'NikaRagYouAre' – It's Australian for Nicaragua

'NikaRagYouAre' – It's Australian for Nicaragua San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua Again, we are the worst backpackers in the world. I am even beginning to get a bit self conscious about it all. We talk to people who are living on $10 a day and I can definitely feel the judgement oozing from them when I tell them that we just blew that on having our laundry done. That said, forking out $240 and flying from Roatan to Tegucigalpa was the best money we have ever spent. It only took 45 minutes, saving us 16 hours of agony on 4 different buses. From Tegucigalpa to Granada was the easiest and most comfortable trip that we have made so far. The town of Granada in Nicaragua is a quaint colonial town situated an hour away from the capital of Managua. It has a striking similarity to Antigua and the main tourist precinct is situated around a central park. We were dropped off in the central park at 7:30 at night after a very long day with very little to eat and without any accommodation booked. We had a place in mind where we wanted to stay, but ended up walking right past it and checked into a very cheap hostel. Not our best choice in accommodation so far. We didn’t want to spend too much time in Granada as we were really excited to head south to Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua, but we did spend one day there. We used this time to get caught up on laundry, go to the gym and do a little sightseeing. The gym was an experience. As Joseph and I feel like we are just eating and drinking on this extended holiday, when we saw an ad for a local gym we decided to go check it out. The gym was a little different to the Fitness First I am used to back home. No air conditioning and I am pretty sure the equipment was around during the filming of Pumping Iron and then left in some salty, coastal environment to rust. Nevertheless, Joseph and I did a workout in heat that was close to the temperature of the surface of the sun. By the end of the session I had sweat out about four litres of water, was completely saturated and looked like I was about to have a mild coronary. The locals didn’t break out in a sweat. The journey from Granada to Ometepe wasn’t very long so we decided that it would be about time for us to catch our very first chicken bus. The chicken buses in central America are old American school buses that are painted a kaleidoscope of different colours, can be known to carry a bit of livestock and have drivers that think they are in NASCAR. It actually wasn’t that bad, but we decided to limit our time on them to only very short distances. As the seats were originally designed for American school children there isn’t a lot of leg room for taller people. We have met people on our travels who actually enjoy riding on chicken busses. Those people have all been short. In addition to guaranteeing a knee cap crushing ride, they are also the slowest mode of transport (second only to walking or maybe riding a donkey). That said, if you are looking to do Central America on a very tight budget, they are extremely cheap and your best bet to cover a lot of ground. You may go crazy as a result however. The boat out to Ometepe looked like a dilapidated piece of junk. I am pretty sure that the Indonesian people smuggling boats that were unfit for the journey to Australia wound up here. Our boat looked like it could sink at any moment as it spewed out black smoke while crossing Lake Nicaragua. We sat right near the window and even formulated an evacuation plan in case we had to do a little man over board situation. There was a man operating a manual bilge pump for the entire journey. After one hour and mild carbon monoxide poisoning, we made it to Moyogalpa. Again, based on a recommendation from a book that we had read, we headed to Playa Santo Domingo to spend a few days on the beach. We arrived only to discover, there ain’t no stinkin playa. The water had risen so much that there was literally no beach, just stairs into a lake. Our accommodation was clean and nice and there were monkeys to compensate so it was kinda cool. As soon as we arrived, we decided to do a bit of exploring around our little town. As the town consisted of 7 buildings, this did not take too long. On our return, a man on a motorbike approached us to say that a Brahma bull was approaching. As there are approximately a billion cows all over the road, we kindly thanked him and moved on our way thinking that it was time for him to check his meds. That is when we saw it. This was one angry bull. He was charging at anything in sight. Everyone on the road jumped into the bushes to escape his wrath except for one poor guy on a push bike. The bull charged full steam at the man and his bike. The man was okay, but the poor bike didn’t quite make it. The next day, we hired some bikes and cycled to Ojos de Agua, which is a natural spring that has been gathered in a sort of swimming pool. Before we arrived, we did not have high hopes, but it turned out to be a really nice surprise. The pools were in the middle of the hot jungle and the water was deliciously cool, clean and absolutely beautiful. We could have spent days swimming around there. The pools weren’t that far away, so we decided to keep our bikes for a bit and get some exercise. We decided to cycle to Merida, which on the map does not look too far away, but the map neglects to indicate that the only road to get there was an unpaved, washed out rocky track and did I mention it was a million degrees? We finally arrived in Merida a little sweaty and had some lunch. Merida is on the opposite side of the island to Santo Domingo. It is not as windy so the lake is calmer and the hostel Hacienda Merida was surrounded by trees. We decided that we would move there the next day. We being myself, Joseph and our new French Canadian friend, Robin. We met Robin in Granada and as we were all travelling the same route we had decided to stick together. Robin also taught us all how to make grasshoppers out of palm tree leaves so it’s been a win-win partnership. It ended up being a bit of a pain to get to Merida from our hostel. Imagine three weary travels waiting for a bus that never comes and one very greedy and pushy taxi driver who does his utmost to belittle and infuriate us. We paid more to go 10km then to travel the 40km from the dock to Santo Domingo. Upon arrival, Joseph and I checked into a room that can only be described as a love nest. The large bed was draped in a pink mosquito net, covered in flowers and the towels arranged in star like patterns. The side of the island where Merida is situated is much calmer and although there is no beach, there is a lovely dock that you can jump off of. When Joseph saw the used nappy and bloody bandage floating in the water, he made an executive decision that his swimming in Lake Nicaragua was done. We did hire some kayaks and paddle out to Monkey Island. We were expecting a little primate metropolis where they had managed to build sky scrapers out of bamboo complete with coconut powered cars. Instead we saw just two cranky little monkeys. Seriously, there were only two on the whole island and they really looked like they wanted to throw some poo at us. We bumped into Lars, who we had met in Guatemala and his new travelling buddy, Bec. She was from the Gold Coast and even went to the same school as me, graduating two years later. She was also in the navy and even knew my brother, Luke. It’s funny how you can be on the remotest part of the most random island in the middle of nowhere and still meet people with one degree of separation. Last year in Africa we met an Australian guy in Zambia who also worked with my brother. I am beginning to think Luke is extremely popular. We all decided to check out the local fiesta that was happening not too far from our hostel. The main attraction was bull riding and apparently a lot of beer drinking. There were hoards of men who were staggering drunk all over the place. The bull riding itself was a little sad so we decided to ditch it and head to another bar to consume a large quantity of rum. I say bar, when in actual fact it was some enterprising locals home with a sign saying ‘BAR’ hung up out the front. We had a fun night chatting with our new friends and eventually found out way back home. We decided that we had spent enough time on Ometepe and it was time to head to the beach at San Juan del Sur. This was our first time on this trip where we got to swim in the Pacific or as I called it “my ocean”. Our first hostel, although cheap, was a tiny, boiling hot cave so we decided it best to find some other digs. We moved to a very lovely guesthouse that was by far the most homely place we have stayed so far. The beach in San Juan del Sur is quite polluted and there are lots of boats milling about so you are advised not to swim there. There is a beach about 20 minutes to the north called Playa Madera that is supposed to be quite nice. We hopped in a shuttle driven by another NASCAR freak and made it to the beach in record time. As soon as we arrived at the beach, an English girl approached us and informed us that a surfer had just died and was still on the beach. They were waiting for the police to come and make their official report before moving him. The police took a very long time to come and his body stayed on the beach for a very long time. He was apparently quite a good surfer and the waves were actually quite small. They think that he fell, his board knocked him unconscious and he drowned. It was very sad. He was only 22.
During our sombre day at the beach we did however meet some very nice Norwegians, Anders and Henriette. Anders is a computer programmer too so we at least got to talk in zeros and ones for a while. In the evening we had a few drinks at the hostel across from us. There we met more interesting characters including a melodian playing dutch woman who entertained us with Celine Dion’s titanic smash hit, my heart will go on. Today is out last full day in Nicaragua before heading south to Costa Rica tomorrow. Looking forward to more monkeys, jungles and active volcanoes!

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