For a while it looked like the trip might not even happen, as people couldn’t quite work out the timing for work and other commitments. Once the dust finally settled from planning, it was my good PC friends Josh, Marcus, and I left standing. So it was to be a guy’s trip.
We took off from San José by bus, headed north for about 7 hours, and after working our way through the rather inefficient border crossing, hopped off the bus in the small town of Rivas in Southern Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere (behind Haiti). It’s government and political structure is dominated by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN, in Spanish symbols), of which Daniel Ortega is now the leader and president.
It’s not exactly clear what the “Liberación” in the FSLN means at this point as there’s been no war for roughly 20 years now in Nicaragua. Liberation from poverty?...international humanitarian aid? Either way they still have the country on lock down and it has made only marginal economic advances since peace was struck in Central America roughly two decades ago.
Apart from some very marginalized parts of the country, Nicaragua has a reputation among adventurous travelers as a damn fine place to travel. It’s cheap, has a rich (if violent) history, the oldest colonial architecture in region, big freshwater lakes, smoking volcanoes, and friendly people.
Before coming to Costa Rica to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer I probably would have never considered traveling to Nicaragua. During our travels we ran across plenty of European tourists but very few Americans. It’s probably safe to say most Americans don’t even have it on their radar as a place for tourists. My only guess as to why would be that the country conjures up certain images when people hear Nicaragua and think Iran-Contra scandal, or our country’s not-so-friendly standing with the Daniel Ortega and Co.
Either way, it is a shame that the country is not taken advantage of by more American tourists.
After getting off in Rivas, grabbing some Nicaraguan cash and a decent lunch, we pushed on to our destination – Ometepe Island. Ometepe is the biggest freshwater lake island in the world. It just also happens to be the home of two volcanoes – one active and one inactive.
Ometepe from the ferry.
We stayed on the island for three nights, took a day-long hike up the extinct volcano and into it’s crater down to a little lagoon, and then recovered from our hike the next day with swims in Lake Nicaragua and plenty of local Victoria beer. (yes, this is the extremely abbreviated version of our trip…internet time is limited)
Lake Nicaragua.
From Ometepe we went to the small city of Granada next, located on the shores of the lake farther to the north. Granada is the oldest city in Central American, founded around 1540, and retaining a lot of fantastic Spanish colonial architecture. We really enjoyed Granada, but unfortunately don’t have any pictures to share. Excited to reach a “real” city, we spent the first night at a crowded bar with live music and cheap Flor de Caña rum sold by the bottle. The cheap rum combined with running into some hilariously crazy Aussies we knew from Ometepe, made the night a complete despiche (fill in here with the English word you believe is appropriate and it probably will be).
As a result we spent the following day and a half alternating between eating cold fruity drinks, lounging on park benches, and seeking out any shady spot that would allow us to forget for a moment that we had no air conditioning in our $8 a night hostel. In other words, picture taking fell by the wayside.
The next stop was the university town of León in Northern Nicaragua. After a quick stop in Managua to pick up bus tickets for the return trip to Costa Rica, with the obligatory overcharging by a Managua cab driver who’s best attempt at a selling point was “other cab drivers will drive you somewhere and rob you”. Naturally we felt honored to be in the company of a cabbie of such integrity.
We finally arrived in León after a two hour bus ride from Managua and found a decent place to stay this time with air-conditioning and cable…our gift to ourselves for being on vacation. After getting settled we started exploring the city.
León would actually turn out to be our favorite city in Nicaragua (which means it was better than any Costa Rican city, as we had already deemed Nicaraguan towns to be far superior to those in CR). León is home to six universities, the biggest Catholic cathedral in Central America, the best art museum in Central America, lots of decent restaurants, and a lot of young people.
We ran into very few tourists, but still never felt that out of place. Most people just went about their business and we weren’t badgered by street vendors to by things like we were in Granada. León is also know as the home of the Sandista movement, so we caught up on some history of the leftist movement in the country.
We also took a short tour “volcano boarding”, which basically involves hiking up a semi-active volcano with a snowboard-like board and launching yourself down one of the rock and sand sides of the volcano. It was quite awesome. Although you couldn’t exactly “carve” down the volcano face like snowboarding, I was surprised to have quite a bit of control on the way down.
The volcano boarders.
After the descent.
Following León we stayed one uneventful night in Managua, then headed back to San José, Costa Rica. All told we spent about 9 days in Nicaragua. It was a fantastic trip and I would recommend traveling to Nicaragua to anyone.
Within a week of getting back to Costa Rica I had to leave my town again to participate in the annual All Volunteer Conference (AVC), which is the last one for me and the rest of the volunteers in my cycle. It was still a good time seeing all my friends and meeting the new volunteers that arrived about 8 months ago.
Now I’m getting back to work! I hope to put up another blog post in a few weeks to tell you about a project to establish a library here in my town that you may be able to help us fund!
I’ll end this blog with a friendly admonishment: Don’t be a bogan! Which only Josh and Marcus are likely to understand.
Hint: bogan = redneck in aussie
Will be in touch.
