Nicaraguan Adventures

We were in Granada last time we conversed, separated from Travis and Angela and reduced to a group of five after Angela came down with some terrible strange sickness.

Now we have reunited and are seven again. Turns out Angela had an ear infection, which is why she felt like shit the morning we left from Utila. This problem was probably connected to her problem with equalizing her ears. With the air trapped in her ear cavities, all the little bacteria were free to multiply. Now she has medication and cotton swabs to slow the murky secretions from her left ear.

Estranged from Trangela (short for Travis and Angela), we spent the night in the Kalala Lodge then met Trangela in their hostel, The Oasis, at 9 in the morning. We quickly realized their hostel kicked our hostel’s ass.

While our hostel had thin mattresses on top of wooden boards, leading to a princess-and-the-pea like situation except there was only one mattress and no pea, but a whole fucking lot of pain and discomfort, The Oasis on the other hand not only had respectable mattresses but free Internet access, colonial charm, murals and hammocks.

Check out this mural that was at our hostel, The Oasis.

After eating breakfast together, we decided to abandon the Kalala Lodge and move over to The Oasis since it was so completely superior. While we could have spent the rest of the day exploring Granada, we succumbed to the free Internet access and spent much of the day on Facebook and catching up on some good old perusing superfluous Web site time.

We stumbled upon murals and sayings painted on the walls.  Nicaraguans love them some poetry.

Eventually we realized we hadn’t eaten lunch and it was about 3 p.m. so we hungrily ventured out of our hostel and went to a pizzeria for a little snack. We split a large pizza and then walked towards the beach, snapping loads of photographs on the way like the good tourists we are.

What an epic colonial church.

At the beach we encountered a charmingly persistent little old ice cream salesmen. His gimmick was to yell “Beep, beep!” as he aimed his ice cream wagon at his potential customers. We couldn’t help but buy a moderately priced frozen treat from a peddler with such personality, such chutzpah.

For dinner that night we decided to eat at a Mexican restaurant on a street the locals called “Gringo Street.” Choosing to sit outside, we were treated to entertainment from a troupe of young breakdancers (you know they spin on their heads and do back flips and the like). The biggest crowd pleaser of all was smallest boy of all, an acrobatic little guy who couldn’t have been more than nine years old.

The following day we left Granada on a chicken bus and headed to Rivas. In Rivas we caught a ride to San Jorge, the town from which the ferries to Ometepe leave. We arrived with a little extra time so we ate lunch at a little diner and then walked down a long path along the beach to the dock where the ferry left. We had to pay a 10 Cordoba tourist fee at a gate and then a lady asked us to take medical form possibly a Swine Flu prevention measure. Four of the group had already passed through but Mike, Shannon and I reached the final gate right at 2:30 p.m. when the ferry was scheduled to leave and the guard, rather than letting us pass through and hustle to catch the ferry, closed the gate in our faces and locked it. We pleaded with him but he said he was just following orders. So the three of us had to wait around until 4 p.m. when the next boat left.

We reached the island of Ometepe at 5 p.m. and Angela was waited with a cab to take us to the hotel they had selected, the Finca Valencia. We drove half and hour across the island and found our picturesque hotel on a dark volcanic sand beach. We were all staying in a quaint cottage.

What a big friendly tree. 

We ate at the hotel that night since we were more or less in the middle of nowhere and bummed around the hotel afterward.

The next day we went swimming in the fresh waters of Lake Nicaragua the largest lake in Central America. In the afternoon we took a walk through a nature reserve near out hotel. We saw swarms of little baby frogs, armies of ants, lizards and colonies of birds, who loved the lofty trees on the cliffs overlooking the expansive lake well stocked with fish to eat.

Look how many birds were in this just one tree.

We ate a competing hotel down the beach that night and used a luxury they had but we lacked at our hotel: Internet.

The next morning we packed up and headed back to San Jorge on the ferry. We had planned out exactly how we would get to our next destination, the beach at San Juan del Sur, but as usual several pushy cab drivers offered us their services. We tried to act disinterested to get them to lower their prices and we walked around looking for deals. Near the exit gate, a cab driver in a red cap offer us the best deal we had heard yet 230 Córdobas ($11.50). This upset the cab drivers we had been talking to earlier who had dropped the fare for each of their taxis to 240 Córdobas. The stockier of the two started yelling at this wily driver and next thing we knew he was throwing punches. We were a bit shocked, but decided hey I guess we will pay the 240. They later explained that this rival cabbie was a pirate who wasn’t certified and wasn’t part of their collective. He didn’t pay taxes and couldn’t be trusted, they explained. I ended up with the stocky enforcer taxi driver’s laidback sidekick. We played Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Reggae and other gringo pleasers and also took photographs of Shannon on his cell phone while he was driving.

Regardless, we got us to San Juan del Sur where we had a bit of trouble finding a hostel with room for seven, but they eventually squeezed us in the Casa Oro, a hostel well known among surfers and backpackers. We settled in and headed to the beach that afternoon to swim, play frizbee and take in some sun. For dinner we took advantage of our hostel’s kitchen and made Mac and cheese.

We played Frizbee into the sunset.

We drank beer and played Monopoly that night. Mike and I were a team that seemed destined for success, but we made some ill advised, essentially suicidal trades after becoming frustrated that the more proactive trades we were proposing were unceremoniously shot down—not to mention our slow realization that Monopoly is a dull game.

After the game, we went for a walk on the beach. We heard a discoteca pumping some music and some decided to enter, but the bouncer denied me for lacking a shirt. It’s so warm here though wearing shirts seem unwarranted.

Today we left at 11:30 a.m. for a surfing trip to Remanso beach. We packed our rented boards on top of the big truck and took a twenty-minute ride to the quiet little beach.

We decided not to pay for lessons, but in turns out that learning how to get up on a surfboard isn’t all that difficult and we all succeeded to get up without official instruction. The beginner friendly waves at the beach certainly helped us. We didn’t learn how do much of anything but go in a straight line on our long boards but we had fun doing just that. At sunset we packed up the truck again and headed back to the hostel.

We were still learning and didn't nail every wave as you can see here.

I cooked dinner for myself and have been spending a quiet night of all things blogging. Tomorrow it’s onto Costa Rica.

The Inter-American Highway

It is just five of us, but we are all crammed into one hotel room, a little bit scared because we are the middle of Tegucigalpa and our guide book tells us it’s a dangerous city and people on the street have echoed that sentiment.  We ate at the hotel cafeteria because we didn’t want to test our luck in the dangerous streets of the Honduran capital.  I sit here typing now for there is little else to do.

There are five of us because one member of our group, Alex, is heading back home before heading to Israel and Angela was feeling very sick this morning so she stayed behind with Travis to visit a doctor.  Her ears have been bothering her after our week of scuba diving in Utila.  Hopefully it was nothing serious.

The eight of us pose with five of our dive instructors.  Scuba Steve is front and center flashing his patented hang loose symbol, Maya our Danish spitfire of a lead instructor is behind Steve, Aurelian, the debonaire Frenchman is to the far left, hailing from Guatemala, Adriana, is to the far right and Wes the Coloradan is lurking barely visible in the back.

Angela’s sickness was the only damper on a stellar week that concluded in us receiving our PADI open water certification and doing our first recreational dives in which we went to a sailboat wreck that was carpeted in coral.  We saw a variety of marine life including a green sea turtle, trumpet fish, and schools of blue fish (I'm not being vague, this is what they are actually called).  The impressive thing is that the Utila area has been severely overfished and we saw only a hollow shell of what a thriving coral reef ecosystem would look like.  It was hard to leave Utila and they were trying to sell us on the Advanced Open Water course to expand upon our first scuba course, but we realized we best move on to a new locale, which is why we are now in Tegucigalpa.

The view of the Nicaraguan countryside from my bus window.

Another bus ride and a taxi ride later and I am in Granada, Nicaragua in a Internet café across from our hostel, the Kalala Lodge.  The eight ride was smooth and without a hitch except when we blew out a tire and had to stop for at least 30 minutes while they put a spare on.

The Tica Bus employees assess the blown tire situation out in the scalding afternoon sun.

We arrived in Managua around 6 p.m. on the Tica Bus from Tegucigalpa and we found a taxi cab driver named Eddy who would pack all our stuff in his cab, squeeze all five of us inside, stop at an ATM and for food and then drive us all the way to Granada, a one hour ride.  We paid 200 Cordobas each (about ten dollars).  The place we chose to stop for food was Quiznos.  We couldn't help ourselves after seeing this little piece of home transplanted in Managua.  The Chicken Carbonara I ordered tasted heavenly since I hadn't had one in at least five months.  He led us to a hostel since Angela had our only guidebook for Nicaragua and we had no idea where to go.

We have heard from Angela and Travis and they are also in Granada and we should be able to reunite tomorrow.  We don’t really know what we are going to do with the rest of the time.  I suppose the beach is calling us, but we are content simply to have relocated farther south and neared our final destination of San Jose.

Diving with Maya and Scuba Steve

5:40 a.m. came bright and early and we groggily set to packing our bags, perhaps slightly regretting trading hours of shuteye for more drinks at the bar.  The sun was peaking out from the dark clouds over the Caribbean in a brilliant display.  We loaded our bags into a boat and headed to Puerto Barrios.

So early, but the view was so beautiful in the Livingston harbor.

After an hour in the boat, we arrived and transferred our bags to a van.  I happened to be sitting next all the bags in the front and I handed my friend’s bags up to them on the dock, but apparently everyone, even people I had never met before, expected that special treatment from me.  As a result of my dockhand duties, I was the last one to get into the van and had the very last pick of seats.  I had to sit up front in the middle next to the driver on a hard seat with minimal legroom for the seven-hour ride to Ceiba, Honduras.

By the end of the ride it felt like my sore tailbone and the rock hard seat were in direct contact—no seat cushion, no body tissue, no anything separating them—and I was so glad to never see that seat again.  We bought a ticket for the last ferry to Utila at 4 p.m. and were disappointed that the price $23, was more than our travel guides suggested it would be.  Since it was only 2 p.m. when we arrived, we had to wait around for two hours.

After a one-hour ride through the bucking waves to Utila we finally arrived.  As usual, we were overwhelmed by hotel representatives at the end of the dock.  Everyone wanted us to stay with them and dive with their shop.  They were offering us free stays while we scuba dived, help with our luggage, and complimentary cold beers.

We narrowed it down to two choices.  One was $279 and the other was $269, but when the more expensive one offered to put us up in our own private cottage and drive us to it in a van so we didn’t have to hassle with our luggage we were sold.  To top it off, their dive shop, Utila Dive Center, was also the biggest and most respected on the island.

The crew enjoys the porch of our posh cottage.

We’ve been happy ever since making that decision.  Our cottage is amazing—the key features include the air conditioning, the kitchen and the porch with hammock.  Our dive instructor Maya is perfect.  She is a Dane who decided she didn’t want to work in an office in Copenhagen so she came to Utila five years and now makes a living diving.  Fittingly she is blond haired.  Maya speaks English with a bit of a British accent and curses frequently, a combination that is disarmingly attractive.

Several other dive instructors assist Maya since our group is so large.  Among them is Steve, a middle aged Canadian.  Steve is a goon.  Steve takes the beer rule a little too seriously.  The beer rule says that if an instructor sees that a student has left their scuba tank standing up and unattended to, then that student owes the instructor a beer.  Since the air is under high pressure in the tanks it makes sense to not leave then standing up in danger of tipping over, because the nozzle could break and send the tank flying like a rocket.  A fair rule, but Steve tries a little too hard to catch people.  Today he called Kate out on it even though she was only a few feet away from her tank.

The beer rule applies just the same for students who put their masks on their forehead inadvertently because for scuba divers this is a signal for distress.  When we where getting out of the water he called me out for the mask rule too and said I owed him a beer.  I don’t plan to pay up, because, in my book, we’re even because I deserve a beer for putting up with him all day.  Steve also tries to act cooler than he is and is always flashing the Hawaiian hang loose symbol.  Our relationship was rough from the start because when I met him, I said “Oh your name is Steve, like Scuba Steve” (the action figure in Big Daddy), but he didn’t look amused and said “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

As big of a goon as he is, Scuba Steve hasn’t ruined by scuba diving experience and we have been enjoying ourselves.

Of course we have been doing more than just diving and studying here.  Wednesday, we went to the Tree Tanic, a sprawling bar that is a cross between tree house and modern art museum.  It was ranked the number one bar in the world on Lonely Planet Web site.

This afternoon we are doing our first real dive after doing three days of training in shallow water and watching cheesy PADI videos.

That saucy harlot Marie Sharp

Last time I left you, I was at the Casa Perico in Rio Dulce relaxing in a newly acquired hostel room.  I told you I was thinking of hitting up the complimentary kayaks and I did just that, although kayak may be too grandiose a term for the crude dugout canoes with no seats and wooden paddles that the hostel offered.

But proper kayak or not, I made a jaunt around the surrounding waterways, encountering some difficulty navigating in my cumbersome vessel the narrow channels of open water in the dense mangrove forest until a hotel employee passing in a motor boat told me to sit “más atrás” or farther back in the boat.  After making that adjustment, I discovered that keeping control of the kayak was much easier.  Boy did I felt stupid.

This is the Mangrove forest near our hotel.

That night, we ordered dinner from our hotel.  I went with the spaghetti carbonara while several others went with a burger with fries.  The food was pretty good until we dipped into the stores of hot sauce by the bar; then suddenly it became really good.  Everyone tried some hot sauce expect for Angela who is a wimp and doesn’t like spicy foods.

The dinner was particularly special for Travis and I, as we were reunited with an old fling, Marie’s Sharp’s Habanera Sauce, with whom we spent one very intimate week in Belize, before we left thinking we’d never see her again.  But, lo and behold, she showed up in Rio Dulce and old feelings and desires were rekindled.  Suffice to say, Travis and I wholly surrendered our bodies to the throes of habanera passion.

After we had exhausted ourselves with an evening of habanera hedonism, we couldn’t help but want more; I seized the moment by stuffy that saucy tart Marie in my gym shorts pocket, absconding with her to my room where I could have her all to myself.  Travis and I justified my kidnapping with the logic that we would appreciate that biting wench considerably more than any other suitor or condiment pirate.

Later that night we tried to get our work-in-progress band with its work-in-progress name, “The Fuck Before Time III” together to iron out some songs.  We discovered that we needed a substantial amount of additional practice and/or training, or at least so guitar tabs in front of us to be worth a damn, but it was nice simply to have a guitar in my hands again after four months of sparing the world the ensuing auditory punishment.

Exhausted from a full day of traveling that started at 3:30 in the morning, I called it a night early and slept for nine plus solid hours.

In the morning, we caught a lancha to Livingston at 9:30 a.m.  The boat took us on a tour of several notable attractions on the river.  We saw a castle, lots of birds, a water lily garden where precious little wide-eyed kids canoed around us in convenient photo opportunities, a sulfur-y hot springs and a canyon.  The two-man crew of the boat had a bit of trouble keeping their mutinous motor going and we stalled a few times while they repaired it.

The boat crew repairs their motor on the way to Livingston.

We arrived at Livingston docks around noon we were promptly swarmed by a small but boisterous group of hustlers trying to convince that the hostel they were promoting was the best.  We let ourselves be carried away by a garifuna man with dreads and a Terrell Owens jersey who kept yelling, “Rastafari!” at the slightest provocation. He promised we could take us to a place that would let us stay for 35Q a night.  I should explain that the garifuna people are black Caribbean people who ended up in Livingston and other places on Central America’s Caribbean coast after they escaped from slavery.  They have kept their culture distinct from Guatemala’s other cultures and one of the main draws in Livingston is to see a Garifuna beach celebration complete with polyrhythmic drumming, dancing, and special mystery rum infused with medicinal herbs.  Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to witness that, but we can attest that Livingston had the highest concentration of black people we had seen in Guatemala.  We could probably count the others we had seen on one hand.

Rasta mon, as I will call him since I don’t remember his name, and his friend in a Pittsburg Pirates cap took us the Casa de la Iguana, a sweat-inducing fifteen minute walk from the docks. The staff came out to show us around and we began the lengthy process of figuring out rooms. While we were choosing, rasta mon offered us some of his medicinal rum and hit on our females.  Ultimately, four of us decided to share a two-person room called “Sex on the Beach” which was in the attic of one of the buildings because it cost us only 20Q each, while two others shared a single dorm bed and the final two were in hammocks.

Rasta mon offers Angela some of his special rum.

Rasta mon and his friend were expecting a big commission for bringing eight guests to the hotel, but our frugal ways thwarted them, as the hostel couldn’t offer much for guests that paid only Q170 in total by squeezing into two beds and two hammocks.  Rasta mon yelled something like “I’ll cut your throat!” at the Iguana staff who only laughed.

While rasta mon may have worn on us after awhile, the Iguana staff made a good impression from the start.  When we arrived three of them, Corey, Matt and Rad Matt were strewn about on couches watching The Office, a luxury we have been denied during our stay in Guatemala as we can’t get the episodes on cable or the Internet.  They apologized for their lack of energy and explained that they had been up until 7 in the morning partying.  They were charming even in their depleted states.

Matt, a bald but proudly so gringo ex-pat (think Moby but slimmer) showed us our rooms. Corey, a gringo world traveler, who kind of looked like a dark haired Patton Oswalt, explained to us how the hostel worked and opened up tabs for us.  Rad Matt, the lone Brit of the bunch in glasses and bad teeth sat on the couch while the other two made fun of him.  Corey claimed he got the name Rad back in the day when he was a techno DJ performer under the name Radical, which he categorically denied.

Corey gave us the down low on the city and told us about the Seven Altars, a series of waterfalls 8 kilometers from town.  He told us that unfortunately, the wet season hadn’t gotten its feet turning yet and the river was flowing as a trickle rather a roar, but it was still worth seeing.

We decided to eat lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall place that offered meals for 10Q each and the head out to the Seven Altars.  The plates of rice and ground beef were nothing special but that saucy temptress Marie saved the day, accenting the bland flavors.

We opted to take a taxi as far as we could on the path to save time, but we didn’t know how to going about doing that until a friendly Mexican lady with ample arm pit hair who told us that every car in town was a taxi and pointed us in right direction.

We were able to secure two taxis for the eight of us and it was only a 15-minute ride to the bridge where we had to get out and walk the rest of the way along the beach.  We let the warm waters of the Caribbean lap up against our feet as we walked.  When we reach the altars we paid a garifuna man in a hammock 10Q each to enter the site and went on our merry way.  The river was rather sedated and water barely creeped over the falls.  We navigated the slippery rocks upriver until we reached the biggest waterfall, where we hoped to cliff-jump into the pool below.  I hopped in the cool refreshing pool to test out the depth and discovered that once you where five feet from the cliff-face the water was quite deep, so you only had to make sure you got a good jump to clear the jagged rocks hiding close to the wall.  We all did it although I, for one, was quite nervous I would slip and fall into the shallows below.  Luckily we were all sure-footed.

The river was rather tame at the Seven Altars.

We took a taxi on the return too and went to the Internet café to check on e-mails.  We realized it was happy hour at the hostel bar so we went back and took advantage.  Since we saved so much on food we didn’t feel bad about splurging on a few drinks.  We couldn’t help but order a drink called Dr. Pepper which is half a beer and half a coke mixed together.  You drop a shot of Amaretta in it and chug the whole drink.  Surprisingly it tasted exactly like Dr. Pepper.

For dinner we got a delicious meal of shish kabobs, coconut rice and salad for Q30.  We sat with a young lady from Manchester named Catherine, with whom we had great fun shooting shit about politics and differences in US and British language use.  In celebration of our last night in Guatemala we all did a tequila shot and a crack whore (don’t worry mom it’s a drink not a disease infested prostitute/junky).

Unfortunately we planned to leave at 6 the next morning for Honduras and had to cut our night short.  Pictures to come with this post, I just don't have the time or patience right now.

Goodbye Xela, hello Rio Dulce

5 p.m. May 2

I had to bid Xela, my home for four months, goodbye yesterday.  It was hard to part from the dingy yet oh-so-lovable city and its friendly citizens, especially my lovely host family.  I’m not saying goodbye to Central America just yet though, because for the next three weeks six friends and I are trekking it from Xela across Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica before heading back to the states.

Today I am in Rio Dulce, tomorrow I will perhaps be in Livingston, the Garifuna haven on the Caribbean coast, before crossing the border into Honduras.  The beauty of our travel plan is that we don’t have a plan.  We have no reservations; we only know that on May 21 we will be onboard a plane leaving San Jose, Costa Rica for the States.  The rest is improvisation.

At 4 this morning we boarded a bus to Guatemala City, before catching another bus to Rio Dulce.  We left the temperate weather of the western highlands for the muggy conditions of the eastern lowlands.  The heat was quite a shock, but a welcome change.

At 3 p.m. we arrived in Rio Dulce, and as soon as we stepped off the bus, hotel peddlers hounded us.  Since we did have lodgings yet, we let one guy talk us into staying at his hotel, Casa Perico, since he said it would cost only Q40 ($5).  He walked us to the dock and told us to wait there and mayhaps drink a beer while we waited for a boat to take us to the hotel.

When the boat arrived we piled our extensive collection of luggage into and headed down river.  We turned into a tributary that wormed through the mangrove forests before arriving at our secluded hotel that harkened Swiss Family Robinson as it seemed to meld right into the surrounding forest.  I immediately collapsed into hammock and felt right at home.

Angela captured everyone's excitement on the way to Casa Perico.

Now here I sit blogging in our dorm-style hotel room with no Internet, so this post may take some time to reach you, but I had to take the opportunity to write while I had it and figure out Internet later.  But since we have free use of the kayaks here, I better take advantage rather than spending my vacation in front of a laptop screen.

I will keep you updated on the adventures and catastrophes of my trip as they transgress