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It was an early start this morning for our big travel day down to San Jose in Costa Rica. We got up and wearily made our way to our waiting mini-bus at 4.45am. The sun was just rising as we pulled up at the Ometepe Island ferry station and hopped on for the 1.5 hour journey back across Lake Nicaragua. We arrived back on the mainland, said hello to our mini-bus driver who was the same guy who had driven us from Leon to Grenada, and then Grenada to the ferry for Ometepe. He was such a nice driver, and he reminded me of a Nicaraguan version of Mario from the Nintendo game.
We took off from the ferry station at about 8.30am, our guide ensuring us that it wasn't far to the border and we'd be able to get some breakfast as soon as we were through immigration. We arrived at the border about an hour later and the signs of a pending breakfast were diminishing. About a kilometre out from the border, there were massive semi-trailers parked in the middle of the road all lined up attempting to get their goods across the border. Luckily human cargo don't have to wait with these guys and our guide informed us that it can sometimes take a week for the drivers to get their trucks through.
We got to the bus terminal and hopped out to stretch our legs while our guide took our passports and immigration forms through the Nicaraguan 'exit' immigration centre. We buggered around for a bit and exchanged some money from the FX-hounds that bother you as soon as you get off the bus. We looked in these duty free shops for a water bottle so we can use our Steri-pen (water purification device) more regularly. Up until now, most of our hotels had provided purified water however the odd one didn't and we thought we should get some use out of this £35 device. We found some cool camping-type water bottles that would've been perfect however the service girl told us that we'd have to pay $20 for the biggest packet of M&M's I've ever seen and you'd get a drink bottle free. We had enough luggage with us without having to carry 3kg of M&M's as well so we left the drink bottle (we couldn't buy it seperately either unfortunately).
After about an hour of waiting and kiddle-time, our guide told us to jump back on the bus, we're going through the border!! Yes...breakfast time!!! Unfortunately, we quickly found out that we had just successfully made it through the Nicaraguan 'exit', and we still had to get through Costa Rica 'entry' immigration. As we approached, our guide told us that it was ridiculously busy for a Saturday. We were following and being followed by these massive tour buses so our guide said that as soon as our little mini-bus pulls up, we are to jump out and run to the end of the queue before the big tour groups. So little Mario pulled up, and out we shot like runner's out of the blocks. About 2 people from the big bus made it before me, but at least all our group was together and ahead of most of the big groups. That was when we discovered the big tour group were Russian. Rach and I remember our last encounter with these rude, obnoxious species from our time in Hurgada on the Red Sea and strangely enough, these people were exactly the same. A couple of sneaky Ruskies thought they could push in from our outer flanks and we soon piped up saying, uh uh uh, get to the back of the line and wait your turn. They didn't understand a word of English or Spanish so we proceeded to use sign language to tell them politely “get the hell back to the end of the line”. The next battle was played out when a particularly unfortunate looking woman kept trying to swagger in from the right flank while we weren't paying attention. Once we discovered her mischievious plan, the loud, obnoxiuos group ahead of us proceeded to angrily yell at us in their native tongue. Luckily for us, we had a Russian and Ukranian on our tour group (who are both the most pleasant of people, not like these savages). So their verbal barrage could be translated word-for-word including the use of profanities like 'animals', 'savages' and even 'vomit' (???). Anyway, using our translators, we were able to decifer that they thought that we'd pushed in and we should let their entire group passed us. We countered their request and suggested that if they all wanted to be together, then the 4 at the front should go back and join them. After all, our group was all together, unlike these selfish Ruskies who must've just ran ahead of their own group. This resulted in a bit of a stalemate and the Ruskies put up a defensive barrier between us (massive blue umbrellas) to plot their next move. We had the advantage though now and they new we had Russian speaking infiltrators on our side.
So we continued waiting in the heat for a good 2.5 hours until we finally made it to the 'shaded' waiting area. This is where battle #2 would play out. The waiting area was set up like a line at the airport, with massive orange barriers separating us from the people at the front. As we approached the first turn, we came face-to-face with the angry Ruskies. One Rusky (who I'll call Ivan) was becoming particularly hot-headed. What was amusing that it had become a bit of a game for us, a way of passing the waiting time given we were at about the 3 hour mark by this point. Irate Ivan proceeded to undo the ropes that connected each of the orange barriers, thinking he'd be able to sneak a few of his comrades through. He was so hot-headed however that his fingers were fumbling the rope. We all just sat there laughing at him until he finally undid the rope, pushed open the barriers and tried to let the fat unfortunate looking woman through. But not before we pushed the barriers back together and squished the woman caught on both sides for a bit. This caused Irate Ivan to go particularly irate, and it required the level-headedness of John to calm him back down.
The battle ended when fortunately there were some nice Russians behind us who refused to listen to their travel group and told us that they were quite happy to wait their turn.
Anyway, we finally got through immigration (including having to go back out to the bus and put our massive rucksacks through the scanners) and sat down for 'breakfast' at 1pm.
We piled back into the bus for the 5 hour journey down to San Jose. It was already 2pm so we'd barely have any time once we got to the capital. The journey was long, but made entertaining by this massive tropical storm that we had to pass through. Luckily Mario is a good driver and we could look out the window and enjoy the flashes of lightening.
We made it to San Jose, which is a lot different to the cities we're used to in Central America. It is just a big, modern metropolis. We checked into our hotel and went straight to dinner at a restaurant directly across the road of us. It was a bit sad because it was our last night with the group, with the majority finishing up in San Jose and 9 newbies joining us tomorrow for the Costa Rica/Panama leg of the journey.
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Mum
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Well done Ben!
Wow...it's a travel day blog and I expected it to be brief...but no...so much detail! I felt as if I was standing in the queue watching irate Ivan and the other rude Russians!