Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Thursday & Friday March 7-8

Oh man, if I had a dime for every hour I’d spent on a crappy bus in Central America, I could probably stay down here for another month! Thursday morning we woke up super early and took the 6:00 ferry from Utila, back to the mainland, as in Honduras. We caught a taxi to the bus station and were lucky enough to get on a bus right away. Unfortunately it just happened to be the most uncomfortable bus in the history of buses, which is weird cause it looked nice and smelled normal (those are normally two of your biggest indicators). 7 hours and 1 too many Brazilian fighting movies dubbed in Spanish later we made it to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. As far as capitals go, it actually seemed pretty small but parts of it looked really nice. Unfortunately for us, we’re not living on any kind of budget that allows us to see those nice parts other than the quick drive by we usually get in the bus. So instead, we found as cheap a place as we could muster close to the bus station, the windows all had bars on them and there were two layers of 24 hours a day locked doors to get in to the hotel, it was quite reassuring. That night we found a Pizza Hut within walking distance and drowned our sorrows in a little marinara sauce with breadsticks, delicious!

Friday morning we got on the bus that would take us straight down to Managua, Nicaragua in about 8 hours. Surprisingly this was the worst border crossing to date that we’ve had. They made everyone get off the bus with all their luggage and then we had to wait while one by one they inspected our bags for who knows what. When it got to be our turn, they opened McKay’s bag and pulled out his headlight. You would have thought the guy had just discovered fire by how awesome he thought it was. He kept turning it on and off and shining it in his colleagues eyes and then laughing hysterically. I thought for sure this was somehow going to lead to us having to bribe him with our headlamp, but he finally gave it back and then didn’t even bother checking the rest of our bags! When we finally got to Managua we immediately caught a taxi to the local bus “station” (I’m using the term station, very loosely here) so we could head to Granada. After shoving 20 more people than full capacity allowed in the bus and with more than 1 person practically sitting on our laps we made it to Granada in about an hour and a half. Granada was much more low key and quiet compared to the capital, so it was fine wandering around in the dark finding just the right hostel.

This is from a bridge on our way to Pizza Hut. It is so sad coming to these countries and seeing all the trash everywhere! On more than one occasion I’ve asked someone for a garbage so I could throw something away, they take the trash from me and then proceed to throw it directly on the ground. It’s just such a cultural thing that I feel like they don’t even understand that it’s a bad thing.

This is overlooking part of Tegucigalpa! Randomly while we were walking back to our hotel a guy pulled up in a motorcycle right next to us wearing a Zions Bank Real SL Shirt, we both creepily swarmed him pointing to his shirt and trying to get his attention. When he finally got what we were saying he told us his sister lives in Utah and had brought the shirt down for him! We were in such a state of shock we forgot to take a picture!

Oh yeeeah, we've made it to the promised land!

I’m sorry, this picture is definitely not for the faint of heart. Don’t look too closely or you’ll see what the lady right next to us had for lunch. She threw up all over herself, the seats in front of her, and her boyfriend! What a good boyfriend he was too, they didn’t have anything to clean it up with so he sat there for two hours and I never heard him make a peep. Once we got off the bus, McKay immediately informed that, that would not have been the case if that had been him. He's such a romantic sometimes!

What started out as a simple traditional outdoor Nicaraguan meal quickly turned in to a full blown war zone with the local birds in the trees above us. Unfortunately we weren’t smart enough to sit under an umbrella and they were dropping bird bombs and people were getting hit left and right. After scattering 4 different shots on our table (luckily not in our food) they finally made a direct hit right on McKay’s shoulder! Needless to say we were ready to get out of there! :)

Saturday March 9

Saturday we went spent the day wandering around Granada, it is one of the big tourist attractions in Nacaragua and reminded us a little bit of San Cristobal in Mexico. We ran in to a really sweet Canadian couple in the morning and they gave us a couple great suggestions for meals. It was really interesting to see how many casinos they had in Nicaragua, unfortunately no craps tables though :( haha! By far our favorite part about Granada though was… (drum roll please) 8 Cordoba cokes!! That’s like 30 cents, we had to drink at least 5 a day each on principle alone!

Oh what, you never bought Coke in a bag? :)

Sorry old school gamers, I hate to break it to you, but this is where all your old games have gone to die....

This is the big main cathedral in the town center, please forgive the sub parness of this picture is, but there were trees and buildings blocking it from all angles!

Guat’s Up? Oh just chillin at the Garden Café for a little dinner!

Sunday March 10

After hunting down the church on Saturday we were still late to church Sunday morning, oops! After church we took a 2 hour bus ride down to Rivas, it’s a port town on the South West side of Lake Nicaragua where we caught a ferry to the island Ometepe. It’s a decent sized island in the middle of the lake, and has volcanoes on each end, so pretty! We ended up staying at the hostel Dona Chido’s for $12 a night. No extra charge for the fan and the power only went out on us a couple times… :) Later we walked around Moyogalpa and decided to try something outside the box for us, for dinner…. Pizza! (Get it? It‘s a joke, because we eat pizza every chance we get!)

This is on the bus ride to Rivas, I'm pretty sure we were also going for the world record of number of people you could fit on this bus. We started out at the very back standing up and every time the bus would stop they'd open the back up and shove a few more people in! All personal space bubbles were dissolved this day.

When we got to Rivas all these different people kept coming up to us and telling us about their ferry, we didn’t really get what was going on and instead just hopped on the first and cheapest boat that was leaving. We probably should have checked things out more cause we ended up on a boat that was probably used by the islands first inhabitants and had been retrofitted with a motor. This is the manual water pump, see the guy with the stick? Yep he’s the one that pumps the water out!

This is a pic of the island I sketched in my free time, I tried to stay as close to scale as possible but the dimensions may be slightly off.... We stayed in Moyogalpa and did a tour of the top half of the island on Monday!

Monday March 11

We went for a tour around the island with some Germans we had met on the bus before (remember the picture above? Yeah, we got to know them probably more intimately than we should have that day....).  We started out at a place called Charco Verde, it’s a park that borders the lake and has a nature walk around a little lagoon. From there we spent a few hours at Ojo De Aguas, which is a natural mineral spring that has been turned in to a nice relaxing pool area! Lastly we stopped by the beach and for lunch in the small town of Playa Santa Domingo.

This is the view of the Volcano Maderas from the beach at Charco Verde. All the sand on this part of the island was very black and fine from Volcanic lava.

Just another day at the beach!

Looking over the bay, on our walk we saw all kinds of birds and monkeys and other nature animals, as opposed to the non nature animals we usually see....

Oh, don’t worry we crossed paths with two different snakes on our little jaunt. I naturally bolted as far away as I could, but McKay got a picture of this one eyeing the bats in this tree, he even got to see it coil up and strike, but the bats were too fast and it went home empty handed!

We also saw more monkeys, I think we may have had our fill of those by the end of this trip.

With water so enriched with minerals it’s guaranteed to make your skin feel soft like a baby’s bottom and heal all your aches and pains. That was the 100% satisfaction guarantee promise we received from the guy as we were coming in….

See how much younger and refreshed I look already? And I haven't even gotten in yet! :)

Lunch on the beach! This welcome sign was hanging above the door as you were walking out, I'm not sure if it was put their ironically or not?....

As we were waiting for our food this whole herd of horses came charging right past the restaurant to have a drink in the lake. It was then we really exposed ourselves to be the true tourists that we are as we rushed out to take a few pics as if this was the most exciting thing we had seen all day! :)

Polly didn't want a cracker....

This sweet viewing area of the other Volcano Concepcion from the airport runway, which doubles as part of the main road that goes around the island.

New friends! Caroline, Michael, and Hannah. We had an awesome day with them and they thought we were so awesome insisted on having dinner with us that night! :) It was really interesting chatting with them and hearing their views and answering questions on all the things that you only hear the news' perspective on.

Tuesday March 12
Took a boat back to Rivas, this time we made sure to get a legit ferry that wasn’t going to tip over, and on our way McKay started talking to an English couple who were also going to Costa Rica. He asked them if they might be interested in sharing a taxi to get to the buses and they said they already had a private taxi service lined up but if there was room we could definitely hitch a ride. Duh, we said yes! They were so sweet and we ended up riding with them all day until we got to La Fortuna, Costa Rica 9 hours later!

This is Paul and Ruth, who gave us the ride, they are awesome! They've traveled to something like 30 countries in the past couple years and had some awesome stories to share. When I meet people like this, all I can think of is how do I make that my life?.... :)