Stopping for a drink in San Juan del Sur

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Day 217: Muchos Travelling

I wasn't sure how far I'd get today. In the absence of direct buses to Granada from Monteverde (apart from the uber-expensive tourist shuttles that is), my journey was invariably going to involve a lot of waiting around at stops and terminals and slow transport on the public buses that would certainly pick up anyone and everyone they encountered along the way. First journey would take me only as far as the panamerican highway, about sixty kilometres away. Although this doesn't sound far, when you're on heavily pot-holed dirt roads in a rickety old bus overlooking steep sheer valleys, the destination can't come soon enough. Leaving at half-five, I met a couple of dutch girls at the stop in the centre of Monteverde and the bus started on its merry way at six. Pulling up on the highway at eight o'clock, the bus was heading southbound, and so along with a few others, we got off our bus and began the long wait for a second one that would take us to Liberia, a city eighty kilometres further north. The journey continued in this fashion, with a long wait for another bus at Liberia taking us up to the border with Nicaragua at Peñas Blancas, where moderate amounts of hassle and form-filling ensued as me, the two dutch girls, and an english guy we'd picked up along the way, completed the kilometre long border crossing, catching another bus from Peñas Blancas to Rivas, a transport hub a little way into the Nicaraguan countryside.

From Rivas, we were supposed to get bus number five, but a passing truck offered the four of us a ride, and whilst the two dutch girls climbed into the front, me and Chris jumped on the back with a load of locals for a rather hair raising and damp (it started to tip down with rain) and bumpy ride, to our spontaneously selected destination of San Juan del Sur. Quite relieved to get off the truck half an hour later, we all checked into the same hostel, and rather hungry, went to find something to eat along the waterfront.

San Juan del Sur is just a little beach town. The beach itself didn't look so inviting, particularly since it was covered with debris washed ashore by the recent storm, but the restaurant was nice enough. In the absence of anything pertaining to vegetables on the menu, I was offered the rather dull and predictable plate of rice and beans. That said, I was so hungry, it didn't matter so much, and we all scoffed down our food as the sun set over the water.

After a bit of a break back at the hostel, it was a Saturday night, and so apparently essential that we go out and let our hair down. We head to a heaving local bar, where several very strong cocktails and a couple of Cuba libres later, we were all a bit past merry, and after a bit of a boogie, we eventually crawled to bed some time around two for a much needed and well deserved sleep, disturbed intermittently by the sound of heavy rain battering the tin roof above.

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