Nicaragua Adventura

After a long while of not traveling to any unknown areas, I decided to meet my best friend Kait down in Central America. She was going to be in Costa Rica, and since that was more expensive to fly into, the small suggestion that I just fly into Nicaragua instead ended up completely shaping my trip and changing hers – all for the best! Kait objectively said that it was a million times better than Costa Rica, had more culture and was cheaper to boot. ¡Bueno!

I started my trip on the plane. I tried to take a percocet to put me to sleep on the plane, but alas, I was “Too excited to sleep” and ended up talking to the people on the plane, & doing a ton of sudoku, doodling and crosswords. On the last plane from Houston to Managua, not only was there a crying baby behind me, but also a little boy who just so happened to “have a little accident” on the seat next to me. Oops!

Kait told me (and several people on the plane) that Managua was not the best place to get a cab as they are somewhat infamous for hijacking their own operation, stealing your stuff, and leaving you in the middle of nowhere. Since neither of us wanted me to start my trip that way, Kait picked me up with a Granada cab, and shuttled me back there to this great hostel.

Hamacas are the best.

I didn’t know it yet, but pretty much all the hostels in Nicaragua are set up this way: Kitchen, big open courtyard complete with cool plants inside, and hammocks for lounging. What set Oasis apart was the pool, which is really helpful when it’s 97° outside (every day).

Granada is awesome. The city is super old and has a ton of really great architecture all painted bright and uplifting colors. While the streets are lined with makeshift booths of people selling everything from mangos to watch batteries and underwear, you can walk through one block and almost get hit by every form of transportation you can think of. Horses, bikes, cars, scooters, and people rush around like its nobody’s business. My favorite part was the Nicaraguan’s uncanny ability to ride double on bikes. Literally everyone and their mother’s would be riding side saddle on the bar.

the old cathedral- near the Waffle shop I'm told.

So, first day we decided to go to a peninsula on Lake Nicaragua in Port Ansese to rent bikes and ride to the end, which was supposed to be a great place to swim. Upon our arrival to the port, we were told the bikes had all been rented and it would have been cheaper anyway to just rent them from Granada, providing us with some serious hindsight. We gave in and got kayaks instead, assured by the french owner that they were better anyway. We kayaked our little hearts out and found a cool abandoned hotel on one of the islands, picked some mangitas to eat off another, and Kait even went for what turned out to be a not-so-refreshing dip in the warm water. We looked, but saw no fresh water sharks.

(we might be dorks)

I was so excited to get out on the kayaks that I forgot to put on sunscreen, and got a pretty nasty burn.

Whooops

After that incident, we played it cool (get it?) and took a bus to head over to Ometepe, an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua with not one, but two volcanoes, and all sorts of cool stuff to do. We brought some fellow travelers along with us, and met a few more on the crowded chicken bus.

These are just old school buses, that they give really awesome custom paint/ sticker jobs. They impressively drive back and forth on bumpy roads, letting people on and off out the emergency exit whenever someone whistles for a stop. Every window also doubles as a trash can, so be careful if you are driving/ biking behind one of these. This bus took us to Rivas. By the time we got there I had to pee so bad that I bolted off the bus and franticly asked every person I saw “Donde esta baño? ¡es un emergencia!” I had to pay something like a nickle to use the grossest baño ever, but it was totally worth it, and Kait and a taxi driver some how found me right when I got out to take us to the ferry.

When we got to Moyogalpa (translates as “mosquito nest”) on Ometepe, we found a hostel and dropped off our packs, and got some really good food, that was a little hard to order. Our waiter decided to simply take one order, walk away, deal with it, and then come back and ask the next person after we asked for his attention. Needless to say we all got our food at separate times, and it took about an hour and a half for the 5 of us to eat.

Our travel friends taught us some card games, which we had to play by candle-light since Ometepe’s power supply apparently goes out for at least one or two hours every night. So we stayed up to the wee hours drinking Flora de Cana rum ( $3 a bottle ) and battling it out at Yannif Yaniv, an Israeli game we learned twice on the trip.

We were told by a friendly local that playa Santo Domingo would be a great place to go next, so we hopped on a bus. We hopped off at the turn sign for Santo Domingo, and started walking; not sure of how far exactly we would have to drag ourselves and all our stuff, or exactly where to go. About 15 minutes in, a truck pulled up and picked up some of the people walking ahead of us. Luckily we caught up before they left and realized they were going to the same place, which would have been about a 4 mile walk. Thank goodness!

We saw some monkeys!

We stayed at a nice place and payed a little extra to procure a fan in our room. Totally worth it. Here is where the best parts of the trip were for me. We got to ride horses along the beach, which I really loved because I love riding horses and our guide was really nice. Kait’s riding experience was a little off, since her horse decided it would rather drink water than run with ours. ¡Que Madre!

These birds were all over the playa. Apparenlty they are some sort of magpie, and gang up on things in groups. Just like the magpies in Boulder, these are some mean birds, that have no qualms about attacking cats, dogs, or the food on your table. I still thought they were cute.

Here is where it got epic. If you are on an island with two volcanoes, you have to hike up one of them. It’s just a rule. Luckily for me we decided to go up the smaller of the two. Our guide, Don Douglas of Managua, had been hiking up the volcanoes every other day for the last 10 years, and could run up the trail he took us on. He also told us he has carried people down who could not make it on their own, which made me feel better about taking so long to get down. The hike up was awesome. We saw all kinds of wildlife, and Douglas told us a lot of really interesting things and knew pretty much everything we asked about.

Leaf cutter ant highway

A falcon Douglas pointed out to us- he saw it from a mile away.

There were a ton of howler monkeys that we could hear and watch on the way up to the entrance, which I would have been really scared of if I didn’t know what they were. Sounds like death metal howling.

Douglas barked at them

oh hello

After 5 hours of extreme climbing, we arrived at the top! Hooray!

Kait carried me up the whole way.

We then got to hike down from the lip into the crater of the volcano, which had a nice little laguna inside. Unfortunately we could not swim in the lake, because it was 90% mud. We did throw rocks into the crater lake, which checked that off Kait’s “Things to do on my birthday” list. Good thing we are so good at throwing.

La Laguna de Mud

Rock thrown. Check.

We felt we had accomplished a lot on Ometepe, and had run out of small bills. Since “no hay cambio” on the whole island seemed to be the favorite phrase, we moved on to San Juan del Sur, right down by the beach. This place was more of a party town, which was fun in some ways, but less authentic feeling to me. Seemed like all the surfer tourism had brought a resort-y vibe to the city. We had a big birthday celebration for Kait, and played tons of cards, while I nursed my aching legs from the hike and my recovering sun burn from day one. We also randomly ran into the people we had met in Granada, and a few other people Kait had met earlier on her trip. Everyone was there!

After some good times and great foods in San Juan, we headed back to Granada so we could be close to Managua, our departing city, without actually being there. Now seasoned pros at Granada, we searched around for fun things to do and found some more friends that Kait had met in various places. We also got blind massages, which were soooo good, and super reasonable. Best $10 I ever spent. We took some time to just say goodbye to Granada, and take some pictures, shop for hamacas, and eat some surprisingly delicious italian food.

Land Shark

It's like I don't even care

This hammock seems like a keeper

I had to leave ridiculously early in the morning – so I scheduled a shuttle to take me to Managua at 3:00am. I was really sad to go, and extra sad when I learned that the in-flight movie was “Tooth Fairy”, starring “The Rock”. As Kait would say, “Woof”.

Now that I have had this taste of traveling, I want more. Hopefully sometime soon I can head back out into the world and see some more awesome stuff. Any suggestions?

Be sure to check out Kait’s Blog for more photos and cool stuff from before I joined up with her. Super.