Advertisement
Published: February 20th 2008
Surf's Up!
Surf Betty! Biggest board we could find...haha...Off on another adventure, long overdue...
Ken, Kim and I headed to Central America for three weeks, starting in Nicaragua and finishing in Costa Rica (as Canada is in the grips of cold and Winter, this seemed to be the perfect destination!)
Flew into Liberia CR, and hopped a cab to Penas Blancas and the Nicaraguan border (Liberia turned out to be a little closer than Managua to our first destination, and the airfare was cheaper as well..). Border was interesting; cab dropped us off at the Costa Rican immigration office, strangely no lineup...after a 3/4 kilometer hike across the border (with surf board in tow) we picked up the rental car, made our way through Nicaraguan immigration and off to Villa Pavela at Playa Remanso! Friends of ours were gracious enough to offer up their place in Playa Remanso, about 5 kms from San Juan del Sur, and it was amazing! Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, 2 minutes to the beach and fantastic sunsets every night, beautiful...
No set-in-stone gameplan for the holiday, we figured we'd hang out at the Villa for a few days; soak up some sun, hit the beach, learn to surf (way too much
Sunset I
One of many spectacular sunsets at Playa Remanso... fun!), chill out in some hammocks and toss back some mucho fine cervezas...tough life! Headed into San Juan del Sur everyday to pick up supplies and poke around, generally ending in a cerveza or two at one of the many joints lining the beach. Cool, laid back surf town, with a variety of neat shops and a decent selection of restaurants and cuisines...locals were nice, weather was pretty much +30C and sunny everyday, pretty much says it all...
The routine of coffee, surf, supply run, cervezas, more surf, dinner, hammocks, more cervezas and general laziness carried on for the better part of the week before we thought we'd better get out and see some of the local sights...the Pacific coast is essentially a string of beaches in that area so we decided to hit a couple of the more popular ones (Coco and Yankee beaches) to see what all the fuss was about... First off the roads are atrocious in Nicaragua; once off the Inter American highway it's essentially potholes and interpretive driving! Most people drive 4x4's, we had a Toyota Yaris...almost lost it in a couple of the aforementioned potholes...no lie. Anyhoo, we hadn't gone far when we
Hammocks and board...
The patio at Villa Pavela, with the board we were able to learn to surf on... came across a cattle drive a good hundred or two cattle deep, taking up the entire road. We followed along patiently until a local 4x4 with a cattle grill on the front started to make it's way through the herd, so we jumped at the chance to make our way through...well, things were going well until we hit a pretty steep hill and the 4x4 pulled away, allowing the cows to suddenly surround our car! They didn't seem all that intimidated by the wee "beeps" the Yaris' horn was blaring and at that point we were simply another cow in the herd...a little scary to say the least! After almost burning the clutch out of the poor Yaris, we stopped the car to allow the cattle to just pile on by, much to the amusement of the cowboys bringing up the rear of the drive... The Yaris took a bit of a beating; almost lost the driver's side mirror, one cow bounced off and dented the right front quarter panel and another one pissed all over the left one, now there's something you don't see everyday!
Made it by the herd finally only to miss the turnoff to Yankee
Hold On!
First pic, taken at Newark...a little prophetic perhaps? Haha.. (KS) beach and arrive at a small river covering the road to Coco beach, a little risky for the Yaris so we turned around...did manage to find a bluff overlooking Yankee beach but couldn't figure out how to get down...so after two hours from leaving the Villa we had gone approximately 20 kms roundtrip, no beaches, a good fright and some minor damage to the rental...rest of the day was spent surfing and cervezing...haha...
After the road trip to Granada and Isle de Ometepe we spent a couple more days back at Villa Pavela before heading to Costa Rica. Settled back into our routine which was great after a bunch of driving, hiking and sightseeing... Rented a bigger board (Surf Betty!) which certainly helped, and even managed to get tagged by a Stingray...ugh...haha...needless to say that didn't feel good...
All in all a fantastic time in a beautiful area of Nicaragua; great food, good hang, loved the surfing and plenty o' relaxin' in the sun, can't beat it....
(Some photos copyright of Kim S., denoted by (KS)...used with kind permission)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 12; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0688s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
jacqueline
non-member comment
Nice pics
we loved playa remanso. my son learned there surfing. are there really stingrays?