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1st sunset
sunset through one of the arched windowsHola,
i just returned from a 10 day trip from Rancho Santana, Nicaragua which is a investment property 45 minutes east of Rivas along the coast. Its a 2 1/2 hour drive from Managua and the last apx 45 minutes were all bumpy dirt roads. The rumor is Rancho has some of the best surf in Nicaragua and we caught a small swell just to prove that.
As soon as we exit the plane we are met by this guy Eric who's house we are to work on his house in exchange for a free stay. There are 3 of us Greg, Tim and myself. Greg got his plane ticket also for free in exchange for work. As we walk to the car we are a little nervous of the rioting taxi and bus drivers we heard about. But we get to the car okay and immediately Eric tells Tim there is no room for him because he doesn't want to put the boards in top of the car for safety reasons. So Tim catches a Shuttle with a guy we met on the plane; Tim's gone...I over heard the instructions he gave Tim.."Just wait at this two story
our room
mosquito net hot ass room! pueblo on the corner, ask for Samir and tell him you're a friend of mine. It will be cool dude." ha ha holy shit! i would be freaked out for sure! In the meantime we load the car and start to do errands? are you serious? we're driving around Managua(the capital) looking for toilets, hardware, table saw ect. all awhile Tim is on the way to god knows where! So i'm chilling out next to this hardware store in Managua, which doesn't look like the safest place in the world, next to a security guard with a sawed off 12 gauge shotgun wandering whats in store for us. anyway 1 hour later we're on the road again and stop at a tile yard. Eric hacks off some Spanish and spits his magic to a local comes back to the car and says "Greg, Alan get out i have to take this guy up the road to get tile." Are you kidding me! so we get out as instructed and watch the 1995 Toyota Runner mush off in the distance. right away anxiety sets over me and i feel like we're going to get kidnapped for sure. i immediately reach for
dinora
a nice girl i met my prescribed Xanex pills and realize i left the bottle in the car. Shit! I didn't do to much research on kidnapping or that sort of thing but with the current taxi and bus driver riots over wages anything is possible. We found this liquor store right next to the tile yard and sat on some bags of concrete and waited. In the meantime its 100 degrees Fareinheit and we're sweating our asses off. 10 minutes 15 minutes pass, still no sign of him. is this a set-up, did he sell us for dinero..i start to get real nervous, so we did the best thing we could do to calm the nerves..bought 2 tonas(the local beer) said skoal and pounded beers and had the best time we could. 2 beers, 4, 6 and yessss here comes the buzz and here comes our ride finally. We're back on the road and finally headed for our destination. In the mean time we're trying to call Tim cause surely he's tripping balls in the middle of nowhere somewhere with chickens pecking at his rotting corpse; but no luck.We get on this dirt road and its bumpy and longer than the uneployment line. it
el ojo de aqua
me on the rope swing must be 45 minutes by now and my teeth are brown from dust not to mention every other part of me. we finally pull up to this house with a half dozen Nicaraugians sitting outside on rocking chairs: grandma, daughters, sons, mamma, chickens, dog, goat, cow, Samir and TIM!!! This house has an outside well, outside burning stove, outhouse and all the primitive things you could imagine. This is our first contact with living conditions in this area, which seems very simplistic and awesome!
We finally arrive at the house will be staying at and come to find out there's no windows or doors! which means mosquito nets + no ac! its 88 F here but the weather says it feels like 100F. its hot, dry and humid! Most days we woke up early, because of the heat, at 6am and worked a bit then surfed a lot and hung at the one solitary bar in the establishment. This place isn't really Nicaragua its like a tourist spot filled with Canadians, Europeans, and Americans. So if you're looking for a more Nicaraguan experience this isn't the place. Even the one restaraunte serves american style food such as hamburgers, pasta,
chicken sandwich ect. But we were blessed with local cooking most the time becuase the guy had a local girl friend living at the house and her cooking was great. It consisted of rice, beans, pasta, eggs, poultry and fresh fruit. Very plain but very delicous!!! i fell in love with plantane while i was there, so good. Anytime we got a little bit of sugar it was like a tital wave of pleasure hit us. The main sugar source we consumed was the drink tang. Which is a powder you mix with water and it creates a sugary juice. all in all it was just what the doctor ordered in these conditions.
We didn't have a car so we were pretty much stuck in this paradise which wasn't such a bad thing! we ended up renting one of their casitas in rancho after 4 nights at the house. Tim and i were just over the heat and the working conditions. The casitas were $125 a night which was pricy as hell for a 2 bedroom air conditioned casita right across from the beach. After we got one of these little bad boys it was no mas trabajo para
greg typeed!
our karate kid t.p. bandanas!! dude the funniest pic ever! moral of story; don't drink to much flour de cana in nica ;p mi. In our last 4 days there we did a lot of surfing, drinking, surfing, drinking, and eating. It wasn't a bad deal..we did end up renting a car with a great canadian couple we met and taking it to isla de omptepe which is an island on lake nicaragua.
Isla de Ometepe is Nicaraugua's baby and has 2 great volcanoes on it. Its right past Rivas and the 1 hour ferry ride is $1.50 US and to get your car on the ferry i think is $20 but you have to give them advance warning i believe. This was a great adventure, it was so nice to get out of prison paradise and see some of Nicaragua! The definite highlight of our trip was a place called el ojo de aqua which translates to the eye of water..if you go to this island you must see this! it's paradise with a rope swing..they dammed a river and built a huge man made swimming hole in the middle of the jungle. There's 2 swimming holes and the upper one has a rope swing with the lower one having a tree stump as a diving board. It was soooo sooo
us
greg tim and i nice here i wish i could have camped out there the whole time. one of the volcanoes is still active and that made for good photos. Other than that we quickly stopped by choco verde, hotel paradiso, and punta jesus de maria and had breakfast right off the ferry at a cool place made of bamboo, i forget the name. We were kinda of rushed on this trip, we only had 5 hours so it was short but still a great adventure.
We get back to Rancho and all of a sudden the bar that was pretty much empty the whole week was pumping! So we had one last party night and Greg finally got off work so he could come hang out too! it was a fun drunk night with which we typeed greg when he passed out and took pictures next to him! haha goodtimes..
We met alot of the locals who were very friendly and really great people. We went to a local party in one of the villages with was equipped with dj's, stage, huge tv screens, strobe lights and a huge blow up air beer can! haha, there must have been 100 motorcycles chillin in the parking lot. it was definately fun and we met up with all the locals we've met over the last week. it was a blast and at the end of the night we ended up with 4 bicycles on the roof and 9 people hanging on and in the car. we gave a lot of people a ride home.
Another cool thing we did is went out of Rancho and made a left; about one mile up on the right they have this liqour store/bar type thing that we hung out and chilled at for about 2 hours. we chilled with all the local boys with there surf attire and just chatted and laughed. it was an experience and let us in on everyday nicaraguan life. i believe the town was called limon II or something like that.
that is little insight on our Nicaraguan holiday, well some of the highlights at least. i hope you enjoyed my story and i'll see you next time.
pura vida,
ac
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RON W
non-member comment
GOOD TIMES
AH, I REMEMBER THE EXPERIENCE OF COMING OUT OF THE AIRPORT AT 10:30PM AND MARIO OUR RIDE WHO HAD WAITED 4 HRS ( AS OUR PLANE WAS LATE) AND TOOK US ON THAT 3.5 HOUR RIDE TO RANCHO IN THE DARK ( AND WE THOUGHT WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN INTO). AFTER 4 DAYS THERE AND ALL THE GREAT SCENERY AND BEER WE DECIDED TO BUY AND CANT WAIT TO GO BACK. IT CERTAINLY IS A WAKE UP CALL IF YOU NEVER BEEN TO A 3RD WORLD COUNTRY, BUT THE PEOPLE WHERE AMAZING. ITS CERTAINLY A STORY TO REMEBER RON