D&D microbrewery and starting Nicaragua

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The D&D microbrewery was pretty easy to find. There was a bigsign on the side of the road and the bus attendant who collected the ticket money told us it was our stop. We walked about 5mins up the road and found the place. It is nestled into the trees, with a pool next to a nice patio area with tables that serves as the restaurant, food is served all day and we were thankful because we were starving! Breakfast had consisted of really gross sweet bread and a bit of juice and that was at 7am, it was now 3pm. We had BLT´s that were ok,with chips that had way too much oil on them and pretty average coleslaw but delicious fruit smoothies! The brewery obiously makes its own beer, unfortunately we didnt get to try any... That first afternoon we went for one of the various walks you can do in the area and after 15 mins we had to race back to our room becuase we were both ill in the stomach! We didnt eat dinner, had dry toast for breakfast and plain rice the next afternoon coz we were too ill to eat anything else. So we got to see the inside of our room and listen to the birds for 2 days 😞 we did manage to get out the second afternoon and actually see the lake which was pretty. We hung out around the restaurant using the very limited wifi for an hour or so and saw lots of little hummingbirds coming in to feed at the nectar feeders that have been hungup around the place. We bumped into the same british couple from Utila and had a nice catchup with them but we left early the next morning.
Finally we felt like we were up to travelling again and decided that becuase we had done everything we had wanted to do in honduras that maybe it was time to go to Nicaragua, an ambitious attempt from where we were. We took the 6.15am bus from the main road nearby (came at around 7) which took us to Tegucigalpa (capitol of Honduras). When we arrived in the middle of the city we stopped at a street corner and there was lots of horns and yelling up the front of the bus and finally the driver told us this was the end of the line. We had expected to get off in a terminal... what had happened was that a few taxis took it upon themselves to create more fares by parking the bus in, forcing those of us who needed to get to any terminals to take a taxi as we were in the middle of nowhere! We were a bit uneasy and annoyed at this but like everyone else, we collected our bags and had to take a cab to the colectivo stop that would take us to the border crossing with nicaragua. The crossing was a bit hectic with lots of trucks and people everywhere. The exit from Honduras cost us $2 each. The entrance into Nicaragua cost us $12 each and I got annoyed because we were waiting in line and people kept on pushing in with their ID cards to get through the border quickly, they eventually sent all those people elsewhere and I madfe sure they couldnt get past me anyway. Then while we were walking across the actual border we got stopped and told to pay $1 each for the municipality tax! we got reciepts for them all but we had literally 30 Cordobas left when we got on the bus to Ocotal and luckily it cost 11Cordobas per person for the 1 hour trip!
We hadnt really eaten anything so we were pretty hungry, we didnt have breakfast, lunch was a tiny sandwich and popcorn between us and by the time we got to Ocotal it was 5pm. Dario took a taxi into the centre of the town from the terminal and got cash out and then we took the last bus of the day to Esteli. We got off the bus on the main road after Dario had been chatting to the bus man for half an hour (who sounded like he´d been drinking rum the whole way there) and then realised we had no idea where we were or where the hotel we were looking for was, so we took a taxi. The hotel we picked was slightly more expensive but close to the centre of town called Hotel Sacuanjoche, nice and secure since we felt a little at odds with the city so far. It cost 200 Cordobas ($1 = 21 Cordobas). We walked into the first restaurant we found close to the hotel. Dinner was more expensive than we were used to but we were starving. Dario had a great steak and I had an amazing chicken schnitzel.

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Photos

coffee plantation walk
we were 15 mins into this walk, only just made it past this bridge before we felt ill and returned.