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Published: July 12th 2007
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Deciding to come to Nicaragua was a literallly a coin toss. After the girls left for home and me alone to travel in San Jose I couldn´t decide on going to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica or coming up to another country. The border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica is famous for being confusing and after the Panama fiasco, I was kind of hoping the coin would land heads for the Osa. Tails won and so I headed north. After a couple of relaxing and quiet days in La Cruz, I caught the early bus to the border and was indeed greeting with a mass of confusion. Trucks and busses were parked all over the place and we were dropped off next to a line that made a July Saturday at Disney´s Space Mountain look like a dream come true. Whenever you change transportation of any kind here in Central America you are immediately under attack from all kinds of people willing to sell you food, drinks, drugs, carry your bags, take you to the line, fill out papers for you, shine your shoes, pick your pockets and be your best friend. All for a price of course. I am finally learning to get off the bus and cross the street away from it all and take a 5 minute breather to think and plan. This cost me getting to the line sooner, but what the hell. Everyone else ran off like crazy cows to get in the line. After saying no about 12 times to all the sales help, I made my way to the line on my own. Two hours later I arrived at the front to have my passport stamped. I was now officially out of Costa Rica and heading for Nicaragua. The poverty of Nicaragua was immediatly apparent at the border. It was very confusing trying to figure out where to go next and it became essential to ask for help. Big no, no if you can help it. So I now had my own personal assistant who glued himself next to me in line and I prepared for the inevitable payment for having him show me where to wait. 50 cents, not bad actually. It costs $7 to enter Nicaragua even though the receipt that you get says that you paid $5. After paying with a $20, I heard the now familiar Nicaraguan phrase ¨No hey cambio¨ Roughly translated this means, ¨I have the change that you need but am telling you that I don´t so that you will give up hope with your crappy Spanish and leave me with your change that I can pocket from you stupid rich gringos, the real reason I work here anyway.¨ I held firm and after the old ladies behind me began to complain, the dude showed his hand and turned over my cash. Welcome to Nicaragua. So now with some change I went to the ATM and quickly found out that the machine would only accept Visa atm cards, I have a Master Card. I had to change some Colones to Granadas and was off with about $60 worth of change.
I had no idea where to go and as luck would have it was told by a Nicaraguan lady on the bus that the Isla Ometepe was beautiful and tranquillo, very quiet. Sounds great and as the bus moved along the highway, the island came into view. Basically the island of Maui inside a very large lake. Very cool and after a short ferry ride across I have been there in the village of Altragracia for the past few days hiking, biking, motorcycling and basically enjoying this beautiful paradise of a place. I can tell you, get here soon as I can see the writing on the wall and it will be different in 10 years. Check it out at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ometepe
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manda h.
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Get there soon?
Just caught a program on a young man by the name of Eric Volz imprisoned, actually held hostage in Nicaragua for a crime he didn't commit. You may really want to rethink your stay because this country sounds like it is not safe for tourists, actually for humans.