Central America Part 3 (The closing chapter) - Nicaragua

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Not that we knew it at the time but we were to pay a much higher price than just fatigue and tiredness from our September 10th, 2010, 13km walk at Rincon de la Vieja National Park in Costa Rica, but that is getting ahead of myself and we will come to that.

Nicaragua

So as I said last time having successfully navigated the shambles of a boarder crossing at Peñas Blancas on Saturday September 11th, we moved on to the beach town San Juan Del Sur.

San Juan Del Sur

San Juan Del Sur (SJDS) is only 30-40 minutes from the border crossing but it still required us to get a bus and a taxi, if you could call either that. The buses in Central America crack me up, for the most part they are old American school buses repainted (or not as is often the case), scratched and dented everywhere and filled with people to the rafters. Every seat will be full and there will be a dozen people standing down the middle of the aisle that is only supposed to have eight and just then you realise the bus isn´t full at all because on will get half a dozen more people pushing up and down the aisles trying to sell you coca cola, crisps, fruit, anything and everything basically including razors, glue and on one bus drugs/medicine pills. The drivers will show no patience on the road, driving way over the speed limit and swinging the bus round corners thinking they are Michael Schumacher. I long for the luxurious buses of Argentina and Chile, still I shouldn´t complain for they are dirt cheap.

Anyway we got in to SJDS in the early afternoon and checked into La Casa Feliz hostel. I couldn´t get over how quiet the hostel was given how cheap it was, we paid $15 for a private room with our own bathroom and you could get a dorm room bed with shared bathroom for $7. The peace and quiet didn´t last. It turned out that there was a surf contest on in SJDS and at around 6pm a van load of young Nicaraguans turned up, to be fair the hostel owner was great and told me that he was helping them out and they were staying for free and as we were the paying guests we could have the music turned down or control of the TV whenever we wanted, what a guy.

SJDS has a pretty nice beach area and a long beach front with plenty of restaurants and bars on it, the whole area has quite a young party atmosphere and surf feel to it and to some extent a relaxing feel to it, this being the reason we went there in the first place as we were feeling tired from all the recent travelling . We stopped there three nights in total visiting the beach area where the surf contest was held on the second day (Sept 12th). Getting out to Madera beach was an event in itself. We were aware that the road was a dirt track from our guide book but in reality it was more of a 4x4 rally track as opposed to ordinary dirt car track. There were big pot holes and puddles all over the dirt road and our taxi (though it managed it) was bouncing up and down for the whole 4 mile journey that took nearly 30 minutes, I was glad to get out of the taxi. The beach and the whole setting for the surf contest however was beautiful, there were only a couple of restaurants set in to the palm trees, the area felt pretty untouched and the curve of the beach reminded me very much of horseshoe in Bermuda.

As for the surf contest itself there were 20 or 30 people partaking in it, all mostly young teenagers, and maybe another 40 or so spectators. Now I saw a surf contest in Australia in March at Snapper Rocks and the difference in the quality of the surfing was most definitely there to see. It seemed like most of the teenagers in this contest could only just about stay vertical on the board, any time they tried a surf trick they ended up in the water, a stark contrast to the quality of the surfers in Australia who were pulling off all sorts of jumps and stunts. Still it was fun to watch and as I said the setting was beautiful and not at all like the setting at Snapper Rocks which was extremely busy and very commercial.

As I said the purpose of going to SJDS was to relax and in my case this meant sitting in front of the TV back at the hostel watching the Sunday NFL and also the US Tennis final, so this meant we only spent three or so hours out at the beach watching the surfing, however that was more than enough for me.

Our final day in SJDS saw me once again relaxing in front of the TV for the most of it watching the Tennis final that had be been postponed from the day before and the Monday night NFL game. In Tracy´s case she went back to Madera beach again only this time in a 4x4 van. That evening we went to one of the nicest restaurants we have been to in a long time, El Colibri. Though there was no electricity in the town due to a power cut this added to the candle light ambiance of the restaurant, it wasn´t cheap but it was lovely and the food was excellent.

Anyway quite relaxed from doing nothing the past few days we decided to move on to the cultural capital of Nicaragua, namely Granada.

Granada

Granada is completely different to SJDS, it´s pretty busy with plenty of locals and tourists but the real difference is in the buildings. Granada has a very colonial feel about it and you can see it in its buildings. Some are very regal like such as the Cathedral in the main square or the San Francisco convent but most are smaller and colourful and quite charming. Though we stayed only two nights we stayed in two different hostels in Granada, the first one (can´t remember its name, it was next door to Hostel Oasis) I wasn´t happy with, the kitchen was dirty and the room not much better. The second hostel, Hospedaje Esfinge, nearer the market, though very basic was at least cleaner in the room. The main street, Calle Atravesada, outside the hostels was amazing to see, it was a true market street with everything and anything being sold or repaired on it. There were numerous people fixing bikes and others with sewing machines sitting on the side of the street fixing shoes or anything you wanted and it was extremely busy too. The main square, Parque Central, was a slightly more relaxed affair but still very touristy with numerous horse and carriages waiting to take you for a ride around the town. Sad to say but some of those horses looked extremely malnourished and this put us off taking a tour, instead we did it on foot.

With Tracy now back at full strength after a few days relaxing on the beach in SJDS we were back on the churches and cathedrals trail. We took in the main cathedral which was quite pretty but the main charm of it was the singing going on in the church at the time, we also took in the San Francisco convent and La Merced church. This church looked far more impressive from an architectural point of view than the Cathedral but the exterior most definitely needed a good clean. We also walked down to the main pier area leading out into Lago Nicaragua, and on route watched some young Nicaraguan kids playing baseball. As for the pier area, well it looked pretty run down, apparently it was the main tourist area before the Calzada street took over and it has been neglected ever since. The water in the lake didn´t look the cleanest either, very much a River Thames colour but we weren´t swimming in it so no odds to us.

One of the ´must do´ things in Granada, apparently, is a boat tour of the 365 islands they have in the lake area just off the mainland, so this is what we did. Some of the islands are pretty small only 10 meters or so across, others however are much bigger at a hundred plus meters across. About 70% of the islands we were told are inhabited by wealthy Nicaraguans and other rich foreigners who use them as holiday homes. The islands are expensive to own and build on, so mostly its just rich people who own them however there were some less grand local properties and we did stop at one for a drink and got to look around the island. The two hour boat journey was nice and relaxing and we did get to see some plant and animal life but I left a little disappointed at not having seen a bull shark that apparently the lago has.

The other ´must do´ thing in Granada is to visit the local volcano and go sand boarding down it if you wish, but once again my arm put paid to that idea and as for the volcano itself well I have been saving myself for the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala were the lava still flows as opposed to going to an extinct volcano in Nicaragua, so that being the case the following day it was once again time to hit the road.

On this occasion we decided, just like in Costa Rica, to give the countries capital, Managua, the miss and head to the university and other cultural city of Nicaragua, namely Leon.

Leon

We arrived into Leon in the mid afternoon of September 16th having taken two buses to get there and feeling a bit ill which we put down to not having eaten much that day, so off we went to grab some food and have a general look round the city. However an hour later and Tracy decided that she needed a sleep as she still wasn´t feeling great, by the time nightfall came we were both feeling terrible and just went to bed with no dinner.

The following morning we still both felt awful, we were both running temperatures up very near to 40 degrees Celsius, we both had bad headaches, it hurt behind my eyes to move them left and right and we both had muscle ache especially the legs and back, we also had no appetite. Clearly we both had the same thing wrong with us and this continued for the next three days as well. At some point during the five days we spent in Leon feeling like death and with this being the third time that we have both been ill in the past few months after us both having travellers diarrhoea in Peru and Bolivia, my broken arm in Argentina and Tracy´s dysentery in Cambodia I decided that this was to be the end of third world countries for us for a while especially as we hadn´t even hit the malaria ridden countries of Honduras, Guatemala and Belize yet.

I decided that I didn´t want to go to a hospital in Nicaragua (ironically this would turn out to be a bad choice on my part) and that instead Tracy and I would go to where generally medical care is considered the best in the world, at least that is my opinion, in this case the USA. I got us some flights on air miles and on September 21st we headed, feeling very ill in Tracy´s case, not so bad in mine but both with rashes now though our fevers had gone, to Phoenix Arizona.

Unfortunately this meant that we didn´t get to see anything of Leon as for three days we never even left the hostel, only on the penultimate day did I feel well enough to head to the shops to get us a bit of food and took a few pictures of the churches and buildings in Leon on route, shame as Leon looked quite a pretty place. Even more disappointingly this meant that we wouldn´t get to see the Volcano in Pacaya in Guatemala or the Bay Islands in Honduras or the Mayan ruins in both Guatemala and Belize, but health had to come first and we will just have to add it to the list of things to see and do in the future.

As it turned out leaving was probably a good idea as since September 21st Honduras had a tropical storm hit the Bay Islands when we intended to be there and Guatemala has had more rains that caused more mud slides and with our luck we would have been right in it no doubt. As for what we had well I thought it was Malaria from the bites we received at the Rincon de la Vieja national park in Costa Rica, Tracy thought it was something viral, it turned out that we got Dengue Fever, for which there is no vaccine your body has to fight it off. Not that we knew it at the time but Dengue Fever is rife in Costa Rica right now and indeed we caught it at Rincon de la Vieja as the symptoms take approximately 6 days to show themselves which would fit perfectly.

Anyway that was two weeks ago now and we are both now back fighting fit in the USA on a road trip which started in Phoenix and I´ll let Tracy bring you that chapter next time.

Cheers
Patrick

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Photos

Battle of the Bands in San Juan del Sur
Throughout Nicaragua the day before Independence Day there were parades of school bands ending with a winner announced in the end.

Madera Beach
Tracy paddling in the foreground!

One of the churches in Leon
This is the only one I (Tracy) saw!

Singing in the Granada cathedral
We´re not religious people but I (Tracy) thought the singing in the church was wonderful

This kid was brilliant!
And about half the size of the rest of the kids

Monkeys on Monkey Island
These poor monkeys were taking to one of the islands for tourists by a vet nonetheless. One of them has no tail as he tried to escape on a power line. Poor things.