rice and beans

Ok friends, family and rabid blog fans - I have extactly 58 minutes in this air contioned panamanian internet cafe to tell you about the time I spent in Nicaragua. Lets get straight to the point - its the tail end of my trip and I didnt have a lot of time to see most of what the country has to offer. The main attractions I wanted to see were either inaccessable or impractical due to lack of time and not owning my own car. I did get a taste of the country in this time and also made two friends who I traveled with for a while.

After arriving in the hot and sprawling capital city of Managua I decided, like most travellers, to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I made my way by manner of overpriced shuttle bus to the charming colonial city of Granada which lays on the shore of Lake Nicaragua (Lago Nicaragua) Granada could be compared to Antigua in terms of its impressive colonial era buldings and charming atmosphere, but the gringo factor is definately toned down here. After arriving at my hostel of choice (the bearded monkey) I decided to shower and clean up, resembling something not unlike a bearded monkey myself. As the oppressive heat lifted in the late afternoon I ventured out to scope out the town and check out the tail-end of a Nicaraguan film festival that was being held at a venue just off the central park. The city was already buzzing with anticipation for the semana santa (easter holy week) though the pace of life here is still relatively relaxed. I caught a documentary at the film festival about the revolutionary sandistas that played an important part in the politics of Nicaragua during preceding decades, and also explaining the link with what was happening in Spain at the same time during the years of Franco. Unfortunately I wasn't able to understand very much due to my mediocre but slowly developing spanish skills, listening is always the hardest! (Especially low quality audio recordings in echoing rooms!)

After Granada I made my way to Laguna de Apoyo in the back of a pick up. I succeded in my goal to remain standing the whole way from Granada, even while pushing 100k p/h on the highway. Now I know what it feels like to have my face and eyeballs massaged by high speed winds. So thrilling. (Best things in life are always free) The Laguna was a beautiful place to relax and soak up the sun for a few days, and also where I met a dutchman called Richard and an Israeli chick Anava. Richard is a seasoned traveller who has spent the last 18 months working in Canada, and then traveling from as close to the north pole as you can practically get (in Alaska) to Panama in a 1986 suburu station wagon which he purchased for $750. I was amazed that the car hadn't fallen apart by that stage and will be amazed if he makes it to Darian´s Gap in Panama in one peice. We decided to travel together in Richard's car for a while and we ended up making it to Costa Rica together. But first we visited La Isla de Ometepe (Ometepe Island), a large island in the centre of Lago Nicaragua with two volcanoes on it.


The super-rich volcanic soil is good for agriculture so we decided to visit a working banana finca called Magdalena. Traveling lesson #58 - Guide books are extremely useful but often wrong/ inaccurate / the writer was on mushrooms or / got sexed up by the owner. The hype for this place in all three of our guides was immense but the reality was less than shining. The staff was pretty apathetic and unwelcoming, the horse riding and other activites over priced and the food bitterly dissappointing. In fact using the word bitter evokes some sort of semblance of flavour. Richard had a sort of nervous breakdown at the thought of eating anymore rice and beans. The national dish of Nica seems to be Gallo Pinto (rice and beans), not so bad when its done well but not what you want to eat everyday I suppose. We did get a few belly laughs from the El Pollo mas Pollo! (the most chickeny chicken!) sign we thought we saw in the village but which in reality didnt actually exist when we went back. (it was actually Gallo!.......guess you had to be there) Pollo means chicken, and I have greatly enjoyed counting the number of creatively named fried chicken joints in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In the future I would like to create a photo archive of fried-chicken restaurant signs. (See how rich my life can be without completing tertiary education?)

After Ometepe, my dreams of visiting the Solentiname Islands and sailing the Rio San Juan to the Castillo (where the spaniards traded canonballs with pirates of the Carribean) were shattered and rendered impractical due to the weather conditions and the time restrictions in place.. You need to have a whole bunch of time to get to some of these out of way places, especially when the bi-weekly ferrie may or ¨may not¨ come. Next time I will probe more deeply into Nicaragua´s hidden delights. I had to be content with a quick trip to backpacker beach vortex San Juan Del Sur, down on the Pacific Coast near the border with Costa Rica. Arriving in the dark and during the beginning of Semana Santa, we had some major troubles even finding the place on the beach out of town where we wanted to stay , and then just finding anything that wasnt booked out. We were thinking of camping on a beach out of town and were gauranteed by a local that the turtle-egg poachers would not attack as long as we left no thievable items outside our tent. We ended up staying in the town sharing a hotel room.



Its no Byron Bay but the town is okay if you want to party for a few days. (more for the 16-21 binge drinking set in my opinion but everyones tastes are different) The beach is actually pretty foul by Australian standards so those looking for something a bit more enticing head up or down the coast for a few kilometres where there are some much nicer bathing options. We did however get a fantastic meal in town that night which made up for many days of lacklustre comida. I even ate a very non-vegetarian steak with onion sauce and let the juices run down my chin. (Or was that the mango daquiri/s?)

After leaving SJdS we would make our way to the not so friendly Costa Rica-Nicaragua border where we would que for hours in the blistering heat along with the thousands of other people wanting to move between the countries to go wherever they were going during the semana santa. Our mantra had become T-I-C-A (This Is Central America) Why do we have to que three times when they could just streamline the process? TICA. Why is this insane? TICA. Why does nobody know whats going on? TICA. What insect is biting me? TICA


x
Luke

TICA