Two Weeks in San Juan Del Sur

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With yet another early start from Liberia, we finally made it to the Nicaraguan border. With a huge queue, we managed to blag our way to the front claiming that Poppy's arm was hurting and she needed to see a doctor. We then took our final few steps in Costa Rica and made our way to immigration control on the other side. We had never been so happy to get our exit stamps from a country.

Nicaragua's immigration took a while too but we didn't mind, we were just so happy to have left Costa Rica. We managed to barter down a taxi to almost half price, jumped into a car which looked like it was about to fall apart any minute, and head off to San Juan del Sur. On the way we caught our first glimpse of the huge lake and of Ometepe Island, and as soon as we arrived in the little beach town we knew we would be staying for a while.

We found Frank and two Scottish guys from the hostel in Bocas del Toro, lounging in a tiny hostel just up the road from the beach and instantly settled in. The owner, David, was an absolute legend, and very happy to know that we would be staying for a while. From that moment on we pretty much ran the hostel, showing people rooms and just hanging out in the evenings in our living room.

San Juan was such a nice break from travelling and constantly moving on every couple of days. We spent our days lounging around either at the hostel, at the beach or in some cheap bar. We watched the sunset every evening during happy hour at our favourite bar on the beach, Iguana's, and eating at our favourite restaurant most nights, Big Wave Dave's - where the food was always awesome and the plates were enormous. The locals were so much more welcoming than anywhere in Costa Rica, and the town just had such a great vibe.

We liked it so much there, when we saw that there was a bar to rent we seriously considered cancelling the rest of our travel plans and staying for the rest of the summer! David even wanted in on our little business plan, but soon found out that the neighbours had signed a petition saying it had to close at midnight so we had to throw that plan out the window.

The night before Poppy's birthday, Stu made a cake!!!! Amazing! He had brought candles all the way from Australia and managed to find all the ingredients in the local shop, so the birthday celebrations began. That night we all went out and had an absolutely brilliant night. The next morning, we woke up slightly bleary eyed and head to a gorgeous little boutique hotel on the beach called La Victoriana, where we planned to stay for the night. We relaxed by the swimming pool and had our first hot showers in nearly two months - heaven. That evening, we picked up Frank from the hostel and headed out for fish and chips as we didn't think that there were any special restaurants in San Juan. Luckily, on the way there, we discovered the town's only slightly upmarket restaurant, and as soon as we saw the menu and still reasonable prices we realised we had to eat there.

We had some delicious cocktails, incredible food (Stu had steak and Poppy and Frank had spaggetti with lobster), and champagne for less than 30 US Dollars. Amazing. One of the best birthdays ever. We decided we really never wanted to leave.

Yet, a few days later, we realised we really needed to move on if we were going to make it up to Mexico in time. So we said a very sad goodbye to San Juan del Sur and finally made our way to Granada. If we ever get back to Central America, San Juan will definitely be top of our list of places to go.

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