The Final Days in Managua - Friday

 The Search for a Bike Box

My highest priority for my first day in Managua was to secure a bike box. I intended to fly home with my bike and the way I've always done it is find a bike shop and ask them for a cardboard box that they plan to discard.

I started by going to a large box store called "Top Bike". I got there right as they opened at 8AM. They sold all different kinds of bicycles - road bikes and mountain bikes were on display in their store and they seemed to have a large warehouse in the back. Yet somehow, just like the stores the day before, they did not have any bike boxes! The saleswoman was helpful and said she knew of a bike shop that might be able to help me and called the owner who confirmed that he could box up my bike for me. When I asked directions to the shop, she just gestured in a direction down the street and said it was somewhere that way, ask someone a bit further down for "Lenny" and I'll find the shop. I started walking that way and passed about three other bike stores along the way. I asked every one of them for bike boxes and nobody had any. I guess I would find Lenny, but he had said on the phone that he wouldn't be there for another hour.

So I did one of my favorite things to do while traveling, I got a haircut. I always just go along with anything a barber tells me in another language. This was no different, every time he asked me a questions, I just responded with "si." I was fairly pleased with the result.

 

 

In the barber's chair. There was also a guy behind me giving some kind of supportive commentary

 

 

 My final appearance for the day. Straight lines.

The bike shop was located inside a huge marketplace, the kind of market that sells everything from corn meal to clothes to flowers to exotic birds. 

 

 

A guy selling some small parrots and an albino squirrel 

 

At the bike shop I was shown a bunch of cartons, but they were all for tiny children's bicycles. I hadn't come with my bike, since I figured I would take a bike box back with me and pack up in my room. I asked if he could stitch together a larger box for me by cobbling together a couple of the discarded boxes. I specified the dimensions and he said he would be ready in an hour. I came back in an hour but he hadn't done anything, I guess he had expected me to bring my bike back and he would pack it up for me. This is where some better Spanish would have helped me.

I went back to my hotel, grabbed my bike, rode it back to the market and he began dismantling everything - down to the derailleurs and the cranks. I was a little sad to see my bike dismantled and become unrideable, but at least it would come home with me.

The bike didn't fit into a single carton, the frame was too big. And they had no intention of reworking multiple boxes to fit. The solution was to simply throw a second box over the first one and wrap an entire roll of scotch tape around it. It wasn't great, and I was fairly certain that this was some kind of second-rate cardboard with the structural integrity of paper-maché that had already partially eroded in the heat and humidity. But it held my bike and its components and I would be able to fit one of my panniers in there as well. It would have to do. The bike shop owner also offered to drive it to my couchsurfer's house, so that also saved me a trip to figure out how to get it to a taxi.

 

The bike box's final form 

My host, Dorian, came to the market and rode with us so he could direct Lenny to his house. We arrived, talked for a little bit and then went out to dinner in his neighborhood. Dorian lives in the eastern part of the city - close to the airport, and away from the hustle and bustle of downtown.

 

 

A mural that Dorian's brother painted on their neighbor's wall across from his house 

Since we only have one full day together, Dorian put together an ambitious program starting early in the morning. We took it easy and went to bed fairly early.