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Published: March 17th 2022
After an unsuccessful attempt at getting a ride from San Juan de Nicaragua to Bluefields by boat, we grudgingly got on a 5 AM Express (and vastly more comfortable) boat back to San Carlos (on the good advice of Freddy, the shark fin guy from Managua). Of course the military searched our bags thoroughly as we were getting on, drinking our sweet instant coffee from a styrofoam cup. We had a quick stop over in El Castillo where we confirmed with a nice coffee shop owner (originally from California) that there still is no boat to Bluefields, and also got some to go grub.
At San Carlos, we hopped right on a bus to Juilgalpa. The city has a terrible bypass road, with loud, fast-moving traffic and litter lining the gutters. However there was still much pedestrian street life and as we got to the center we were greeted with a bounty of trees and fruit stands lining the central park.
You could tell people were surprised to see us as we got many "Holà's" and smiles along our walk.
We finally arrived at our hotel. We decided we would try to bargain the price a little bit
as they probably hadn't seen many tourists lately. The hostess showed as our room and I asked her how much. She said "660". I asked her simply, ?"¿ un poco menos?", and she responded "569" (about 17 USD). I thought that was a weird price, but still less than the original, so we took it.
In our hotel, there was one other guest, and he was from Guatemala. He explained he was on business, working for the Chinese (I was beginning to notice a trend...). But this time he was selling them a special type of wood used as percussion instruments to make iPhone ringtones.
We got some pupusa's that night for dinner and settled in for a good night's rest.
The next morning we had a couple of things to take care of before moving on. First we wanted to get to the pharmacy to buy something for my foot which had been getting stinky with some sort of fungus. Luckily there was probably one pharmacy per block. We tried explaining to the pharmacist what my problem was and she reluctantly suggested a cream to apply, however I wasn't sure it was a good idea and
thought maybe I should talk to a doctor first. A light shined in her eyes and she pointed to the doctor sitting right by the entrance, offering free consultations. He took a quick look at my foot and confirmed that the cream was a good idea. Baddabing baddaboo. No messing around.
We also wanted to go to the post office to mail a gift back home. However we found out that YOU CAN NOT SEND INTERNATIONAL MAIL FROM NICARAGUA! Not even a post card, which we had just gotten several free ones from the tourist office.
Slightly defeated, we stopped in the archeological museum and saw a wonderful collection of totems from the First Nations there. However we found it really ODD and GROTESQUE that they included a CYCLOPS BABY born around the year 2005 in Juigalpa. We did not take a picture.
We got back on the bus, figuring out how to transfer midway to avoid going all the way into Managua. We arrived in Matagalpa in time for an afternoon frappe made from local beans, knowed to be the best in the country. We checked into our hotel and walked around the busy town, with
multiple dance clubs on some streets pumping loud tunes. We had some pretty good Chinese and went to bed.
The next morning we climbed to the top of the hill where the cross was, in the Agape reserve. The top had a beautiful view, and the cross was pretty nice. On the way down we took a different route and were surprised to find a guy taking a toll of 30 Cordoba's to pass through his land. We agreed since we didn't want to hike back up the hill again...
We tried to catch a bus out to El Chile, a community of women making indigenous style textiles. We missed it though, and couldn't find a reasonable way to get out there. So we stayed in town and had an amazing pizza and a glass of wine / craft beer from Estelí, at an Italian restaurant actually owned by a nice man from Bergamo.
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