We arrived at our next rest day location.
After 4 days of ‘brutaliful’ cycling we are now at Copan Ruinas, close to the border to Guatemala. Tomorrow we can explore the old pre-Columbian ruins of Copán.
Now it is time to get a bit rest from the 4 battling and energy taking days.
The hotel is ‘grande’. I already had 2 ‘Cerveza Bicicleta’, spring rolls, tomato soup and ravioli.
Stay tuned to read more when I upload photos and update the details of the 4 riding days.
Tomorrows stage was modified from:
2000m climb to ~2600m and from 0% off-road to >30%.
Alternative:
More than 3000m climb, 160km distance, all paved on Pan Americana!
Q: Why is Cristiano making the stages more and more difficult day by day?
Could it be that TdA doesn’t carry enough EFI medals with them, thus need to reduce the number of eligible?
@ Eric: Stay alert, if you become to be the last EFI survivor 
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 
We will have some long, tough cycling days. Not only from distance, but more from the amount of climbs and off-road. With an increase of difficulties with every day running more into exhaustion and failing to recover calories.
There might be not enough time left to write and publish my articles every day … I’ll try my very best. The final ‘polishing’ will be done at the rest day, at latest.
Remark: by the time I am able to publish this, we have already completed stage 14
I finished the second of 4 hard cycling days. I might not be able to stay up to date with my articles ….
Rider meeting is calling
A well deserved rest day after the many 9+ hours of cycling days and thousands of meters of climbing in the past week. I definitely need it to recover more from my stomach bug. Therefore I decided to stay around the village and skip a tour to the near by capital of Honduras, Teguicigalpa.
Valle de Angeles – Valley of the Angels – is a lovely place in the mountains. Surrounded by green hills and colorful trees, with riders on horses sharing roads with old worn-out cars, brand new jeeps or Harley Davidsons and the 3-wheeled tuc-tucs.
At one end of the village there is even a ‘Bicycle Cemetery’, obviously with the remains of badly battered bicycles from previous trips to this place..
70.2km – 1413m up – 1028m down – (did not ride)
It was supposed one of the easier cycling days. A short one, all on tar with just a 
tougher climb at the end. However I was forced to use the car after my last night’s stomach fiasco. Still having higher temperature, totally shivering and pale like a ghost – one couldn’t see me standing in front of a white wall – I packed my bag and Luke brought me to the lunch stop, where we got some delicious, fresh coconut to drink, from a local family.
Cristiano carried me and Dan (who is also recovering from a stomach ‘bug’) to Valle de Angeles, our location for the next rest day.
It is a nice place in the mountains and parrots are entertaining us in the 
garden with their ‘Holas’ and ‘Hallos’ – unfortunately trapped in a mid sized aviary. It would have been much nicer if they we as free as those in San Juan del Sur or Granada.
At 8:30 I already had my laundry disposed for cleaning and went to sleep … a loooong loooong sleep. I just got up in the afternoon to have some soup and returned to ‘narcosis’ until the next morning.
A healthy sleep. I totally feel better today, but still need the rest day to gain more strength for the forthcoming cycling days.
At the arrival in Yuscaran I still felt strong, but exhausted with 11km that I did extra. However, obviously the food served (or the finisher beer that Dave gave me?) did no good to me at all. At around 9:30pm my stomach started to rumble and I developed higher temperatures. A Paracetamol 500 did not instantly help. At 10pm I had to rush to the bathroom and throw up. I do not want to go into details, but I didn’t leave it for two hours until I was totally drained and the mess I made was cleaned up as good as the available tools allowed. Bill, my room made, called for Dr. Sarah to look after me. I got some good medication and human touch which eased the pain a lot. Sarah was so nice to sleep over in our room on the floor for the next 3 hours to periodically wake me up to drink water.
Although the lights were switched on the whole night, Eric, the ‘racer’, seemed to have slept a healthy sleep. Maybe just dreaming about his bike, whether he cleaned all the stains from the previous ride. At the next day he was in camp only shortly after us, riding the cars.
How could this happen? Should I be superstitious?
* My my ‘Hakuna Matata’ sticker peeled off from my bike 
frame
in the rain. The sticker from Tanzania which says: ‘No
Worries’ and was attached since my TdA 2008 trip.
* I couldn’t buy a new lucky country bracelet the day 
when we entered into H onduras.
* the horseshoe I found 
around the lake leaving
Rancho Mancho is
mounted upside down to
my handle bar?
* simply bad luck?
125.1km – 2268m up – 2036m down – 5640kcal – 9:20h
Another 9+ hours on the bike day into our third country: Honduras
It was a long, but kind of easy climb
to the border on a perfectly paved road, with a final Coke stop in Nicaragua to get the energy back. you never know what will be ahead of you, thus never miss a chance to stock up! My riding was good, although a bit sour from the last day’s fall. However – have a look at the profile above – we had to carry our bikes over the top, otherwise we would have risk to puncture the tires on that sharp peek.
The downhill to the lunch stop was great, although we are
back on gravel again. No rain, no wet stones, no hassles. We are already on the ‘Ruta Colonial y des los Volcanes’. The beginning of the 2nd section of the tour.
I had a great lunch, lots of food, water and social talks. But then I missed something …
It was supposed to be a 125km ride, but I made it 136km since I missed directions at lunch.
Now I know that ‘L @ Police’ does neither mean ‘Lunch @ police’ nor does it mean ‘Lost @ Police’ it simply meant: ‘Turn left at the police check point’.
Nobody saw me leaving the wrong way from lunch, after about 5.5km I was sure, that I was wrong, because nobody was behind me and I was still on good pavement. It was time to check my notes to recognize my error. So I returned to the Lunch stop and was greeted with smiles.
Question: Is this a matter for the UN Human Rights watch?
Canadians, Americans, South Africans and other nations were called back when they did the same mistake. Only ‘Little Joe’ from Germany was left on his own 
After the extra 11km I finally headed into the right direction again and was happy to pass Suzette after a few kilometers. If she was right I was right too! I continued strong and passed several other cyclists, suffering badly from exhaustion.
Around the final corner and into town, with real rough cobble stones. Rattling everything into position that was dislocated during the day.
I was welcomed with a Heineken, sponsored by Dave.
However this was not the end of the day …
Read more in the following article.
107.6km – 1977m up – 2756m down – 5101kcal – 9:18h
What a day! It was one of the toughest and most difficult so far to ride. It was raining all day and we had 56% off road today. The first 46km on pavement meant great fun for everyone. You can see it in our faces enjoying the down hills, although the rain drops hammering on us.
The pain started on the 2nd half, when we had to
leave pavement and went onto rough gravel. The stones were so big and slippery that it was hard to control our wheels, even on slow climbs. That is where I had my first accident. My front wheel slipped 
on a rock, pushing me to the ground. Nothing happened, have others enjoy the incident, get back on the bike and simply ride on. 
The expressions on the the faces talk for themselves, how everyone loved the rocky climbs. Eventually on the top of the climb we saw some sunshine, however not in the direction we were supposed to go, but happy to make it that far and 
looking forward to the long downhill that should bring up effortless to lunch. However how enjoyable a downhill can be, it holds some dang
er with it … I didn’t enjoy all the fast, rattling downhill as much as Michiel does. On a last steep downhill stretch, just a few kilometers from lunch I decided to become an ‘action hero’ and did a straight somersault dive over my handle bar. Bringing me to the ground, shaken and breathless. 
Fortunately, besides cuts and bruises, nothing severely happened. All bones in one piece. At lunch, Sarah, our tour doctor, patched me up again to make me finish the day and preparing for another long one.
