Megan
5 months ago
megan
Nibbles of Nicaragua
After a really nice 5 weeks in Guatemala and 3 in El Salvador it was time to keep heading south. Word on the overland traveler street is that Honduras isn't very foreigner friendly and there's not much to see and do on the mainland. We hate to judge a country by its cover, so maybe someday we'll be back but for now we decided to high tail it thru and only spend one night there before doing another back to back border of entering Nicaragua. But don't worry, I had a Honduran beer because that is my role in life.
The next morning we were up bright and early to cross into Nicaragua - a border we had been dreading. We heard many people had to unpack their whole van to go thru a scanner and the border crossing could take 6 hours. It must have been our lucky day as we got thru the escape room maze in around 2 hours. Celebration time would soon be happening as I hit my 75th country! Oh but not so fast...
Within minutes of crossing into Nicaragua we were pulled over. The man in uniform asked if we had a fire extinguisher and road triangles which we proudly presented having read blogs about this schtick. Then the cop changed his tune and said we crossed a line. I couldn't figure out what the heck he was saying, while also trying to play dumb and annoy him with questions in worse spanish than I knew. Long story short, he held Gordon's license on the side of the hot road and threatened we would never be allowed back in the country if we didn't pay him $100 now. I offered him a nice cold coca cola as a currency which he smiled at and took a chug, but no dice on letting us go with a warning.
We both knew it was a shakedown but we had already had a long border day and finally after about an hour on the side of the hot road I said will you take $20? He nodded his agreement and we were freed from this terrible representative of Nicaragua for $20 + a cold coke. Afterwards we read up and this is the exact word for word shakedown, text book style. Well $20 over 6 months to a crooked cop isn't a terrible track record, so we shook it off as we had some beer tasting to get to. Hopefully next time they will tire faster of us and we will 'win' the battle. And note to self to not hand over our license but hold it up to the window first.
We stayed for 4 nights in Leon and weren't super impressed with the over 100 degree heat and kind of gritty feel of the city. But we did meet some cute dog tour guides that found us several days in a row and followed us around the hot city showing us it's beautiful churches.
We hiked a volcano and my RHF was caught on camera. I'm thinking the cop saw this 'resting heat face' too.
But it would soon be turned to a smile as we had a very special guest visitor arriving and meeting us in Granada for 8 nights. Now presenting Tricia of Seattle.
I can go no further in this blog post without the disclaimer right now that she is my sister's friend first. Although I've been trying to steal her to my dark side for many years, it seems that Tricia is quite happy being shared by the Friesen sisters and my sis is quite happy sharing as long as I don't forgot she was her friend first.
Over the next 8 days we lived it up in a fancy airbnb that had it's own very necessary plunge pool.
The pool came out of Gus's dog treats budget.
We hiked another volcano, saw a big sloth and Tricia went ziplining for $4.
We explored the lovely city of Granada alot in the evening when it was cooler. Here's a walk-in movie theater showing Barbie in the main square.
Street food yumminess called a Frito.
Granada is known for the beautiful tile works and splendid inner courtyards.
Tricia and I stole away to Ometepe for a night away while Gordon graciously watched Gus and some sci fi series in the airbnb. Ometepe is a gorgeous hippy island with two volcanos and Caroline's friend and I rented some scooters. It was a truly brilliant place to scooter ride for $20 each reinacting our favorite dumb and dumberess plotlines.
The 1 hour ferry ride was rough I will say though, it had yours truly quite seasick on Central America's biggest lake.
Back on the mainland we celebrated the last night with Tricia in town and she said that she loved her life and was ready to head home. We enjoyed her company and it made me feel really happy that she got so much relaxing fun time that she felt ready to head home and get back to work.
After she left, we headed to the Pacific ocean to San Juan del Sur for 4 nights. After 2 nights of bad sleep from it being too damn hot we needed to get out of there and spontaneously decided to head to the Costa Rican border and the mountains to get off the red in our temperature map.
I feel like we only skimmed Nicaragua in the 2 weeks we spent there as we mostly stayed on the tourist trail. But as a few people we met said - April is the worst time to be there. It's when the rainy season that cools things off hasn't quite started yet, and the heat is just climbing to make it pretty miserable.
My favorite memory of Nicaragua was at sunset from about 5-7 pm all the locals would pull their rocking chairs out to the street and have a little street party while their homes were too hot.
Really really great idea I hope to incorporate someday in my life. Thanks Caroline for loaning me your friend and thanks Tricia for joining us for some fun memories, especially getting us into a Nicaraguan pool hall in a country where women don't play pool and you were a tiberon! (shark)
And if you ever need your happy place again you know how to find us!
Gus will probably still be in his...
