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Published: January 20th 2012
Hotel Cisneros
First night in Nicaragua - finally arrived!Wow. We are finally back to our blog after almost four years of no travels. It has felt amazing to be back on the road again, even if this trip is only six weeks and not eight months like the last, and each day inspires us to keep traveling. We arrived in Managua, Nicaragua on the night of December 27
thafter a smooth and relatively short flight from San Diego to Houston and then Houston to Managua. We had pre-booked our hotel in Managua since we knew we would be arriving so late and they even picked us up at the airport (what luxury!). Our driver, Gerrison, was our first introduction to the incredibly amazing friendliness of the Nicas (Nicaraguans) as he happily practiced our Spanish with us while detailing the highlights of Nicaragua.
After a quick trip to a viewpoint in the middle of downtown Manauga the next morning, Gerrison dropped up off at the bus station and we made the short hour and a half trip down to Granada. Granada is an old colonial city on the shores of Lake Nicaragua (the largest lake in Central America). The streets are lined with colorful house fronts with windows and doors
that open into large interior courtyards. After checking in at Hostal Oasis (accommodations were a bit more pricey - $20 – than what we were used to paying in Asia, but this place had a pool), we grabbed a bite to eat at a local comedor and then made our way via two local buses and some hitchhiking to Laguna de Apoyo, a lake which has filled in the crater of an old, dormant volcano. We chilled out at a lakeside restaurant with some ice cold Tonas (the national beer) and started to mellow into travel mode. On our way back to Granada, we stopped at the local baseball stadium and caught part of the game between the Granada Tiburones vs. the Managua team. We bought the cheap tickets ($1 vs. $2.50) and ended up having to crawl through a hole in the fence to get into the stadium (completely legitimate) and were almost as much entertainment to the fans as the game. We got to try one of the Nicas favorite snacks, Quesillos, which are corn tortillas (delicious and homemade) rolled with sautéed onions, sour cream and cheese.
Our next day in Granada was our only full day,
so we jam packed it with the rest of the area highlights. We took a boat tour of Las Isletas, a group of small islands just off of Granada in Lake Nicaragua, which are home to many of the rich and famous Nicaraguans. Our boat driver and tour guide were two brothers who had grown up on one of the islands and so we stopped off to see the islands and wander around a bit. In the afternoon we hopped on another local bus (the bus system is very easy to figure out with signs in the front window that actually tell where the bus is really going – that was never the case in Asia, or if it was, we couldn’t read what they said) to Volcan Mombacho. As we walked towards the park entrance we got sidetracked by a canopy tour operation and ended up spending our afternoon ziplining rather than hiking the volcano. We had a trio of local guides who were quite the entertainers and more than happy to conduct the entire thing in Spanish so we could continue practicing. We ziplined forwards, backwards, upside down and even on our stomachs for “superchica” and “superchico”. The
lines passed over coffee plantations and we got to watch the Nicas picking and sorting the coffee.
The trip from Granada to our next destination, Jiquilillo, in the very northwest corner of the country was a long, dusty one. We took two buses, Granada to Managua, then Managua to Chinandega, the second which was the classic “chicken bus” of Central America stopping every two seconds to pick up a pig, a lawnmower and about twice as many people as fit in the bus. I traded off standing and sitting on a pile of luggage next to the driver with a young teenage pregnant girl while Matt was stuck standing somewhere half way down the aisle sandwiched between two large men. Needless to say, it was an uncomfortable three hours. Upon arriving in Chinandega, we found that we had just missed the bus and the next one didn’t leave for three hours, so we practiced our haggling and got ourselves a comfortable taxi ride for the last hour drive out to the coast to Jiquilillo.
Despite being on the Pacific coast and getting some great surf, Jiquilillo is in a rarely visited part of the country and pretty remote.
It felt great to finally step into the “real” country and become part of a small fishing village for the next five days. We stayed at Rancho Esperanza, an ecotourism project started by an American about eight years ago. It was the day before New Year’s eve and about eleven other travelers (two Canadian couples, a Danish girl who was volunteering in Nicaragua for three months, three Swiss, a Belgian and a German couple, as well as an expat with his two kids who were camping on the property) had either just arrived or arrived that day as well. Our group settled in and became complete beach bums. The way the hostel is run creates a real community – all the meals are eaten family style, bathrooms are shared, and there aren’t really any other tourist operations around so everyone hangs out together. There was even a cool whiteboard where we kept track of how many beers we drank and what we ate. The employees, both locals and Americans, hang out with the guests and made us special treats each day. We spent New Year’s at Rancho Esperanza, sitting around a bonfire on the beach and listening to some of
the locals play the guitar.
From Jiquilillo we traveled back south, passing again through Managua (for the final time) to the southern Pacific coast near Popoyo. I had found this great hotel online, and hoping that it was really as great as it seemed we made the 2 hour bus ride out to the coast from Rivas to the tiny village of Limon #2 and then walked a half hour in the dark through a torrential downpour to get to the place. However, as soon as we stepped onto the hotel property, we knew we had made a good choice. It was absolutely beautiful. We had booked the cheapest room ($30/night), but there are other room that go up to over a $100 and the hotel is really more designed to please the guests in that higher price range. We felt like we were living in luxury on a backpacker’s budget. The beach was also gorgeous, and although the swell was small and wasn’t breaking right out front like it usually does, Matt was able to walk a half hour down the beach and get some decent, fun surf. Our second day there another young couple from San Francisco
showed up and we surfed and explored with them the rest of the time. Down the beach from our hotel was another hotel perched up on the cliff between two beaches. The view and sunsets were magical from this place aptly named “Magnificent Rock”. We were supposed to stay two nights, but stretched it out to three and even then could barely tear ourselves away.
We spent our last night in Nicaragua in San Juan del Sur as we continued our way south towards the border. We were rather unimpressed with the small fishing town, which surprised us since we had heard so many good things. We took a taxi to Hermosa Beach just south of the town to spend a few hours relaxing on the beach and watch the sunset. We did, however, have one of our most amazing meals of the trip in a small comedor across from the market in town that evening. It was the typical Nicaraguan meal – grilled meat, gallo pinto (beans and rice), cabbage salad, and maduro (sweet plantains), but it came with half an avocado too and somehow the flavors were better than anywhere else we had eaten the same meal
(which had been daily for the two weeks we were in Nicaragua).
The next day we set off on our last Nicaraguan “chicken bus” towards the Costa Rican border at Penas Blancas, this time almost falling out the back door of the bus as we stood pressed between piles of luggage in the back since people were so crammed in the front we couldn’t get in that way. The border turned out to be an absolute disaster, and looking back we definitely think it would have been worth it to buy the Tica Bus $30 tickets and ride on the nice bus, rather than try to make our way across ourselves. No Asian border, or any other border or airport we ever seen for that matter, could even begin to compare to the disorganization of the Nicaraguan/Costa Rican border. We stood in more than five lines, none of which were signed, sometimes for things of purpose such as a stamp in our passport, other times for seemingly no reason at all. After having both our passport stamped to leave Nicaragua and then again to enter Costa Rica, we exited the respective buildings through the exact same door we had
entered into the exact same space we just came from. The line to get our passports stamped to enter Costa Rica was more than two hours long and wound around like a Disneyland ride. I sat at the front with our backpacks while Matt stood in line (thank you, Matt!) with a Finnish dude we had picked up as a border-buddy on the bus. The whole thing was completely ridiculous. We skipped the baggage check line (which looked to be about another hour and a half) and just walked out to the parking lot where the Costa Rican buses were waiting instead. No gates, no fences, nothing!
The long day continued with a two hour bus ride to Liberia, then another three hour ride out to Tamarindo on the Nicoya Peninsula. The three hour ride should have taken 45 minutes if we had been in a car, but the bus detoured off the highway about seven time into every tiny village along the way. Also, since Costa Rican buses lack a Cobrador (the guy who walks down the aisle to collect your fare), it takes about five minutes each time you pick up a new passenger while the driver
Calle Calzada
Main street in Granada - adorable colonial buildings collects the fare and makes change. For such a developed country relatively speaking, what an inefficient bus system! We arrived in Tamarindo well after dark to find every hostel booked. We finally found a rather dismal room, dropped our stuff, washed up, then went out to explore the town. The development and number of tourists was shocking after our time in Nicaragua. We ended up grabbing some dinner and tucking in early.
Wanting to get to Nosara at a decent hour, we rose early and were out on the main street of Tamarindo waiting for the bus at 5:30am. A tourist van pulled up alongside us though, and asked if we needed a ride. The driver was heading to San Jose to pick up some tourists from the airport and happily brought us as far as Nicoya. We intended to catch the bus there, but since we had arrived so early, the first bus didn’t leave for more than three hours. Tired of traveling and just wanting to get to our destination, we found a taxi and zipped into Nosara after a short 45 minute drive. Finally home (well, at least for the next month!).
Hope everyone had
a great New Year’s! We miss you, but are stoked to be traveling again!
Love, M&M
P.S. As I sit here writing, a troop of howler monkeys are perched in the trees just across the road from my front terrace hooting and howling away– quite the distraction I must say!
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