112,6km – 2171m up – 2143m down – 4961 kcal – 9:20h
This was just the ‘right’ 
start into the new section, after my stomach problem. I partially recovered over the rest day and could finish this first of 4 consecutive brutally long and challenging cycling days.
We left camp in the rain, climbed out of town and had a fast downhill. The rest of 
the day was climbs to regain the elevation loss. The weather conditions constantly changes from valley to valley. This is an area were sugar cane is grown and the whole family celebrates harvesting and bring home heavy loads of with their oxen carriages.
Today the kids were playing us nuts with our ‘red’ tour marker tape, that we use to indicate which direction to take at critical way points. They must have removed it from the trees and bushes were Cristiano fixed it and were running with it through the town. Eventually all of us got lost as we couldn’t match the written directions to the flagging. Thanks to GPS – most of us are using a Garmin nowadays – we all found an alternate route and made it to the lunch stop from were we could continue on the planned track. A long climb in the Pan Americana Highway brought us into Zambrano.
The hotel for the night is nicely situated outside the city. The owner was living in Austria for a while. The house is over and over decorated and filled with religious icons and collector’s art. It must have taken ages to gather all these things and bring them into Nicaragua. A beautiful and rich decorated Christmas tree reminded us of the forthcoming holiday season.
For the first time on this trip, there was a desert announcement this evening. Especially the ‘sweetie’ in me couldn’t await what it would be. Disappointment was great when it was only ‘rice pudding’, so I skipped it 
