Mostly they would be "Indio" as they say down there, but we'd say imdigenous and if they were in uniform they'd be wearing a mask, maybe a ski mask. But, it's pretty likely you went by signs and murals and community centers and maybe your roadblock was Zapatista.

been enjoying these updates

Finally got some new posts up! We're caught up through Tulum, Belize and Northern Guatemala. http://ushuaiaorbust.com/2018/04/29/guatemala-norte/

Older posts: http://ushuaiaorbust.com/blog/

Next up is Antigua. I had a blast in El Salvador and Honduras and you're all pussies for not going I'm going to try to get totally caught up in the next week.



I'm currently in Leon Nicaragua - which a week ago was rioting and blood in the streets (some 40 dead across the country in massive protests and govt crackdowns). I was planning not to come, but apparently the country can bounce back to normal in a matter of days. Crazy.

Oh yeah it's about 4000 degrees here and no one has AC. No wonder people are rioting. I spent one night in a non-AC room last night. Never again.

It would have been fine last night if the temperature in my room was anything close to the temperature in the open-air hallway just outside my door. Instead it was at least 10, maybe 15 degrees hotter in the room all night. You'd think the Spanish colonial architecture would try to account for this by putting a hole in the ceiling or something for the heat to escape. Instead the high ceilings just act like a giant heat sink, trapping all the hot air.

I finally opened the door and put my personal fan on a table in front of the open door (the room fan was mounted on the wall and semi-useless). There I slept in my underwear on top of the bed. Funny how privacy goes out the window when extreme heat is the other option. I did get a little self-conscious when the sun came up though, and shut my door - which of course made it hotter again.



One reason I could never totally quit drinking - "new country, new soda" just isn't that fun - even if each country did have a new soda. At least Nicaragua beer seems closer to the 4.9% as claimed on the label. I swear Honduras and El Salvador is 3.2% at best. I literally couldn't get drunk on it, and damn did I try.

Eyebrows raised, red faced and beard you kinda look like Satan.

Chicks are into that right?

Well, the ones who are might be the ones you want to meet when looking for romance as you pass through their town.

I'm moving to Mexico City and will probably visit much of Central America at some point. Have there been any areas that seem just to dangerous to make a visit worthwhile? I'm most interested in Antigua, Granada, and León.

Those places are all fine unless Nicaragua is having another revolution. My favorite places so far are Baja, Puebla, Oaxaca, Antigua, El Tunco - El Salvador, Lake Yojai and especially Utila Island in Honduras.

I’m in Leon now. It’s too ****ing hot for me. There are tons of cool day trips and outdoor things you can go from here though. And the nightlife scene seems pretty active - if small.

Everyone I’ve met from multiple countries ago says do the volcano boarding from Leon. Just did it. Fun but I was kind of scared to go too fast because I met a girl a couple days sip who tore her MCL. If I did it again I’d go faster.

I’ll post more on the crazy week of blood in the streets they had here when I get to my laptop.

No the only places that are too dangerous are places you’d never want to go - the slums of the major cities and some Mexican cartel areas near the US border. Anyplace an expat or tourist would want to go is pretty safe.

The worst things I’ve heard about were a couple of solo female travelers camping alone in Bolivia and North Baja (not in an established campground) getting raped - which is sadly a fact of life just about anywhere.

The only attack on a car I’ve heard about is some people who were way out in the boonies of Colombia near the Venezuela border. Some armed dudes hopped out of the bushes. Made off with wallets and a few bags, but left the occupants unharmed.

I did see a naked guy walking down the highway in Honduras. Not sure what that was about. Oh yeah - apparently if you are an expat in Honduras or El Salvador for a while - kidnappjng is not the outside the realm of possibility. But plenty of them still do it.

OK thanks for the detailed response.

I'll definitely check out the myriad of awesome places near Mexico City including Puebla and Cholula. Everyone raves about Oaxaca and Chiapas, so I'll get to those soon too.

I was a little concerned about Mexico City, but after doing a bit of research and finding that most people who visited/lived their loved it, then going myself for a month and feeling as safe or safer than cities like STL, Chicago, NOLA, decided to just relocate myself there as a base to explore more of Latin America.

Your blog has been really inspiring and a great resource for information. Enjoy the rest of the trip!

awesome updates suzzy, keep em coming

I did the volcano boarding today with a French girl who was here last week during the craziness - working at a hostel in exchange for free room and board. Apparently it was pretty nuts. She thinks 10-20 people died just in Leon, about 65 in the whole country. Obviously the govt is reporting like 1/3 of that. One 14-year-old girl in Leon was hit by a ricochet and killed. Really sad.

She said two weeks ago the town was packed with tourists. Then a week ago when the trouble started everyone bolted. For background - Ortega came out with social security changes - raising the amount to pay in and lowering the benefit - and everyone went nuts. All the major cities were shut down at night. Most bars and restaurants closed (except at tourist beach areas).

She said at one point they moved the mattresses to the courtyard in the hostel and slept there because the homemade bombs were so close the owner was afraid of shattered windows. So it sounds like basically civilians with improvised bombs and stuff vs. govt guns. Which ended about as well for the civilians as you'd expect.

However they kept at it and after 4 days the govt relented and reversed the new policy. It took a day or two but then everything calmed down and now except for a burnt out block that I need to check out tomorrow - everything is back to normal. Weird.

People were talking about revolution, being ready to die, and making plans to arm themselves. Somehow I doubt that's just going to go away. And next time could be worse.

Are you sure you don't have to be careful about reporting on political stuff online in the country while you're still in it?

Not that I've heard of. This isn't Asia.

Suzzer,

Enjoy your trip reports. Ive done the same drive once and also a couple of times by sailboat.

Im not sure if you have any interest in playing poker while you are in Nicaragua but there are a couple of good games I can let you know about. In Managua and out at the beach with some of the expat community.

Very dynamic times here, to say the least. Everyone is hoping for the best yet preparing for the worst. Tragic, all the unnecessary deaths.

PM if you any questions etc or just want to grab a beer while here. Nica was home for 9 years. Here for extended visit before heading south again....

TTB

PM sent.

I'm really getting caught up on the blog posts while sitting in the AC all day. Here's the rest of Guatemala - Antigua and Lake Atitlan. http://ushuaiaorbust.com/2018/05/01/...-lake-atitlan/

NSFW

Very cool post. You know Guatemala had a civil war that killed maybe as many as 200k people. It was mostly in the 80s, but wasn't over until 1996. At least 30k Maya were murdered there too.

Yeah it was pretty nasty. US helped create it of course. I guess I could add more history to my posts.

I do hope to write a Bill Bryson-style funny/informative memoir when I get back and have time to intensively research everything.

El Salvador post is up. Now with more depressing history and USA evil ****ery - just for Microbet. Also papusas! http://ushuaiaorbust.com/2018/05/04/el-salvador/

Cool. I've gone to Salvadoran restaurants twice now and have not really liked it. Soooo much fried stuff. That might be a plus for a lot of people though.

Other than papusas I didn't really get excited about too much except the rice and beans - which are good everywhere.

Great blog entry as usual!

I'm pleased your windshield is holding up. Watching the potholes video, I'd except all kinds of debris to be getting kicked up at you. Hope that good fortune holds out.

Do you find yourself getting disoriented? I grew up in the northern US, so the sun is always supposed to be in the south. Whenever I'm in the little latitudes, or southern hemisphere, I find myself always thrown off by the sun being in the 'wrong' place in the sky.

Nice update, hope for continued good travels.

I haven’t noticed the sun thing yet. It is kind of weird seeing Orion always hanging out near the horizon instead of overhead.

The windshield is fine. I did just get a flat tire from sharp rocks on the road to the Nicaragua Caribbean coast.. I’m supposed to lower to 20psi for that. I’ll do it on the way back. I’ve got a portable pump but haven’t used it yet. The tire hopefully is getting fixed in Bluefields right now.

Adventure travel update! I'm currently stuck in Bluefields on the sparsely populated Atlantic side of Nicaragua for an extra 5 days (hopefully not more) due to mass protests and roadblocks that basically block all car traffic from the Pacific to Atlantic side. The roadblock at Nueva Guinea went up at noon Thursday. I showed up at 4pm.

If my flight from Corn Island hadn't been delayed from morning to afternoon - I probably would have just made it. Or just missed it by like 5 minutes, which would have been really painful.

I spent the first night in my car along with everyone else - hoping they'd open up at some point. Then in the morning I gave up and went back to Bluefields. The minimum I heard for the roadblock was 2 days. There seems to be a word-of-mouth schedule to these things, but it changes a lot and no one really knows for sure.

The only thing I know for sure is there's a Managua/Bluefields bus trapped in Bluefields. When that moves I know the road will be open. I've got a local guy here keeping me up-to-date, for which I'm buying him a few meals. He also told me there's no panga boats to La Rama - not that that would help me much. Although he told me there were no flights to Managua, which is wrong. But he knows the panga captains so I think he's accurate on that.

Nueva Guinea to Bluefields is about a 2 hour drive but through some gnarly construction that gave me a flat tire the first time. I have since aired down to 20psi and been fine. This time it was raining on the super-slick clay mud and they were towing cars uphill to get through it. So there's another fun factor to worry about - might get trapped by the rains.

I went back to the front lines today and saw all the same people - no one's moved - even people in nice cars. The line was actually shorter than when I left the previous morning - as like me plenty of people gave up and went somewhere else. There are makeshift campsites all over the place. Multiple people said 3 more days. So I came back to Bluefields again. So frustrating because it's like a 5 minute walk from where my car is stuck to where I want to be. They don't block foot traffic, bicycles or horses - only motorcycles, cars, buses and trucks.

Myself and my car get a lot of attention in that line as the only gringo and with USA plates - and people get drunker and want to joke around with me more as the night goes on. It's good natured and I'm sure it's most likely safe, but I felt a little like a sitting duck. I did see my drunk neighbor who kept calling me gringo and was making me a little nervous from the night before. He had gotten a hotel room and cleaned up, and was very nice during the day.

It's hard to tell the spectators and trapped people from the protestors - maybe that's by design. Except for a couple guys walking around with makeshift rocket launchers. They fire these throughout the night as fireworks - but were also firing them at cops (and getting shot at for it) in the protests a few weeks ago.

So by my guess it's maybe 30 protestors, a few of them armed with glorified fireworks. I didn't see any other weapons. But I did see some people in the back of a truck with a serious military rifle - driving towards me, about 20km away from the scene this morning. No idea what that was about. If everyone who's stuck just banded together I bet they could push these guys off. But maybe then hidden weapons come out or something. I've heard most of the other roadblocks at least let people trickle though - not this one.

Im going to try to fly to Managua tomorrow then go see Granada - just for something to do. Then hopefully fly back and drive my car across the country on Wednesday. Hopefully civil war doesn't break out while I'm out there.

Being stranded has some advantages. I'm finishing up on the blog posts now. http://ushuaiaorbust.com/2018/05/13/honduras-pt-1/

Where else can you get beautifully shot food porn like this?



Also there's a weird naked guy story - but sadly no pics.