Nicaragua

WARNING!! LONG ENTRY AHEAD!! But I promise the best stories are towards the end!

In case I didn't make this abundantly clear in the last post: never, never, never take a ferry with me. I'm a magic divining rod for guaranteed miserable boat rides. In the span of four days in Nicaragua, I managed to find three of them.

The only fortunate thing is that they didn't come directly on the heels of my partially cancelled, teeth-loosening ferry to Honduras. I first got to take a small break from nasty boat rides, managing to explore a couple of interesting places in Nicaragua along the way.

The first stop we made was at a town called Pochomil--the former beach resort of choice for Nicaraguans (emphasis on former). We went there because we read that the prices were super cheap. Turns out, it's because the place is more than a bit run down. We left because it was that seedy. But not before negotiating hard for a fantastic lobster dinner! Since the city had fallen on rough times recently, every restraunt was after our business and willing to negotiate. And who am I to pass up a $10 lobster dinner on the beach with a sunset, hammock and beer in my hand? It almost made it worth the terrible nights sleep in the run-down, broken-mattressted, bug-infested place we stayed that night.

Next morning, we gingerly pulled ourselves out of bed and onto the earliest bus for Granada, the supposed jewel of Nicaragua . Too bad every foreigner in the world knows this, and the wealthy ones have decided to buy property in the old city center, forever altering the feel of the town. But we were in luck because there were huge fiestas in the center plaza every night celebrating something big (still not sure what) that required most of the town to turn out until at least midnight. So we got to sample a taste of the local flavor through that and through our meanderings into the outskirts of town. And as it turns out Granada is a really nice colonial town, if that's your thing. The buildings in the city center are tall, beautifully painted and fully restored--perfect for wandering around and exercising your photographic skills. It's just that I feel like every country in Central America has a town similar to this. Perhaps not as grand as this one, but not too far off and I've seen a dozen of them (at least).

Plus we were impatient to get to Ometepe, a double volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua that is full of hiking and wonderful outdoor activities. Lake Nicaragua is no ordinary lake either; it's massive, stretching for hundreds of kilometers in either direction. In fact, it requires at least an eight hour ferry to reach it from Granada. This is where my magical ability to find terrible boat rides comes in.

The boat itself wasn't in bad shape. The boarding was normal and orderly. And the first few hours were fine, if a bit stuffy. The only discomforting aspect of the trip was that all of the second class passengers (us included) were crammed together on wooden benches near the water line and far away from a moving air current. This last detail proved most disastrous when a storm started to kick up the waves and drive almost every passenger to vomiting within 30 minutes. Too bad there was another five hours remaining. Oh, I love the smell of vomit in enclosed areas!

Luckily for me I'm not overly sensitive to motion sickness, so I managed to keep my lunch. And, after a while, the crew took pity on us--or maybe didn't want to clean up the mess--opening up the restricted rear deck where there was lots of fresh flowing air and even more space for the passengers to hang their heads over the railing.

Eventually, the gut-wrenching ride slammed to a rainy halt on a concrete pier on Ometepe Island. Now, we only had to find accommodations for the night while it was raining and while standing a few kilometers from the nearest town. Fortunately for us, two friends of ours (Carmen and Andy) that we had bumped into three times prior in the trip, had disembarked before us and had already negotiated a van ride to the far side of the island to a hostel that had rooms available for the night, and--most importantly--one that was willing to cook us a much needed dinner at 10:00 at night upon our arrival.

In one of these weird twists of traveling fate, after talking about our trip plans for the next month, it turned out that all four of us were wandering in the same general direction with the same general itinerary and were interested in the same general style of traveling. We therefore did the only thing prudent: we forged a partnership over our pesto-spaghetti dinner and agreed to henceforth travel as a foursome--kicking it off the next day with a hike halfway up a mountain to a beautiful waterfall.

The hike itself was rather uneventful except that there was a spectacular sunset, we camped next to a family of howler monkeys that bellowed through the night, and managed to discover that Andy was a chef, and could whip up a tasty meal with seemingly nothing more than rocks and potatoes. I had never eaten such wonderful food while camping. Usually camp food is little better than overcooked, half-souped pasta with some random, cringe-worthy flavoring added at the end. But not with Andy. He could set a cooking fire roaring in no time and churn out a mouth watering dinner from his endless, army-surplus sack of randomly collected Central American spices that would set your tongue wagging. Let's just say that I enjoyed eating for the next month.

After finishing our hike the next day, we trudged our way through the heat and around the Southern edge of Ometepe to a hostel named Monkey Island. Thus called because there are a couple of tiny islands off the nearby beach that are full of monkeys just like the cute, tame one at the front of the hostel that eats bananas from your hand (and picks your pockets if your not careful!). After eyeing out the situation, me, Andy and Trish decided to make the twenty minute swim out to the island for a bit of exploring.

This was one of the few times in my life where I'm happy to be a weak swimmer.

Andy and Trish reached the island a few minutes ahead of me, and right as I begin to pull myself onto the rocks surrounding the island, were greeted by the same variety of spider monkeys that we had previously fed. Except these were the snarling, teeth-baring, angrily screaming variety that were none too pleased to have trespassers on their island. Andy made a hasty, watery exit seeing that he was still standing next to the shore. However in diving back into the lake, he couldn't quite clear the rocks, scraping his side up thoroughly as he completed his frantic, flailing belly-flop/dive. Trish, unfortunately, was trapped on the island. She had already walked up a ways when the monkeys had descended upon Andy, and she got caught attempting to tip-toe back to the shore. The lead monkey of the troop after spying her, started loping towards her with a vicious snarl and, understandably, Trish started panicking.

"What do I do? What do I do?" she screamed as the lead monkey nipped at her ankle.

I yell back from the safety of the rock I'm perched on, "Kick him! Hard! Kick him!!!" Of course, this is after coming to my senses from the surreal scene unfolding before me--I mean how often does a friend of yours get attacked by monkeys?

Being the trained fighter that she is, she sends the monkey tumbling end over end with a solid blow to the head. Which only served to piss it off even further and to make it charge towards her with even more menacingly bared fangs upon its recovery. So Trish, literally surrounded by monkeys angry enough for her blood, does the only thing she can: covers her face with her arms and makes a mad dash for the water.

She actually managed to make a textbook dive into shallow water, keeping her entry shallow and her arms extended in front of her face. But it didn't do her any good since she came down on a rock submerged about six inches below the water, ripping up her right side. The monkeys wisely didn't follow us into the water, having been trained through the years to avoid it because Bull Sharks (the most aggressive shark in the world--9 ft long and known to attack humans) live in the lake. And I happen to be the slowest swimmer, trailing two bleeding people who are limping through the water back to the shore through shark infested waters. It was probably the worst swim I've ever made in my life.

Sometimes I hate being a poor swimmer.

After twenty, long, miserable, heart-pounding minutes (during which I found out that trying to simultaneously swim as fast and as quietly as possible is a loosing proposition) we arrived back on shore. There, we licked our wounds, recovered our nerves a bit and swiftly came to the conclusion that monkeys in general suck, and that we should head to the other side of the island for better adventures.

Upon busing to the opposite side of the island, for some reason, we decided that it was a good idea to camp on a different tiny island just off the coast of Ometepe. Unfortunately, it was Sunday morning, which meant that every store within a two hour walking distance of our bus stop was closed. After a couple hours of wandering around trying to by food in the scorching mid-day heat, Andy managed to hire a fisherman to ferry us, and in the meantime the rest of us procured a small but tasty stash of local food for the next 24 hours on the island. We were even smart with our negotiations, telling the fisherman that he'd only get paid when he picked us up.

And as we rounded the edge of the cove and the island came into view, we thought we were set for a fantastic adventure. The island was picturesque, with a beautiful old tree growing from the summit and a carpet of emerald grass surrounding it. Upon disembarking on the shore we discovered that said grass was actually eight feet tall, impassable, full of itchy bugs and covered the entire island. And to top it all off there was no place to pitch our tents except on a small, bug-infested spit of gravel that threatened to be submerged by the far-too-closely crashing waves of the lake. Dreaming of floating away in your tent and being eaten by sharks all night does not make for a fun camping experience.

Oh yeah, in case you forgot, we took a boat out here too. So when the boat was supposed to return to pick us up at three in the afternoon, of course, nothing showed up. Which left the four of us on this narrow, bug-infested gravel patch discussing amongst ourselves who gets to swim through the shark infested waters for the next two hours to find help. It was a lovely conversation.

Fortunately, as the sun was sinking ominously low and with our bellies beginning to rumble, a small launch appeared, bobbing in the waves on the horizon. It turns out the fisherman's boat had broken down and he had to borrow his neighbors to pick us up. Oh, and it was going to take a couple of trips. This was a much smaller boat, you see. Trish and Carmen got to go on the first boat because they needed food and a reprieve from the bugs the most, leaving me and Andy behind for the next hour to scratch our itches and wait for our turn. Most happily, there were no further incidents with this adventure. We said our thank yous, payed him after dropping us off and quickly found a nearby place to sleep with some hot food.

With that, we said goodbye to Ometepe. Except that there was one more boat ride to endure. There's only one way to leave an island when your on a budget: the public ferry. And what a lovely ferry it was. First, on our bus ride there, it started to rain--which served to chop up the waters for us nicely. Then, we had to wait for four hours in the rain for the ferry to begin boarding. And then, when we at last got to board this lovely contraption, it looked like it was held together with bubble gum and duct tape, and listed heavily to the right.

When it finally shoved off from the dock and began it's wallowing, stomach-churning plod through the lake, the boat frighteningly began taking on water and began leaning even further to the right. Fortunately, next to the engine that was leaking diesel exhaust into my face, there was a bilge pump for a crew member to work. Everyone seated on the right side had to be careful of their feet and luggage though, because the pump would empty its water directly in the middle of the cabin which would immediately flow to the right since the boat was tilted that much, and the passengers had to be conscious of the waves that--even though they had calmed somewhat--regularly washed over the right side, soaking everything. Good thing this ride only lasted an hour.

From there we made our way to San Juan del Sur, the new beach resort of choice of Nicaragua. The beaches around it were lovely and fun to goof off at and drink too much rum on, but we quickly grew tired without some sort of trouble to get into. Luckily for us there was a full moon coming and a protected beach a couple hours away that had leatherback turtles laying eggs on this time of year. Therefore we made our way there from our $3-a-night rooms, intent on camping and watching turtles lay eggs inches from our noses.

With a full moon set to aid our observations, we set up our tents near the beach, cooked another lovely dinner, watched the sunset and prepared ourselves to wait patiently for the mother turtles to pull themselves from the sea. However, the beach wasn't small and the moon not as bright as we had hoped, which meant that throughout the entire night we had to walk in an endless loop up and down the beach in search of these ancient, birthing behemoths.

But there were distractions! There were baby turtles hatching all along the beach, and someone had to protect them from all the predators that had gathered along the beach to partake of the feast that nature provided. I can at least feel proud that, if nothing else, I got to help protect an endangered species survive just a bit longer on this trip. The mothers, however, proved elusive. There was only one that nested that night (according to the naturalist on duty) and our group only spotted it on its way back to the ocean. I was, most unfortunately, taking a short nap since it was my turn to do so, and I missed out on seeing it.

Only after a few moments of sleep, we groggily boarded the earliest bus out of there heading for Costa Rica (it takes at least 12 hours to get there if you're lucky). But the roads weren't going to cooperate just yet. It started raining again and the dirt roads of Nicaragua had turned into a slippery mess. This became evident to me as I awoke to the sound of our bus wildly revving its engine, spinning out while unsuccessfully attempting to gain traction as it slid backwards down the hill and turning sideways, heading for a ten foot ditch on the side of the road. It stopped a few feet short of disaster. The drivers were somewhat used to this, calmly pulling out a bunch of chains to attach to the tires, which helped it finally crawl to the top of the hill thirty minutes later, sans passengers. Where it was met by a semi truck that had not been so lucky and was firmly lodged in a ditch on the other side of the hill blocking most traffic in either direction.

Luckily there were lots of small 4x4 trucks that could off-road by this wreck and one of them happened to have picked up two guys that we met last night on the beach. They convinced the driver to let us hitchhike along to our bus stop where we just made our bus by a couple of minutes.

Nicaragua had given us lots of memorable adventures, but it was time to move on. Only two more weeks until I had to board a plane for South America!

Next up: Costa Rica and Panama.

Thanks for reading this far! The next post will be shorter!!