El Salvador: The Life and Times of Mamacita Rita (cont.)

Some rapid Spanish is exchanged, farmer to boys, boys to farmer; then those four boys, straight from the Formula One pit crew training circuit, as if they've been waiting their entire lives for this moment, disassemble, repair and reassemble my bike tire with a series of shouts, Frisbee throws, and tube squeezing in a total time of two minutes. 

They charge me one US dollar, and I continue my journey onward, forty-five minutes after getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. 
   
The first mountain that shows up grinds my pedaling to a halt, even with my easiest available gear and all the power I can muster;  pressing down on those pedals is damn near impossible.  So I adopt Plan B and walk up the mountain.

Then, finally, the payoff, after walking for fifteen minutes, I am only rewarded with a measly, two minutes of downhill fun--fun that’s limited because once I reach exciting speeds, I am forced to tap my half-working rear brakes as it’s a perfectly real possibility that a wheel could decide it no longer wants to be a part of the rest of the bike.

More mountains appear.  Rest breaks occur with increased frequency.  I’m miserable.  The miles pass. 

Like a man emerging from a month in the desert, I ride into the town of El Zonte, my destination for day two, eighty miles after I began.  I find a hotel within spitting distance of the Pacific for $5 and fall into a deep sleep.  

I dream about the woman who served me lunch that day.  In the dream I’m even more parched than I had been in reality; and every time I ask for a gallon of water, she sticks out her hand and says, "Talk to the hand!"

The hours and days pass.  I pedal. 

After peeing one day roadside, my ankle tingles.  Tingles turn to pains.  Ankle pain becomes calf pain.  Within seconds, I’m rolling on the ground, pants partially down, desperately untying my shoes, yelping like a distressed circus animal.

Turns out, I choose a fire ant hill to stand on while I peed.
    
The next day I approach the border, the one that says Honduras; I rejoice. 

On the Honduran side I put Mamacita Rita for sale by offering a man who’s resting his t-shirt on top of his gut five dollars if he could help me sell her.  Within five minutes ten Honduran men are hovering over her, hands at hips, speaking speedy Spanish, touching, discussing.  Men leave.  Men come.  An hour passes.  I make friends. 

Eventually, I settle on $10 and the front seat in a minivan to the Nicaraguan border.  My buyer, Pedro, and I hustle through Honduras (only a sliver touches the Pacific side) arriving at the Nicaraguan border just before dark. 

As we pull up to immigration, about thirty shouting men are banging the windows of the minivan when they see me inside, all clamoring to take me with their bike rickshaw through no man’s land, almost a mile, to the Nicaraguan border.  It’s chaos.  I bracingly step out, and my pack is immediately snatched. 

One guy yells in my face that he was the first to offer his bike service, but someone else already has my bag.  More yelling.  Pushing.  Suddenly, the guy who wants my pack punches the guy with my pack in the head.  They fall to the ground in a full-out brawl, only my pack separating them.

I shuffle around them like a wrestling referee, eyes on my pack, when a punch lands somewhere near an eye.  Blood squirts, and the men cheer.  The guy on bottom has a few gashes on his face that leave him looking worse for the wear. 

Suddenly he has no more interest in my pack.

I swipe it back and run like hell to Nicaragua.

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