Then there was talk of a "real" road that would run from the western part of the country all the way to Bluefields. And for years there was only talk. And then for years there was work. The July 11 post here shows part of the space between the Pacific side and the Caribbean side before and after the road.
Once the road was completed to the point that people and stuff could come and go, I heard lots about it and saw big trucks carrying all sorts of things into town. I once was in a taxi in Bluefields, stuck behind a pick-up truck, listening to my driver's complaints about all the people from the other side coming into Bluefields and messing up the traffic because they didn't know their way around town (he used a word other than 'messing' but I got the point).
But I'd never been on the road. Recently, friends made sure I got to travel on part of it.
We picked a time when its westernmost section was not blockaded, because we traveled during the summer of 2018 when blockades were a thing. And we traveled cautiously and didn't go more than an hour west - although we weren't really very worried about trouble and a couple of weeks later I traveled NIC-71 much farther away from town.
The road wasn't then fully finished. But it's far more easily traveled than many of the 'old' ways into town, and it accommodates vehicles bringing all sorts of needful things to town - as opposed to carrying the things to Rama and then taking the things off whatever vehicle they were on that took them to Rama and then putting them on a boat for the rest of the trip to Bluefields.
And sure enough, there it was just a couple of blocks past my carpenter's shop and right around the corner from BICU.
I took these pictures from the front seat of the truck so the coverage is limited. But it's easy to see the road and how beautiful Nicaragua is.
