Nicaragua

Finally made a plan to go to Nicaragua, its been a goal since I first got here to go to Nicaragua and Panama and im soo glad I was able to do both. However we got off to a rocky start, got up at 4:30 and headed to San Jose we hadn’t bought our tickets in advance due to time so we got to the first bus station and they were sold out quickly got a cab to another station and they were sold out till 12pm! Waiting for 10 hours in a bus station didn’t sound like fun so we were really worried we might not be able to go but we were told we could wait for the 7am bus and if there were people who didn’t arrive we could get tickets so after 2 hours waiting in suspense we were lucky enough to get tickets! The bus ride is a bout 10 hours because you have to wait at the border for at least 3 hours…at the border we also were lucky we didn’t have to wait out in the extreme heat for 2 hours instead we sat in the bus and watched a really old film about an African safari but than we had to go to the next check point and wait about an hour out in the trash and heat and tons of people selling everything from food to movies to shoes…but we made it into Nicaragua and immediately could see differences between the countries. Passed a few towns on our way to Granada and all were poverty stricken at least 2 times more than CR which is bad enough. Even in Granda which is touristy the extreme poverty is still completely visible we got in at dusk and had to find a place to stay before it got really dark, was a little scary cuz it was just two of us and just felt more dangerouse of a place than ive ever been…but we found a cool hostel that was 7.50 each a night and as were we checking in ran into a tica friend from heredia, central America apparently is small enough you can run into friends in different countries! Anyway we decided to all go to laguna apoyo the next morning, we stayeda round the hostel for dinner and I tried to go to sleep early but the extreme heat doesn’t really permite good sleeping I just go tas close to the fan as possible but still just sweated the whole night. The next morning took a little adventour to try and find food to bring to the laguna and I bought a donut for 5 cordobas which is like 10 cents. Got back to the hotel and met Gustavo our guide and owner of the hostel. Stopped at a like strip mall thing to find I don’t even remember but we went into the grocery store and it was like being back in the usa we were both soo confusted by the flourseent lighting and just everything was clean and shiny and big it was soo strange and we found peanut butter! Anway got to the laguna which is gorgouse and jumped straight in to escape the heat I of course stayed put basically the rest of the day my friends are starting to learn if there is water somewhere I will be in it until some one drags me out. But the water was fresh and a grea temperature and had just little ripples so you could float on your back and look at all the mountains surrounding you. Later we rented kayakes and you could hear the monkeys howling through the trees ahh I was in heaven. Couldn’t stay out o fthe water long cuz of the heat but stayed all afternoon and than the guide convinced us to go on to the volcan masaya for the night tour. Definatly the best volcan ive seen so far got to see it from a few diff view points and got in the back of a pick up truck which always had looked so fun to me and was until the driver slammed on the breaks and we all went slamming forward luckily no one got really hurt...went to see two caves one full of bats that would fly right out at you there were hundreds! Than the next cave we actually go to walk into a good amount with a few random bats a s well…lastly went to another part of the volcan to see lava!!! Unfortuantly the gaseos which are “un pocito toxico but don’t worry” says our guide, were covering most of it the gases would sometimes blow right into it and smelled awful…after long day Gustavo took us to dinner at a papa johns/chicken place were I had a drink called cocoa which was like rice milk, cinnamon and something else , very yummy. Back to the hostel were I again attempted to sleep a few inches from the fan. Next day took an adventour to Masaya to see a artisan market I head was really cool, we took a public bus which are very different from CR buses a guy yells out and the driver honks the whole time yelling wehre we are going and people basically have to jump on the moving bus...the market was cool bought a hammock for about 10 dollars and some other things…got a taxi back to a diff bus station where I was faced with the most extreme level of poverty I have ever seen which isn’t even comparable to other parts of the world but still shocking. There was trash, dogs, bugs and really old broken down buses everywhere, there was some kind of market with fruits, drinks comida, got on the bus and kids and handicapped people would walk up and down the aisles selling/begging…anway back to our hostel where I spent the night talking to the girls that worked there from England and we tried to turn the usually loud bar that is right next to our room into a movie theater and also talked a couple who had been traveling for I don’t even know how long they had been to India and all of cental America…every European I met seems to have traveled so much im sure that’s b/c im going to backpacker hostels but its so fun to hear about peoples travels and stories Is really going to miss meeting such cool interesting people like every weekend, not that people in the usa aren’t interesting its just so awesome to get a little taste of different cultures and lets face it the accents are just so cool!...After another hot night bus back had no air conditioning which the one other American on the bus made quite a fuss about, the driver asked me if I spoke Spanish and I was like si..and he said go talk to the annoying American guy in the back haha…anyway got another stamp in the passport and I will defiantly not forget the things I saw.