From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

Saturday, March 14, between Léon and Managua

We left early that morning and had more than 90 km to cover if we wanted to get to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, before dark. We came to a little village, about 20 km from Managua. As we biked through, a man ran across the street and called out me to “Just 1 second, please!” I didn’t stop: I felt like something was wrong. Sébastien stopped though, and talked for a bit with the man who turned out to be Kevin, a fellow cyclo-tourist of German and Bolivian origin. He had left Mexico and was heading home to Bolivia. So I stopped, and walked back towards them, pushing my bike. And then the other shoe dropped: “At 7 am this morning, a cyclo-tourist was mugged along this very road.” The news was like a slap in the face. I started to panic. Kevin showed us his bike beside the police station. We went to park our bikes next to his, and then we met Sylvie.

Sylvie is a French Canadian, and has biked a lot and has a lot of experience. She took a number of sabbaticals from her teaching job to travel around the world on trips of 6 to 7 months. That morning she had left Managua, and after about 15 km, a car pulled up right beside her and opened the passenger side door so that she had to stop. Inside there were four men, each with a gun. The driver stayed behind the wheel. The other three were well-organized. They held her at gunpoint and put her bike into the trunk of the car (it was a little city car like a Clio, and the bike hung out of the back). They searched her to make sure that she wasn’t hiding any money on her and then got back into the car. Sylvie ran off into the underbrush, afraid of getting kidnapped or shot. She flagged down a car to take her to the closest police station, where Kevin had camped the night before since he had been unable to find a hotel.

Sylvie had no money, no passport, nothing. Luckily Kevin had a cell phone to call Canada (the phone at the police station could only call locally!) and he lent her some money and translated for her (he speaks fluent Spanish and English). Sylvie’s boyfriend wired her some money right away through Western Union. But because she didn’t have a passport, the money had to get sent to one of the police officers who went with her to the agency. And that’s when the police officers, two in particular, started to ask her for money for everything: for the gas for going to the Western Union office, for the taxi that the commissioner would take to find the muggers… The officer wouldn’t even let her buy her own meal: he insisted on getting it himself and kept all the change. He even asked her to cover the cost of photocopying the police report. When Sylvie finally decided to take the chicken bus back to Managua (where we met up with her again, biking together, very carefully), the officers told her that a parting gift would be appreciated given all that they had done for her! She left them the only thing she had with her, other than her clothes, her bike helmet.

All four of us stayed in the hotel (right on the outskirts of Managua, not the nicest part of town) where Sylvie had spent Friday night. She got there first and told the managers what had happened to her. They said that she was lucky to be alive. I had a tank top at the bottom of my bag that I wanted to give to someone who needed it, and so I gave it to her. She had only her biking t-shirt and shorts. I also gave her some underwear and socks that I didn’t really need (you see, even now we’re not really traveling with the bare minimum!) Of course we offered her the use of our stove and anything else that she needed.

We talked with Sylvie as much as possible, putting ourselves in her shoes. When we finally went to bed, though, it really hit Sylvie about what happened to her. She couldn’t close her eyes without living the scene again… Since leaving Honduras and traveling through Nicaragua, we’ve felt safer and have let down our guard a little. This unfortunate episode has shown us that something like this could happen to us anywhere.

We recognize that we need to be even more careful than we have been in terms of personal safety, and also our personal lives (access codes and passwords), and also be careful of those sentimental things like pictures, videos, and of course our bikes that we’ve traveled so many kilometers on and that we love and hate at the same time.

As the saying goes, it may have been “a blessing in disguise” meeting Sylvie like that, but no matter what we take out of this, we wouldn’t wish that experience to anyone.

PS:

Sylvie (www.sylvietheberge.com) went to the embassy today (Monday) to get her new passport. If everything went smoothly she should be on a plane tomorrow to see her loved ones… but she won’t stay for long, since she’s already planned her next trip, in safer country at least. We wish her all the best, and hope that she is able to get over this quickly and move on to new adventures.

PPS: (by Sébastien)

A few impressions of Nicaragua

The landscape is more beautiful than in either El Salvador or Honduras. The headwind is stronger. There are fewer children and people who shout “gringos” and “gringa” as we bike by, and almost no one comes to ask us for money. But there have been some happy encounters.

Sara