Nicaragua Trip (really long-read at your own risk)

I spent 5 days during the Semana Santa vacation traveling around Nicaragua with another volunteer, Emily. Here are some of the highlights:
Day 1: I arrive at the Tica bus station 2 hours before the bus leaves for Managua because it is the most popular travel week of the year, I have no tickets or reservations and this is the only direct bus leaving on this particular day. There is a couple already there purchasing tickets for the same trip and I overhear the salesman tell them that they can’t choose their seats because there are no more available. I silently freak out in my head, but wait patiently for my turn. The man sells me a ticket, which I later learn is the final ticket for this bus.

I spend all day on the bus watching first a movie (in English, yea!) and then old eighties MTV videos (hilarious, can’t believe anyone ever thought they were good). During our only stop, which was at the Honduras/Nicaragua border, a nice German girl introduces herself to me and asks if I am traveling alone because she is and would like company while finding a place to stay in Managua for safety. I tell her that I am meeting Emily in Managua (Emily had left 3 days before me.), but that she is welcome to join us in finding a hostel to spend the night.
Day 2: Emily, I and our new friend (we can’t remember her name) catch a bus to Granada in the morning. We arrive in Granada and soon after, meet a man (speaking great English) in the central park, who leads us to a really cute hostel (this is a very common job) where we secure beds and drop our backpacks. We spend the entire day walking around Granada. I LOVE Granada! It is an adorable little touristy town that is really clean, for CA standards, and has great shops, coffee shops and restaurants. It lies on the coast of Lake Nicaragua, which is almost the size of Lake Michigan. I could have spent more time there, but we were on a mission to get to the island of Ometepe and didn’t have any extra time.

For the evening, we got dolled up and hit the town for a nice dinner and some dancing at the town’s most popular club.
Day 3: We are told that the usual bus to Rivas (the town where we will get the bus to the ferry that goes to Ometepe) isn’t running due to the holiday. We decide to walk over to the bus area anyways to see if there are any other options. Of course there are plenty of other buses that will take us to Rivas and a driver tells us that his bus is leaving in 10 minutes. We board a bus and proceed to sweat for the next 45 min as the bus slowly fills to about double it’s capacity. Finally, the bus leaves and we soon arrive in Rivas. From Rivas, we take another bus to San Jorge, where we board a very questionable looking ferry to the island of Ometepe. This ferry ride was the second most frightening of my life (please refer to earlier blog for the first). This was a wooden boat that, due to the holiday, was probably filled (again) to double it’s capacity. By luck of the draw, I get stuck on the lower level of the boat while Emily and our German friend, along with another new friend, Monica, who used to work at NPH Mexico, are safely stationed on the upper level. As we pull away from the dock, I notice that the boat is more than slightly tilted to the left side (my side) and not leveling out. In addition it is making a horrible moaning sound not unlike that on the movie “Titanic”. As the people around me are happily chatting and guzzling beers sold by a smart Nicaraguan entrepreneur, I am inching my way closer to the ten visible life preservers and mentally planning my escape route for when the boat capsizes. At this point, one of the novel attractions of Lake Nicaragua: the home of the only species of fresh water bull sharks, is throwing a wrench in my plans to swim back to shore. Fortunately, I don’t have to carry out my plan and we arrive safely on the volcanic island.

As is true of the entire trip, we arrive on the island without a hotel reservation and really don’t even know on what part of the island we would like to spend the night. We hop on a bus (the last of the day) that circles the island and decide that we will get off at Playa Santo Domingo because the guide book recommends it and the name is nice. We exit the bus and our German friend, who we have finally figured out is named, remains because she has to stay at a hostel near the ferry in order to return to the mainland early the next morning. (This bus ride is her only activity while on the island.) At the first hotel in our path, we are told that there are no vacant rooms or beds in the town, but we can rent a mattress on the floor of the lobby for $6 a night. (This is more than we paid for any other rooms during the trip.) We figure the woman is bluffing just like all the people who keep telling us there are no busses or ferries due to the holiday, so we move on to the next hotel to inquire. We are told repeatedly that there are no rooms or even hammocks available for the night, so we return to the not so friendly mattress lady and secure our sleeping arrangements for the night. As Emily is showering in the beach side shower in her bathing suit, I discover that Monica, our NPH friend from the bus is sitting at the table next to me and I strike up a conversation. As it turns out, she is also going to be joining our lobby slumber party along with another American couple. We all get to know each other over dinner and a couple of drinks then retire early to our lobby accommodations.
Day 4: We wake up bright and early, pack our bags then head to the neighboring hotel to hire a guide to lead us up Volcan Maderas, the smaller and inactive one of the 2 volcanoes on the island. Monica decides to join us. We spend the entire day hiking up the volcano, which is 8 hours round trip. It is easily the most challenging hike I have ever done, which isn’t saying much considering the only other hike I have done in my life was just a few months ago dragging my sick self up Mt Si with Hopper and Dan. This hike was more challenging because it was much more steep and the top half of the climb was in a cloud forest which caused the path to be very wet and slippery. However, climbing down into the crater of the volcano and hanging out in the lake situated in the center was worth all of the pains of getting there.

After the hike, we were all covered in mud and I am sure not smelling our best. Unfortunately, we still had the chore of finding a place to stay for the night and had decided to return to Moyogalpa, the town where the ferry would leave from the following morning. Monica had heard about a hostel while in Granada that was there and known to be popular with backpackers. Due to the fact that there were no buses running that day on island (again due to the holiday), we hitched a ride along with a young family in the back of the truck of a young man and his girlfriend. We had to negotiate a price since in Nicaragua, unlike Honduras, it is common to pay for hitchhikes. We arrived very tired and still dirty at the hostel only to be told that they only had one open bed. However, after Monica flirted with the owner and threw out some names of mutual acquaintances, 2 more beds magically became available. Little did we know that this was by far the dirtiest and most uncomfortable of all of the places we would stay. However, by that point we didn’t care and the atmosphere was really fun due to all of the young backpackers staying there. We finally showered and cleaned up before sitting down to a great dinner and some beers with some guys that Monica met as I was showering. A crazy night ensued that ended with Emily and I crawling through all of the other backpackers to climb into our very narrow and wobbly top bunks without sheets or pillows and Monica making out with a handsome hippie Costa Rican man in the courtyard of the hotel.
Day 5: We fall out of bed and practically sleep walk our way onto a much more secure looking ferry boat back to the mainland. We have to back track our way by bus back to Managua and then on to Esteli, where we spend the night in order to be close to the Honduran boarder for the chicken bus boarder crossing journey the next and final day of our trip.
Day 6: We take 5 buses hopping from small town to town, crossing the boarder and finally ending up in Tegucigalpa where we run into some fellow volunteers and the director of the ranch who thank goodness gives us a ride back, allowing us to avoid the final bus ride and the dreaded ½ mile walk from the ranch gate back to our house. Although I was dead tired and had been dreaming of my bed all day, I realized as we entered the house that I had really missed the ranch, my girls and all the other volunteers and proceeded to spend the rest of the night catching up with everyone on all that we had missed and telling some of the more funny stories from the trip.