Dec 9 th, Leon , Nicaragua

Isaac and I had been riding pretty hard the last few days, so we decided to relax at Bigfoot hostel for another day.

Bigfoot hostel is great. The owner is an Aussie, young guy. He has built and opened three other hostels while running a surf school at the same time. He designs the hostels, builds them himself, and then sells them for a sizeable profit. Bigfoot has wireless internet and great common areas. The large BBQ is lit every night you just need bring stuff to toss on the grill. The actual rooms are nothing special but the rest more than makes up for it.

Dec 10 th, Leon , Nicaragua to Ometepe , Nicaragua - 150km on Ca 1

We had heard tale of a beautiful island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua , Ometepe. Isaac and I both had a little off -roading to get out of our system before we continued on with the rest of Central America and its borders.

We rode to San Jorge and hopped on a ferry to Ometepe. We were told that it would be impossible to circumnavigate the island on motorcycles due to bad roads. Suggestion noted and promptly discarded.

We were a rare site on this ferry for sure

There are two of these bad boys. Making the island look like a figure eight from the air

There were quite a few cattle on the hand laid road to the town center . I almost hit a chicken

Dec 11 th, Omotepe , Nicaragua

Isaac and I got up with no clear idea of what we were going to get into that day. We just wanted to get dirty. First we tried this impossibly steep road called Mirador De Diablo.

You can see the road up ahead; the picture does not do it justice

Isaac dumped it first in a jagged moon crater. I then followed suit by dropping it twice, once on either side. No damage to the bikes. We turned around. Down but not out.

This drop catapulted me into a shoulder roll that ended in the bushes

Okay that was a bad start to our day of ass kicking. After the dreaded Mirador we decide to take a leisurely drive around the island. This turned out to be about six hours of great fun. There were plenty of dirt roads of vary degrees of credibility. We took a detour to try to get a good look at the water. Apparently the lake is inhabited by freshwater Zambezi sharks. No lie up to ten feet in length. We didn’t see any but it was verified by our guidebook. Apparently they have been over fished by the locals. They exported their fins to Japan for shark fin soup.

This is what most of the road was like as we circled the first volcano

Our detour to the water