Category: RTW Trip

After a grueling 3 weeks in Nicaragua…okay, there really wasn’t that much that was grueling about it, except for maybe the cold showers and that rat that invaded our bedroom one night…we decided to end our stay in this beautiful Central American country with a few days at the beach. Appropriately enough in a country chock full of volcanoes, Las Penitas, the beach we went to near Leon, was a black sand beach, that burned the heck out of your feet. As with most Pacific Ocean beaches, the water was rough and the waves were huge and popular with surfers. The water was however, in contrast to most of my experiences with the Pacific Ocean, not freezing cold and actually felt really great, especially considering how hot the sun is in Nicaragua.

A couple of hours in the sand and the surf and a mojito or two (we had to try the local rum!), and we were nice and relaxed (since let me tell you…permanent vacation is rough). So being all relaxed and having nice hammocks all around us for a leisurely day of reading, what did we decide to do with ourselves on day two? Well, wake up at 5 a.m., rent a kayak, and paddle around for 6 hours, of course. What else would you do?

In the early morning sunlight, we paddled through a lagoon created by an island that is now a nature preserve. Herons, egrets, and other large beautiful birds flew low over the water. Blue and orange crabs clung to the roots of the mangrove trees that grew dense along the lagoon. Tiny fish leaped in and out of the water. And somewhere caymans lurked, though we never did see one.

After a few hours of paddling, we tied up our kayak and scrambled across a narrow portion of the island to the crashing waves of the ocean on the other side. We looked as far as we could see in both directions, and yet saw no one. We had the entire beach to ourselves. So we waded in the water, searched among the many shells that washed ashore for the best of them, and watched tiny hermit crabs scuttle along the sand. When the tide had gone out, we returned to our boat, making the return trip with the current in our favor, a good thing since the sun had become quite intense.

After all the paddling, swimming, and sunning, I was wiped out, but Jeff still had a bit of energy to spare, so when darkness descended he headed back to the island, this time with a park ranger and a very specific goal—spotting one of the sea turtles that come ashore on the island to lay their eggs. (And here, in his words, is that experience…)

Six men per week live out on Isla Juan venado during the week, and their job is to walk the beach at night and look for turtles laying eggs. They then collect these eggs after the turtles have left and move them to a “vivero” where they can safely incubate. When they hatch, they are released at night so they have a better chance of survival. My guide and I (I was the only one interested in turtle watching, apparently) set off early in order to see the release of some of the young ones that had been born that day. Beyond that, “necesitas tener suerte” – a little luck was in order.

We headed out to the island slightly before dusk and by the time we reached the vivero (hatchery) and the tiny turtles, it was pretty well dark. Even so, they were impossibly tiny and soft. And when they were set on the sand, they just sat there, somewhat bewildered. Eventually they got the idea and stumbled off toward the ocean. Then they disappeared.

Then we set off down the beach, my guide and I on a romantic evening stroll.  There is something quite maggical about the beach at night, especially in Nicaragua, where the entire sky is lit up with stars.  The soft moonlight illuminates the crashing waves, the cool sand, the way every ridge in the sand casts dramatic shadows.

We walked for about an hour down the beach, with me turning on my flashlight constantly looking for turtles. Its only after I give up on seeing one and we turn around that I realize how silly it was to be so actively looking for one. About five minutes back toward the vivero, there is a giant shadow of disrupted sand leading directly up the beach. At the end sits a giant lump, and its abundantly clear, tengo suerte. The turtle has just started digging a nest, and is throwing out sand with strained effort. My guide tells me we must be very quiet because at this point if we are noticed, it will leave without laying eggs. We sit patiently and wait until the sand stops flying and the turtle starts laying. At this point, there is no turning back for the turtle.

We observe this much closer, then watch as the turtle slowly fills back in the sand and does what I think is the coolest part. It scoops sand in, then leans to and fro on its belly a bit like a rolling pin, compacting the sand. Following this ritual, the turtle ambled back off toward the sea, and within one wave hitting it, was gone.

That was the only turtle we saw all night. In a way, I liked it that way. Many would’ve been neat to see, but I wouldn’t have studied it as closely, watched the whole process through. And it felt like something I had to earn with all my walking, a just reward. It really was an amazing process to watch, and I’m glad I went (and made my guide walk so long with me). It was a pleasant way to end Nicaragua.

In the 3+ weeks that we’ve been in Nicaragua, I’ve ridden more school buses than I think I have in the rest of my life combined. You see, I was a car rider when I was in school, so I only hopped aboard school buses for field trips. But in Nicaragua, the good ol’ Blue Bird school bus is the standard mode of transport. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the bright yellow bus of your childhood, well, my friend, it’s been reincarnated in Nicaragua. And it’s seeing things it’s never seen before.

For starters, it’s seeing way more people onboard than it ever thought possible. You think those seats are made for two people in each one? Ha, think again. Three minimum. And that’s three adults. If you’ve got kids, you can fit way more than three. And what was that nonsense about keeping the aisles clear. No, sirree, the aisles aren’t for safe passage. They are for jamming with people. As many as can fit. We’re a friendly people here. Your hand smooshed up against her boob is no problem at all.

The modest school bus is also seeing life as a courier of not just people, but things. Have a bike you need to get to another town? Just throw it up on top. Want to take 50 lb bags of rice to your village? Those go in the back. Smelly fish? A chicken? An entire trunkload of goods you want to sell at market? No problem. Wherever they can fit is just fine.

Oh and about that no drinking and eating rule. That was just a joke. Eat and drink all you want. Eat the corn cakes that the lady hawks to you at the station. Drink the sodas served in plastic bags that the young boy who got on last stop and will get off next stop is shoving in your face. Then when you’re done with your chips and your candies, your plaintains and your refrescoes, just throw the trash out the window. I mean, it’s not like there’s a trash can on the bus and who would even think of holding on to it all the way to your destination.

And while we’re throwing rules (and trash) out the window, the one about walking while the bus is in motion can go. If you can’t walk around while the driver drives, then how can you make sure the entire bus hears your infomercial on protractors or Icy Hot? And don’t bother waiting for the bus to come to a complete stop before exiting or entering. You might not get to get on or off if you do that. The bus has a schedule you know…though maybe you don’t, since the bus has probably never shown up when the schedule said it would.

But hey, just wait…seriously, just wait, it will come. It always comes. Well, okay, almost always. Just not that one time when it broke down in the road only about 2 km from where you were waiting for it for an hour past when it was supposed to come. But hey, like the bus driver said, when you saw him under the hood of the bus as you rode past in the back of the pick-up truck that transported you instead, the bus was still coming. You just needed to wait a little longer. And then, as always, you would have a most excellent experience on the Nicaraguan transport of choice…the good ol’ Blue Bird school bus.

Last Thursday, once class was over and we had consumed one of the always enormous lunches provided by our host family, Jeff and I hopped the bus to Masaya, a nearby town famed for its markets. Jeff had been before but he hadn’t really said much about them except that he’d bought his hammock there. From what the guidebooks said and what others had mentioned in passing, I was under the impression that the old market—the one most highly recommended—was a place where artisans from all over Nicaragua set up shop and sold their goods: handwoven hammocks, carved wooden figurines, ceramic bowls and vases, and much more. I was pretty excited because, even though I wasn’t planning to buy anything—the backpack is full enough as is—I love looking at crafts and talking to the artisans who make them. I was expecting an arts and crafts fair with Central American flavor.

Well, boy was I disappointed. What I found instead was a sterile building with stand after stand selling the same exact things. In fact, they weren’t really stands at all; they were more like little shops. And the people who ran them weren’t artisans, but shopkeepers. They didn’t really know anything about the pieces or have any experience working with the crafts themselves. It wasn’t at all what I expected; instead it was prettily packaged tourism.

So we walked through rather briskly, glancing at variations on the same thing over and over, and then took a walk through the town to a malecon (or boardwalk) extending above the nearby Laguna. Luckily, it was rather scenic, providing a bit of saving grace to an otherwise disappointing trip.

I think I once heard someone say that you can’t win them all. Turns out they were right. But since we seem to win way more than we lose, I guess I can’t really complain. Chalk it up to experience.

Its not too often you can hop a bus into the clouds. But that’s exactly what we did last week as an easy day trip from Granada, riding the bus from the entrance to the Volcan Mombacho Reserve directly to the shrouded top. The top remains semi-permanently in a cloud from the moist air from Lake Nicaragua hitting the steep cliffs of the volcano. This results in what they call a “cloud forest.” I just call it neat and think its fun to walk around in.

They had a lovely path that wound around the main caldera, with vistas looking both ways, into the crater and out across Lake Nicaragua and Granada. If there were no signs to tell you what you were “looking at” however, it wouldn’t matter, since they all looked just like this.

But what all this cloud cover did was make everything look creepy and incredible all at the same time. Even simple trees took on new imagery. It didn’t hurt that the constant cloud cover provided a very moist environment that epiphytes apparently love.

The end point of our hike was a series of “fumadores,” emanations of steam from the earth. Given the conditions, however, these were tough to separate from the rest of the cloud until you were right in its sulfurous path. But from this western edge of the volcano, facing the lake, you could strongly feel the wind pushing up and over the mountain, and any body parts facing the lake collected cloud, like my arm.

All in all, it was a very surreal experience, but fascinating. Here’s a few more pictures to round it out.

Formed (at least in legend) by the explosion of the nearby volcano Mombacho, 365 tiny isletas—one for each day of the year—dot Lake Nicaragua just off the coast of Granada. In the heat of a Tuesday afternoon, we motored past them along with two of our classmates from Casa Xalteva, as well as a guide and a driver. Many of the isletas are too small to be occupied and thus are simply oasis of green as well as the occasional monkey.

Some are home to small communities–and by small I mean two to three houses. Some host restaurants (which allow you to swim as you wait for your meal).

And a final few are privately owned. All are beautiful and made me feel as if I were in the Caribbean, rather than a lake in the middle of Nicaragua.

Our guide, an employee of Casa Xalteva in charge of organizing outings, actually lived on an isleta and gave us some firsthand accounts of life on a tiny piece of land. His description of what they ate reminded me of a popular scene in Forrest Gump—fried fish, baked fish, fish with plantains, fish with yucca, plain fish, fish soup, etc.—and had us all laughing. On the other hand, his comment that you could buy one of these isletas for $40,000 had us all quietly contemplating. After all, who doesn’t want to own an island?

Later in the day, our feet back on solidly dry land, we wandered down the pedestrian lane that stretched from Grananda’s central park to the lake, happening past a travel agency with a help wanted sign in the window: Wanted, Bilingual Assistant. Jeff, though never before having expressed an interest in the field of travel planning, decided that he was plenty qualified. And there we had it—Scheme #1 in what I’m sure will be plenty as we travel the world and contemplate the many opportunities out there. Jeff putting his mad Spanish skills to work planning other people’s vacations, while I sit at home on our own private island and write a novel or two. Not a bad option, I’d say.

Ever since we arrived in Granada, we heard how great the Laguna de Apoyo was. Beautiful, clear, refreshing water inside of a volcanic crater. So we decided to head there on Sunday. Though its a thirty minute drive away, any tour agency in town would take us there for a song (~$10). Here’s the problem: first, that was too easy for us and second, its funny how your concept of cheap and expensive changes.

Instead, we decided to take the shuttle from another hotel for less. Arriving there, we learned there was no shuttle this time of year, but they did inform us that an express bus left for there from the shuttle stand two blocks away. We rushed over as we only had a few minutes (or so we thought), only to find out this also did not exist. Instead, they could drop us off at the turn off of the highway, still an hour long walk away from the laguna. We decided this would not only be fine, it would be a great way to work up to a nice dip in the water. So off we went. We ignored the taxis waiting at the turn off offering to whisk us down to the laguna and started walking. We passed community after community, house after house, church after church, all in services on a Sunday morning. At every fork in the road (of which there were more than the map ever indicated), a handful of highly helpful people loitered, always with a smile and a point in the right direction. Its like they knew where we were headed or something.

But after an hour, we were still climbing and no laguna looked remotely in site. The sun was beating down, we had almost exhausted the water we brought, and we had heard the way down to the laguna was farther than the distance up. At this point, the whole walking thing started to seem like a bad idea.

But right about then, we crested a hill and there it was. A gorgeous vista out over the crater of a volcano, with a shimmering lake waiting for us hundreds of feet below. Granted, we still had a long way down to go, but all my thoughts of how loco we were vanished. We bounded down the hill with a spring in our step and headed to our original destination, having heard the private beaches were the best.

Unfortunately, Crater’s Edge had a small sign outside their hotel indicating they were closed for the entire month. Undeterred, we walked nearby to the Monkey Hut, took one look and decided this hostel was too touristy for our taste. And they wanted $6 for the privilege of hanging out (to be fair, for that you got to use their inner tubes and kayaks). Besides, they had no restaurant where we could get food.

So we walked down to the public beach. We parked ourselves at one of five identical looking beachfront restaurants, passing the afternoon in comfort with the locals. The water was clear and refreshing. Kids came over to take our pictures, we made friends with a group of small children playing in their underwear with floaties made of two liter coke bottles and watched a pair of teens do some serious making out nearby. I’m pretty sure none of this would’ve happened at our friendly hostel.

Our version of taking it easy on the way back was to take the hour late bus back out of the laguna, then hop another bus back to Granada. I don’t know why exactly we have this aversion to the simple way of doing things, but it does always lead to the “interesting” way instead. It would’ve been a much different day if we had just taken a taxi or tourist bus.