Nicaragua

We returned from Nicaragua last night. We did day-anda-half hops between Granada, Isla Ometepe and San Juan del Sur. Traveled with Filip from Belgium. For so many places in a short time, it was a rather low key trip. More sites than adventure. All in all, it was very different than Costa Rica, that was a surprise. The people looked different, more poor, yet even the more friendly, slower pace, the heat was 2x stronger, everyday hit 90+ in the sun, easy.

The night before we left, Matt caught a super bad stomach bug, stayed up all night. I think our yogurt went bad, but we are not sure. I thought we were going to have to call off the trip but Matt was feeling bearably better at our alarm the morning of, so we zipped up our backpacks and called a cab to the Tica bus station and met Filip. We were on the road by 6:15 and with a little sleep and gingerale Matt was feeling good to go by lunch time. Granada has beautiful colonial work everywhere, the original craftsmanship has been barely altered. Made for some gorgeous pics. They have a main drag dedicated to tourism. Cheap hotels, hostels, restaurants of all kinds and a market in the central park.

Isla Ometepe is a 75 minute bus ride and 45 minute ferry from Granada. Simple and poor but hands down the most safest place we have been in Latin America. There is little to no violence towards foreigners and theft is always done in secret.

We completed a 4 hour hike on Volcano Conception but otherwise, we were drinking Tona and watching the sunset, or talking with our New York bred, witty hostel owners Robert and Simone in the open air cafe, sipping cafe con leche and breathing in the excessive second hand smoke between both Filip and Robert. Robert and Simone had been in Ometepe for 5 years, prior to that the Dominican Republic running a pizza shop and prior to that Europe. Made for some interesting stories and views. They were very thoughtful, they only took cash and the 1 atm in town was broken. There was a supermarket credit card machine as back up, but there was a 15% tax so Simone let us run up a tab of at least $100 in wait for the atm to be fixed. Robert and I are 2 pics below.

San Juan del Sur was our final stop and we met a young taxi driver who drove us their directly for cheap, bypassing the planned 3 hour bus ride, without air condition, in 90 degree plus weather. Our driver was relentless in blaming US government for Nicaragua's high gas prices and the toll it was taking on his taxi business, as well as talking about my Spanish to Filip in the front seat because he thought I couldn't follow what he was saying, but all in all, he drove us there safely and he connected us with a decent hotel in town... We put our bags down and headed straight to the beach...Back to the border the next morning around 10. We went through immigration and then literally walked across the border and bought a ticket for a noon bus back to San Jose. We got in around 7pm.