Cycling The Globe

Distance: 113.2 km
Ride time: 5:31:26
Average: 20.5 km/h
Max speed: 47.9 km/h
Total: 35728 km

Everything is very compact here in Nicaragua. Yesterday night I had left the beautiful Island of Ometepe. Today the plan was to cycle to the old colonial city of Granada, have lunch at the square, and then continue to the capital Managua. That’s a lot of sights in 24 hours.

The original Granada in Spain is one of my favourite cities in the World. I spent 6 months there as a student back in 2006. In the Granada of Nicaragua I would only have a few hours – enough to cycle around to take some photos in the beautiful city center.

Granada is famous for the fact that it was founded in 1524 and as such considered the first European city in mainland North America. It reminded me a lot of Cartagena down at the Caribbean coast of Colombia – another of the very early Spanish cities in Latin America.

After my lunch at the square I continued towards the current capital Managua. At my hostel I met Peter from Germany who is riding his motorbike from New York to Ushuaia. Incredibly it had only taken Peter two and a half weeks to ride all the way from New York to Nicaragua. It will take me a little longer to go up there by bicycle…

In contrast to Granada, Managua doesn’t really have any sights. In fact Peter and I had a hard time finding a restaurant for dinner. In the end we managed to find a food court in a shopping center after wondering of the people of Managua eat at all.

It was nice sharing thoughts with Peter about being on the road. I got a few tips for places to visit in the rest of Central America. Happy riding Peter!