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Published: February 26th 2007
One of the many churches in Leon
There are over 20 churches in LeonLEON - Mon 11/12 - Wed 13/12
So after a lengthy bus journey down from Honduras on chicken buses we finally crossed the border into Nicaragua at Guasaule, without realising it. We are sitting on the bus and it had come to a stop, I looked out the window and a guy was shouting what I thought was ´agua´(water) at me. There was nothing quite unususal about this as every bus we go on there are numerous entrepreneurs selling anything from water to banana chips to sandwiches either on the bus or through the window. I kindly said ´no gracias´and turned away. Next thing I know this guy is on the bus in front of me shouting what was actually ´Nicaragua´´oh´, I said with surprise, realising that we were obviously at the border so I signalled over to Maurice and we gathered our things together and got off the bus. Before we were off the bus however, we saw our bags being whisked over to a bici-taxi by that same guy. Once we got off the bus we were mobbed by men, women and children offering anything we wanted so they could make a few bob. We whipped our bags
from the bici-taxi and told the guy that we had not agreed anything as yet and were not ready to depart.
Our heads were fried with it all, we had 10 offers of a taxi to the border, insisting that if we didn´t leave now we would miss the last bus to Leon, there were 10 other offers from moneychangers, wanting us to change our lempiras from Honduras into cordobas for Nicaragua. There were nearly fisticuffs at one point between the locals on who was going to get the fare from us.
The worst thing about border crossings is that they catch you when you´re most vulnerable - having just arrived in a country, tired from travelling, everyone is shouting at you and hanging out of you and you just don´t know if they are trying to scam you or not.
Anyway after much negotiation and shouts of ´no gracias´from us, we finally agreed on what we felt was an acceptable taxi fare and exchange rate for the money. We hopped into the bici-taxi and we were off. Arrived at the border very shortly afterwards, the taxi driver wanted us to give him our passports to get
us through migration at Honduras, ´ah no we´re fine we´ll take it over ourselves´ we kindly responded. Maybe we play it too safe but we don´t take any chances in this part of the world - better safe than sorry is our motto.
Got through migration with no issues and got back into the bici-taxi to go to immigration in Nicaragua. There was a bit of a steep hill and with Maurice, I and our 35KG luggage to cycle up the hill with, the taxi driver began to sweat and our guilt set in. We were just willing that hill to end and we both agreed on a tip for the taxi driver to ease the guilt, in fairness the hill ended before too long and we had a steady downhill freewheel then. Got through immigration with no hassles and the bus driver dropped us at the bus to Leon. We gave him the amount we agreed on plus a nice tip - would you believe it as far as he was concerned that was only half of what we agreed on, ´ahem, no we don´t think so´, after much arguing where we were not backing down, he agreed
to take the money and we got onto yet another chicken bus to our final destination - Leon - 2 hours 30 minutes away.
Finally at 8.30pm that evening we arrived in Leon, nearly 15 hours after we set out from L´Esperanza in Honduras. With only having had one taco each to eat at 11.30am that morning, we were feeling sorry for ourselves so we checked into a nice hotel and agreed to ´stuff ourselves´with a nice dinner.
Showered and changed and feeling normal again we set off to find a nice restaurant. It was 9.30pm and we found a pizzeria, they said they were closing at 10pm so we said we´d take a menu and a seat. We flicked through the menu and decided on lovely big pizzas and some nice garlic bread on the side. The waiter came over and the conversation went something like this:
Maurice: A large special with everything on it
Waiter: No sorry, we don´t have that,
Maurice: Ok, I´ll have the salami and mushroom so
Waiter: No sorry we don´t have that either
Maurice: Well what do you have
Waiter: We only have the hawianina
Siobhan: Oh that´s grand, that´s what
I want I´ll have a medium,
Waiter: No we don´t have a medium we only have a small.
Siobhan: (getting very frustrated) So out of all the pizza´s on the menu, you only have the small hawahian, fine, we´ll have 2 small Hawahian pizza´s
Waiter: No sorry we only have one hawahian
Siobhan: But there´s two of us, that´s not enough
Waiter: Oh no it´s plenty for two.
Siobhan: Fine, whatever, but we´ll have garlic bread too
Waiter: No sorry we have no garlic bread.
I should have guessed. Well the pizza arrived and it was no bigger than a sandwich & meant for the two of us. To add insult to injury it was horrible - I was disgusted, so much for ´stuffing ourselves´. It was clear to us after seeing people leaving the takeaway section with rather large pizza boxes that the guy was closing at 10pm and was just too lazy to make anything other than the quickest pizza on the menu. Needless to say, he didn´t get a tip or any future business from us!!
We spent the next 2 days in Leon, wandering the town and taking in the sights, including many churches
of which Leon has over 20. Not a lot else to report on Leon, so after our 2 days/nights there it was further south to Granada, a spot we had heard a lot about.
Granada - Wed 13/12 - Mon 18/12
We arrived in Granada and booked ourselves into a nice hostel - Oasis, I say nice because it was clean, had a pool, book exchange and free internet, and not your usual free internet where there is one really slow PC for the whole hostel, there were about 10 PC´s with fast connection. Excellent we thought, a chance to catch up on this damn blog and that we did, we sure made use of the free internet spending hours on end on it.
Granada was a very nice town, colonial in style, the buildings are all brightly coloured with a lot of character and it is set on a lake (albeit a polluted lake). There are plenty of horse-drawn carriages around. There are so many realtors around selling properties, it seems the Americans have spotted the potential and good value property on offer here and are snapping up property left, right and centre, we were told it´s
the next Costa Rica to the Americans and some Americans are in fact selling their property in Costa Rica to buy up in Nicaragua. Granada is full of tourists, in fact there are probably more tourists around now than locals. We managed to bump into 3 travellers that we had met at some stage along the way. The upside of all this is that you can eat like a king in Nicaragua for very cheap, Maurice enjoyed many hearty steak dinners for $5, very dear compared to what we were spending in recent weeks but too hard to resist !
When we took a break from the free internet, we wandered around the town, taking in the main plaza and the plaza de Independence and some of their beautiful churches. We also stopped for a beer or two along the way!!
One of our days in Granada we took a trip to a very scenic Laguna (an inactive volcano whose crator is now filled with a beautiful lake) where we lazed away the day between hammocks and sun chairs, reading, having lunch and kayaking in the Laguna. We thoroughly enjoyed the day of pure relaxation.
Nicaragua is
Central America´s largest countries but seemingly it´s least visited! It is the second poorest country in the Americas just behind Haiti - 70%!o(MISSING)f the population live below the poverty line. It was clear on some of our bus journeys that there wasn´t even electricity in many parts of the country. There is a severe energy crisis in the country and at nightfall pretty much every night there was a blackout, pity no one told us about it, we got caught out!! We were out for dinner one night and when we left the restaurant the streets were pitch black, I mean you couldn´t see your hand in front of you, which is quite a problem in a town where potholes on the footpath are the norm. We felt our way home that night very slowly and noticed some commotion on one of the streets up ahead, a few screams and then people running - obviously some of the locals felt a blackout was an opportune time for some petty theft. From then on our torch came with us wherever we went, so we didn´t get caught out a second time.
San Juan Del Sur - Mon 18/12 -
Thurs 21/12
After out stint in Granada it was time to head south to a lovely beach town on the Pacific coast called San Juan del Sur. San Juan is a chilled out town with a picturesque coastline and stretches of bars. We enjoyed three leisurely days in San Juan del Sur where we watched the sun go down over a few beers in the evenings - there were fantastic sunsets to behold!!
So with Christmas looming, the pressure was on to get to Costa Rica so it was time to say goodbye to Nicaragua & hop on another early bus to the border.......
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Sinead Feeney
non-member comment
Are you having fun?
I'm seriously asking this question. Are you enjoying it? I'm scared every time I read these things. Well Granada sounded like it was nice. But are you going to come back in one piece from those other places?