strong toned "buenos dias" of an elder.
I could not this single event spoil my journey in the country.
That morning we cycled through heavy traffic on the "carretera al norte", the main 2 lane highway that connects San Pedro Sula with Tegucigalpa, the capital, and probably the busiest road in the country.

In mid-morning we arrived in Comayagua. We had made only 32 km but decided to call it a day.
Comayagua is considered one of the prettiest colonial town in Honduras, but after having gone through so many pretty colonial towns (specially in Mexico), not even the hidden speakers in the gardens of Plaza central impressed us.
Nevertheless it was a pleasant town and we spent 2 relaxing days there.

After our not so nice experience with San Salvador`s traffic, we had decided to avoid Tegucigalpa at all costs, making a loop north - partially on gravel - through Talanga and San Francisco, meeting the highway to the border 50 km east of the capital.
The following days to Las Manos on the border with Nicaragua were uneventful and just adding km to leave the country.

Jeff and me entered Nicaragua on the 20th of July, one day after the commemorations of the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. The first page of La Prensa newspaper was filled with a photograph of hundreds of thousands of people that had gathered at the Plaza de la Revolucion in Managua to celebrate the event led by Daniel Ortega and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chaves.
I had entered the ninth country of the journey.
the odometer marked 19314 km.

Nuno Brilhante Pedrosa
Ocotal, Nicaragua.

Nossa Senhora de Fatima inCojotepeque (El Salvador)

El Salvador is a seldom-visited country. The lack of tourist facilities and infrastructure, and its (somewhat unjust) reputation as a violent country dangerous for travelling, lead most travellers to base the Central American itineraries in the neighbouring countries, Guatemala and Honduras. For bicycle touring, despite landscapes without fantastic mountains as seen in Guatemala, the roads are generally in good condition, and outside of urban centres, traffic is light and easy to deal with. It is certainly less chaotic and dangerous than on Guatemalan roads.

When Jeff and I studied the map of the country to determine a probable route, we agreed we would ride the country's highest roads, entering at Las Chimanas in the west, pedalling over the Sierra Apaneca Ilatepeque, and passing Lago Coatepeque and Cerro Verde park, before descending to the capital, San Salvador, and then climbing back above 1000 meters through the Cordillera Metapan Alotepeque and leaving the country at El Poy, north of the capital.

Despite the highest point having been only 1486 meters elevation, the 400km route in El Salvador was the hardest of any country so far, with an average of 16 meters of climbing for each kilometer pedalled. But the reason for choosing this difficult, mountainous itinerary was simple: Central America was experiencing its annual rainy season, which causes high heat and humidity in areas below 1000 meters elevation, especially between 11am and 4pm, making cycling there very uncomfortable.

Ahuachapán was our first city in the country and the start of the Ruta de las Flores (Route of the Flowers), one of the prettier cycling routes in this small nation. The CA8 passes through coffee-growing country and colourful villages with cobbled streets and colonial-style houses. The dark green of the coffee plants mix with the lively colours of diverse flowers, forming a landscape that I found familiar; it seemed more like riding on Madeira Island than in Central America.

In contrast to Guatemala, where much of the aboriginal population still keeps its religious traditions and forms of dress, here the Spaniards had been more efficient in decimating the population and local culture, and the majority of people are at least partly of European descent, removing the appeal of exotic native culture present in the neighbouring countries.

At the intersection of highway CA8 with the CA12, which comes from Sonsonate and the Pacific coast, we rode north towards Los Naranjos, another coffee-growing area but with more industrial characteristics. The colourful villages gave way to tin-roofed labour camps camouflaged by the dense vegetation of trees and coffee plants, revealing another side of El Salvador. The impoverished population of these "agricultural ghettos" is the bitterness in the taste of coffee. The monopoly is controlled by a small minority of rich Saladorans and foreigners (among them the American giant Starbucks), but the hard work of maintaining the culture of this magic bean is performed by poor families living in tin shacks, many of them former combatants in the bloody civil war that shook the country in the 1980s and early 1990s.

During one of this mountainous route's many climbs, dark clouds met us, creating a fog that lowered our visibility to just a few meters. Thunder and lightning flashes were so near that we felt we were in the epicenter of a tropical storm. It also did not hesitate to rain torrentially. We took refuge in a building belonging to the La Mejada cooperative, which, to my delight, maintained a small coffee museum here.

Aficionados of this delicious drink could not have found a better place to escape from a tropical storm. Rain beat steadily and with incredible ferocity upon the tin roof, while we enjoyed a "Mojada coffee" and heard explanations of the cooperative's functions, which demonstrated to me that a small part of its production made its way to the Portuguese market. When the sky had released all its water, we continued north to Santa Ana, the country's second-biggest city.

San Salvador, the capital, only confirmed my theory that bicycle touring in Latin metropolises can bring a trip to a premature end. The center of the city is confused, chaotic and dangerous for cycling, a taste of which we had already had in Santa Ana.

The next day we left the city, promising ourselves not to ride through any more great urban centers in Central America. I was left with a "souvenir" of the city, my rearview mirror cracked by a passing bus that had compelled me to ride in the gutter of the tree-lined Avenida Juan Pablo II, and by pure luck my name was not added to the city's road statistics.


I had convinced Jeff to detour a little from the planned route to visit the city of Cojutepeque. Cojutepeque is just another Salvadoran city without any interest to the tourist, but only if the tourist is not Portuguese.

Near the city, on the Cerro de las Pavas (Hill of the Turkeys), lies the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Fatima de Cojutepeque, with a statue of the Virgin brought from Portugal in 1949 and placed on top of the hill in a colourful, green, open space.

"This statue was brought from Spain, and attracts many pilgrims every May 13th," said Carlos, a young man on his bicycle who offered to lead us to the top of the Cerro de las Pavas .

After correcting him, and proving it with a wooden engraving of Nuestra Señora de Fatima which had been given to me by my mother and which has travelled in my luggage for more than 18,000 km, Carlos further led us to points on the hillside overlooking the city and the San Vicente volcano, directing our gaze to various places on the landscape that stirred memories of the civil war.

Carlos' adolescence coincided with the most turbulent period of the country's history. The bloody armed conflict that killed more than 75,000 people over 12 years still resides in the memories of all Salvadorans, especially Carlos who, now at 30 years of age, easily recalls the difficulties it created. His ambition, and that of seemingly the entire population of the country, is to emigrate to the United States, the land of opportunity. Many had already made it there, and their remittances to their families here are currently the country's main source of income.

The next day we continued towards Suchitoto, probably the prettiest and best-preserved colonial city in the country. Along the way we passed through Ilobasco, a village of potters, where it seems every citizen took a pottery course in a polytechnical institute and opened an artisan shop in their living room or in a storefront with doors opening to the streets of the village.

Yesterday we arrived in La Palma, within 12 km of the Honduran border and the end of our travels in this small country. It will certainly not rank among my favourite countries of the trip, but, due to its being little-known and little-visited, it provided its own rewards. The Salvadorans I met were without a doubt the highlights, with their genuine affection and hospitality still unaffected by mass tourism.

Nuno Brilhante Pedrosa
In La Palma, El Salvador