Nicarauga trip, part 1!

Hello to all after an extended absence from my posting on the blog! I have just returned (as of Sunday, that is) from a 10-day trip to Nicaragua and, as promised, I’d love to let you all know what exactly I was up to and how cool it was!

For those who were keeping track of me last semester, you may remember I took a weeklong trip to Panama. USAC, the study abroad program I’m in, facilitates such weeklong trips every semester – last October was Panama and this semester was Nicaragua. However, as Nicaragua is an extraordinarily cheap country to travel in and USAC would have charged me $500 to go with them, I decided less money and a longer, less schedule-ized trip would be a better option. As such, my friends Ashley Lyons and Ashley Hansen (to whom I’ll have to refer with last initials due to the same name – it caused some confusion during travels!), who were both here with me last semester as well, joined me and the three of us took off two Fridays ago – that is, February 20 – on our own to see what we could do by the time our classes called us back to Heredia.

Friday, February 20
Ashley² (meaning both of them, another term I’ll be using) came over the night before because we had to get up at 4:00 am to grab a taxi into San José to the TicaBus station. TicaBus is a trans-Central American bus service that extends from Panama to Mexico; Ashley L. and I will use the same service when we go to Guatemala during Holy Week. The bus left around 6:00 (we were told to be present an hour in advance), and we spent most of the day traveling. My assigned seat (closer to Ashley²) was actually taken by a fussy old lady who decided for inexplicable reasons that she deserved the aisle seat and that I would be just fine in her window seat…and so it was. The bus itself was absolutely freezing, because they just blast the A/C the whole ride. After sleeping a few hours I talked a little bit with my stubborn seat companion (I was over it…really), whose name is Francisca. She’s a Nicaraguan (though Panamanian by birth) who was on her way to Managua after visiting family in the south. She told me a little bit about her now home country, and wished me a good experience in my travels.
The Nicaraguan border was pretty crazy. Most of our crossing consisted of us unloading luggage for and presenting papers to apathetic border patrol agents (particularly on the Nicaraguan side) who lazily stamped our passports and made no effort to even act interested in whether our luggage ought or ought not to be checked. I could have brought pretty much anything into Nicaragua and they would have had no idea…which was a scary thought. Anyway, after a few more hours in the bus we finally arrived in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua.
As it was our first day and we were already tired from lack of sleep and an inactive day seated in a bus, we didn’t do a whole lot. We did check into the hostel Los Santos (the Saints), a comfortable if not entirely clean place to stay with a pleasantly open atmosphere. We did go out for a few hours, but mostly just to find an ATM (Ashley H. only had $US on hand and I had nothing), and we did manage to take out some córdobas (Nicaraguan currency – 20 córdobas = $1) for at least the first part of our trip. Afterward, we searched in vain for somewhere we could buy tickets to a baseball game, something Ashley L.’s guidebook recommended. After a modest dinner of PB&J sandwiches and other snacks which Ashley H. had brought with her, we decided to take a two hour nap until 9:00 at which point we wanted to go out and enjoy some Managuan nightlife. We ended up being so tired that we ignored our alarms, slept until 10:00, and after getting up decided to just sleep the rest of the night anyway and go out the next day.

Saturday, February 21
After plenty of sleep, I woke up around 8:00 and after a quick shower I grabbed a hammock outside our room and read a little of the latest novel I’ve been getting through (The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, almost done with it!) while waiting for Ash² to get out of bed. After getting some bread for breakfast, we took a taxi to Las huellas (the footprints), a museum/exhibit in Managua in which one can see footprints from centuries ago that were preserved by a volcanic eruption and were discovered decades ago by Nicaraguan workers who were clearing out land for construction purposes. The place was very low-key, and very far off from just about anywhere else in the city. We were the only visitors at the time. Afterward we took a taxi to the beach of Lake Managua, where we encountered one of those amazing places on earth where you simply have to cross a fence to find yourself in a different economic setting – between streets in which dirty children selling gum maraud around looking for white people and streets with green grasses and tiki huts built for tourists. At the shoreline, we found a $2 boat tour of the lake we could take, which turned out to be basically a loop around one side of the lake with no information given. The boat was quite tall, and the waves were pretty enormous that day as well, so we had a pretty rocky ride – at times I felt a real (albeit very brief) moment of fear of capsizing.
After our boat adventure, we decided to head towards Managua’s central plaza where a number of important buildings, monuments, and parks are all within a few blocks of each other. After seeing a beautiful monument to Ruben Darío (a native Nicaraguan and one of Latin America’s most beloved poets), we approached the main plaza which is surrounded by an old cathedral, the presidential palace, and a couple other important buildings we didn’t take the time to investigate. While relaxing for a water break (it was hot out!) we were approached by a couple of street kids. At first they wanted to sell us stuff (cute little flowers made of reeds which rot a few hours after you buy them – they’re all over Nicaragua), but after establishing that we weren’t buying they decided they didn’t have anything else to do so they just sat down and started talking to us. I was a little uncomfortable at first, but Ashley L. is so incredibly quick to warm up to people that we ended up talking with them for some time. Just then a motorcycle with a couple of Latinos entered the plaza. I had already established a healthy fear of all things Managua, thanks to the constant threats of taxi drivers and locals who had basically been telling us so far never to walk anywhere (no matter what time of day), so naturally a couple of bruisers who looked like they could be in a biker gang (in fact, it turned out they were) did nothing to make me feel any more relaxed. Ironically, they turned out to be one of the best parts of my day – the street kids we were with asked them where they were from, and they said, of course, Costa Rica. Ashley² and I all thought (and almost said) “We are too!” After rephrasing the thought to “Cool, we live in Costa Rica!” we started talking with them. They turned out to be a very friendly pair of ticos – from the Costa Rican biker gang “Steel Angels.”
After a quick lunch of packed sandwiches and mangos (during which two police officers seemed to be staying within eyesight of our park bench – to protect us? we thought, half in jest and half seriously), we visited a couple more parks. One included a giant silhouette monument to Augusto Sandino, the historic heroic mascot of the FSLN, or Sandinistas, the current political party in power. Speaking of politics, I found it very noteworthy that in all of Nicaragua (but especially in Managua) one cannot escape the plentiful political propaganda that the Sandinistas have established. Huge signs abound depicting Sandinista political figures (usually Daniel Ortega, the current president) with inspiring messages like “¡Vamos por más victorias!”, “¡El pueblo, el presidente!”, or “¡Cumplirle al pueblo es cumplirle a Dios!” (Let’s keep going for more victory! The people – the president! Doing it for the people is to do it for God! [that last one being a bit difficult to translate accurately]). Though the rampant poverty testifies to a different reality, one would certainly get the impression from billboard optimism that the country is well on its way to being (if not already) a gem of Latin America.
After returning to the hostel we went out to a Mexican restaurant with great food, though it was mysteriously not busy for a Saturday night. After food we went hunting for a discoteca (dance club), but ended up taking taxis to four different places (one was closed, another played “prom slow dance” music almost exclusively, and another turned out not to even have a dance floor) until we finally got to Matrix, a rowdy club in central Managua. There we made a couple acquaintances, including Fannie, a delightfully friendly (albeit slightly tipsy) nica (or Nicaraguan – the same as “tico” for “Costa Rican”) who danced with us. Eventually Ashley H. became a bit tired of the attention her blonde gringa looks were earning her, and I ended up dancing with her most of the night so as to fend off some of the locals who were hoping we weren’t boyfriend-girlfriend. Overall we had a lot of fun, but around 1:30 we called it quits and took a cab back to the hostel to grab a few hours of sleep before an early bus ride the next day.

Sunday, February 22
After about four hours of sleep we got up, had breakfast at the hostel, and grabbed a cab to the bus station where we found a microbus to León. We ended up waiting awhile for the bus to get to the station, but it was a pleasant ride. There was a large group of Norwegian girls on the same ride, and it was a little strange to hear a language that I didn’t understand over the course of the 2-hour trip (on a side note, I’ve noticed an unusual amount of Scandinavians in Latin America – they’re everywhere down here!). Ashley² napped a bit, while I put my iPod on and read some more Wilde. Wherever and whenever you get off your bus in Nicaragua, you are guaranteed to have a multitude of taxi drivers at your disposal, and León was no exception. Ten minutes later we arrived at LazyBones hostel, a great little place with cheap rooms and free internet, coffee, swimming pool, and pool table. After unpacking we started wandering the streets of León (though we were quite tired from not sleeping much). Despite seeing some beautiful sites around the city – including Basilica Catedral de la Asunción (Cathedral of the Assumption), the largest cathedral in Central America – we soon realized that very little in the way of restaurants or stores were open, as it was Sunday.
Thus, we went to a local supermarket, bought some basics for a simple dinner, and went back to the hostel to relax. After a day of little sleep, bus rides, and walking the city for a few hours we were ready to just crash. A short swim in the pool felt great, and we considered following it up by going to the local movie theater. Instead, some of the other guys in the hostel popped in The Dark Knight on the TV by the pool, and as Ashley² had never seen it and I wanted to see it again, we made that our entertainment for the night (Tracy Dahl-Webb, if you’re reading this, I still want to watch it with you when I get back!!). After the movie, we had dinner, used the internet, read a little bit, played some card games, and finally went to bed after making some on-the-fly plans for the following day.

Monday, February 23
Breakfast at the hostel was cheap and tasty. The first thing we did after leaving the hostel was go to the office of Quetzal Trekkers in León, an organization we read about in brochures in the hostel the day before. Quetzal Trekkers is a group of volunteers with locations in both León and Guatemala. For relatively little cost, they take able-bodied tourists on a number of backpacking hikes up volcanoes and other such trips, providing everything from water and food to sleeping bags and hiking gear. 100% of their proceeds go to a sister organization called Las tías (the aunties) which helps street kids who would normally not receive any sort of education or opportunities for positive social interaction and participation that Las tías facilitates. After checking out trip options, we told the office we would come back that evening to make a reservation for the following day.
Near a central market we hopped on a camioneta (basically a pickup with benches in back that runs short transport routes around town for 3 córdobas [15 cents]/person) that took us to a smaller market where we found our bus to Las peñitas, a small but lovely beach near León on the pacific coast of Nicaragua. There weren’t a ton of people there – our guidebook said to expect deserted beaches on weekdays – but we didn’t mind. It was a hot day, but thankfully a few hours after a strong sun we enjoyed some cloud cover. The waves were enormous, but that didn’t keep us out of the water (we were careful, mom!). We spent about a half-hour simply diving under the giant waves that packed a punch if you didn’t get under them fast enough (in this we were not alone – a large group of Scandinavians were there as well…), then headed in to relax on the sand a bit. On a whim, we buried Ashley H. in the sand and took some photos. After excavating her, we were approached by a bold Nicaraguan boy of about 11 years who, after failing to sell us his shell necklaces, declared Ashley L. to be his girlfriend (much to our amusement, of course). We washed off the sand, grabbed a table at a nearby restaurant and had a light lunch and cold drinks before grabbing a bus to León.
Once back in León, we went back to the Quetzal Trekkers office to finalize a 2-day hike up and down Volcán Telica, starting the following morning. Not particularly hungry at this point, we grabbed some frozen coffee and slushies at a local café after which we head to the movie theatre for an evening showing of “Simplemente no te quiere” (“He’s just not that into you”). When we arrived back at the hostel, we packed all of our things and showered in preparation for the following day, when we needed to be at Quetzal Trekkers at 6:00 am for breakfast and prep for the hike. Excited for the adventure that awaited us, we slept well that night (we would need it!).

Ok, this post has become ridiculously long, and I’m only halfway through the trip! As I’ve been working on this for a few hours now, I’ll leave you with this for now and get the next half up in a few days. Sorry for making you wait for the post, but as you can see there’s plenty to tell! I’ll be typing up part two over the next few days and post sometime next week. Pictures are also on the way! Thanks as always for the prayers and support. I really miss you all. Peace!