What a journey. From Puerto Viejo to Bocas was about a 4 hour drive including customs. Customs included walking over a sketchy bridge that divided up the countries. Similar to a narrow railroad steel bridge but instead of train tracks it had small wooden planks. If you weren't paying attention you may fall to a interesting death. But no one did and we all crossed just fine.
From Nicaragua to Costa Rica I had to trick the customs saying I would return to Nicaragua in order to enter Costa Rica (since I have no return ticket). As for Panama, I had to do the same thing. I cheated the system and said I was going back to Costa Rica in order to enter. They have to know or there really oblivious. Either way, I made it in and I'm a rock star.
About an hour in we pull up to the boat dock that would drive us to Bocas Del Turo. Bocas is a chain of islands off the mainland offering incredible scuba diving, beaches and surf. The boat drove us out there and me and Stepan walked on foot searching for a hostel. Each time you get to a new spot you always get the locals talking to you and them offering there service to help you. It gets very annoying because they get paid by one hostel so they pressure you into going there. But we aint scarred and blasted by these people. Funny part is, you put up this stubborn wall against them, but typically they always have the right solution but I never want to give them gratitud for being right. We found a party hostel called "Mondos". Recommended in our books but the hostel was full. We walked down the street and found a hostel called "Hasteluego". Super clever name, we were sold. Seriously nice hostel, comfortable and great living situation.
We asked the lady where the beaches were. We could either take a taxi to the surf spot or ride bikes. We opted out for riding our bikes, which ended up taking us a solid 45 minutes down sand and gravel roads to find a few reef breaks...and no surf. haha. We moved onto Bocas as fast as we could because the swell was here and it was real small. The surf beach we ended up at was called "Bluffs". Fast beach break that reminded me of Sandy's in Hawaii. The water sucks right up and drops just a few feet next to shore. Ended up watching the wave for a while, hoping the tide would change the look of the wave. A few guys next to us decided to paddle out. We followed. Even though the wave was crazy fast it turned out to be really fun! If you fell, you would get covered in sand top to bottom. Sometimes you would feel like your body was being used as a cheese-grater or better yet sand paper grinding against your body. But it didn't matter, it was fun!
Sun was setting and we had a long bike ride back, so we trekked it home.
That night was the first real night in Bocas. When we arrived the town was dead and didn't seem like anything was going on. The fact is, in the day time everyone ventures out to different islands and beaches. Once it gets dark is when the real fun starts here. Weird local Panama culture events happen while all the tourist get ready to rally the bars. The local events involved teenagers wearing red outfits, ninja masks and a dragon that covered there head. The man wearing this was the leader and had to fight all these kids. His weapon was a wip while he would battle these kids. If the whip hit the kids wooden staff, it would break a portion of it off. If the stick breaks, there out. Most to all of the time the dragon warrior always one. In fact, I didn't see them loose.
As for the nightlife goes, it goes bazurk (a word in my dictionary). This town does it right. There are a handful of bars but each night they choose which one everyone goes to. It cuts out the guessing game on where all the people will be and equals to a better night. Tonight was "Iguanas". Crazy name right! Well you can imagine was it was like right? Okay, maybe not. Heres a short summery:
-Its Argentina's summer and all of the girls travel to Central America
-I think there all at Iguanas
-Each one is more beautiful than the next
-Since there on Argentina time, the party doesn't even begin until midnight
-Tequila (Julie)
-Good God
Because of this great all day beach time and bizarre perfect night life, a easy week was to be here on this island.
The next day me and Stepan rallied and went to La Playa Paunch. This reef break was lots of small coral reef and a potentially great wave. This time we hired a taxi to get out there. When we pulled up most of the locals were wearing booties to protect them from the coral. We were not advised. Walking out into this coral to the break was very difficult. It stayed about 2 feet deep, sharp, white wash crushing you as we slowly but surely got to a safe area where we could paddle out. The wave was super fun. It did remind me of my previous accident. If you caught the wave too long and fell, you will hit the reef. Luckily, I told myself that incident wouldn't happen again. So it didn't. This wave for the Caribbean side was the most fun of them all for me. You could get about 3 solid turns in before the wave would steepen up and hollow out for a short barrel ride. Somehow, one of these waves I got sucked into a barrel and pulled out of it! It made the whole trip!
That night at the hostel I met 3 Argentinian girls. Broken Spanish and broken English we were instantly friends. Swapped stories and passed around drinks. True Argentinians they ate dinner at 11 pm and we headed out to the bars around 12:30. Crazy lifestyle but thats what they do. We ended up traveling around Bocas Del Turo day and night for the next week. Awesome girls.
3 Days into Hasteluego me and Stepan decided to find another hostel to see what its like. We found a place right on the ocean and hammocks surrounding the place. At first glance this seemed like a good fit. We booked the dorm rooms. Turns out the place had no insulation and could here every knook and cranny footstep from each person and full of 18 year old kids who have never left home before and wasn't sure what "cleaning" was. So this place turned out to be a nightmare in the making. Two days into this place we were trying to figure out how to get off the island and head to Panama City. There were two options: Shuttle bus or normal bus. Both ways were 10 hour bus ride but one is better and cheaper than the other. This is where it gets interesting:
Last night at the hostel I get woken up the reception desk saying we have to leave today. Of all the hostels this one makes reservations and we were taking a few spots. I get up, hungover from 4 hours of sleep and talk to them. I jump off the bunk-bed to smashing my sunglasses in half! Great. Not a big deal though because I brought a second pair just in case. I open my bag for the reserve and soon realize my extra pair is also broken. Its probably been broken for weeks but I never knew. This equals to a perfect beginning to one f-ed up day to come. I go outside to talk to the reception: we have 2 hours before we get kicked out and no ticket off this island. 2 girls in the room had extra night buses for the next day that we could by for $30. Seemed like a good route but had no hostel to stay out that night and every hostel in this town gets booked at this time. At the same time, Stepan dipped out for his last day getting certified for scuba diving. This meant me running around, 4 hours of sleep and very hungover looking for hostels or bus tickets out of this island tonight. Both of which turned out to be very tricky. I ended up going to the bus station looking for night tickets, all of which were booked. Then went looking for hostels, booked 2 just in case something happened. Around 11 am some local guy at the hostel heard I was looking for night bus to Panama City tonight. He said he had "2 left". Which is typically a lie. I was about to buy the tickets but wasn't sure what Stepan was trying to do and didn't want to just buy one ticket for me. I asked the guy to come back in a hour. Stepan returns and I tell him about the deal. We hit the streets looking for this rasta hat wearing weirdo. No sign.
We go to a different bus station to see if they had any bus tickets for tonight. They said they have a night shuttle for $45 leaving at 7:30 and there were tickets available. We buy them. Walk back to the hostel and the rasta homie walks up saying he's been looking for me. Those tickets were $30 and the normal night bus. Dang! This is where the fun begins:
Me and Stepan pack our gear and head to the boat station to get picked up and taken to the mainland. The shuttle bus supposedly holds 30 people and theres about 15 people waiting for the same bus as us right now. Boat pulls up and we drive off! Things are looking good, taking photos and re-living the dream of Bocas. Bocas was great. We pull up to the dock and get off. End up waiting outside for this bus for about 2 hours. All of a sudden this yellow van pulls up and says this is the bus! haha, yea right. There are 3 people with surfboards and about 15 backpacks. Some serious Tetris was about to happen.
But it didn't. As always the surfboards and the surfers get put on last, while the other people scramble like Asians to get in line first. Not racist, just facts. At this point the van is full and better yet maxed out with people uncomfortable sitting and cramming. This was pretty messed up. We all paid $45 for a bus not a van. We all start to get pissed. The worker is running around trying to figure out what happened to the real bus and how to fix the problem. Only she is retarded and is just stressing like no other. Finally my friend Brett looks at the lady and says "what are we supposed to do?". The van was closing its doors and me, Brett and Stepan are not in the van and stranded in this shit hole of a town and full of sketchy people that would love a new surfboard. Brett starts to ask a few more questions and before you know it, this big Caribbean lady blows a cap and steam rushes out of her head. She looses it. Starts freaking out saying its not her problem and how we better watch out back because she has friends that would do bad things to us! What? Where did this come from. Immediately, she jumps in a taxi and jets off. At the same time the van shuts its doors and drives off. Now were really stranded. 3 gringos, nothing around us and the boat station is closed. Soon to realize there were 3 other people around us trying to go to Bocas Del Turo but didn't know the station was also closed. That makes 6 people stranded, laughing and not a clue what to do. We went back into the station and waited for a boat to hopefully cruise by.
Minutes later a boat comes by and we flag it down. Ask him to take us back to Bocas. He says ok but charges us $10 each to get there. Fully ripping us off but we have no choice. Back to the island we tried to get off but apparently won't let us leave.
1/2 hour later we arrive back to heaven. Definitely no hostels available but luckily I booked 2 hostels before we left. We go back to one of them and I tell them about my reservation. I show them my handwriting and they say I've already checked it. I ask them to show me! Well someone did check in and forged my handwriting. Pretty clever group of kids I must say. They wrote in my exact first and last name and snagged the room. All of which I don't blame them but I insist that I got robbed and explained my story of the night. The old lady runs upstairs and shows me a few random rooms that were available. Sold.
We eat, shower and try and turn this whole situation around by going to party. After all of this, something good has to come out of this. Typically, a long crappy day can become the best night of your life. In my case, all of the things that has happened in the past 24 hours, anything could be good.
Me and Stepan went to the notorias club called Aqua Lounge. Party hostel/drunken girls swimming in the ocean. Super fun.
Fill in any story you want.....
Next day woke up and my iPhone is stolen.
Go back to the boat station and complain about how they screwed us over and how they need to give us money back or get on another bus tonight. They agree and book us on a "bus" tonight.
Same situation, we get on the boat and soon find this small bus filled with about 30 people. Crammed and hot we drove for 10 hours to Panama City. Halfway there we stopped to get food at some random restaurent and grocery store. I ate some bad chicken that made me sick instantly.
Make it to Panama City, sick, abused and stolen goods from me. Hopefully this bad 36 hours is gone.
Now at Lunas Castle Hostel. Huge old style mansion filled with kids. So far so good except for getting food poisoning and and another serious case of bed bugs last night (mom you chinks it after we talked). Almost just as bad as Managua. Fully covered in bites and a wreck. Oh well, its part of living the dream.
Next stop, leaving from Panama to Columbia on a 5 day sailboat right. Its gonna be insane!
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
Five hours up from Dominical to San Jose and Five hours back down the other side of the country we ended up in Puerto Viejo. Instantly feeling like were not in the same country. The people are much darker...black, laid back and lots of reggae music. You know, kinda like were in the Caribbean. Rasta far-i.
The all time famous hostel in Puerto Viejo was called Rockin J's. Everyone talks about it and we were heading straight there. Oblivious to what this place offered we pulled up to the monster real estate, jam packed with people. Easily one of the biggest hostels I've come across. The land consisted of the tv show "horders" gone wild. Every piece of junk the owner got himself a hold of, became part of this haven. The whole building was covered by mosaic pieces of ceramic, art everywhere, junk resined to the tables and lots and lots of hammocks. One bunker held 100 hammocks for guest (me). One with another 100 hammocks and the top floor was all tents. Pre-made but all sleeping outside. Cheapest room was the hammock, then tent, then dorm room. The classiest way to go out was sleeping in the hammock.
Instantly dropped our gear off and headed to the beach for a surf. Super fun, very challenging wave. Steep and fast with a strong current.
Few days into this place, lots of new Argentinian friends and new destination on the horizon. If Costa Rica wasn't so expensive, I would post up in Puerto Viejo for a long time. Plenty of stuff to do here, great food and great people. But $10 a meal isn't too appealing.
Next stop Bocas Del Turo, Panama.
The all time famous hostel in Puerto Viejo was called Rockin J's. Everyone talks about it and we were heading straight there. Oblivious to what this place offered we pulled up to the monster real estate, jam packed with people. Easily one of the biggest hostels I've come across. The land consisted of the tv show "horders" gone wild. Every piece of junk the owner got himself a hold of, became part of this haven. The whole building was covered by mosaic pieces of ceramic, art everywhere, junk resined to the tables and lots and lots of hammocks. One bunker held 100 hammocks for guest (me). One with another 100 hammocks and the top floor was all tents. Pre-made but all sleeping outside. Cheapest room was the hammock, then tent, then dorm room. The classiest way to go out was sleeping in the hammock.
Instantly dropped our gear off and headed to the beach for a surf. Super fun, very challenging wave. Steep and fast with a strong current.
Few days into this place, lots of new Argentinian friends and new destination on the horizon. If Costa Rica wasn't so expensive, I would post up in Puerto Viejo for a long time. Plenty of stuff to do here, great food and great people. But $10 a meal isn't too appealing.
Next stop Bocas Del Turo, Panama.
Dominical, Costa Rica
Ok folks, its been a while and lots of things have happened:
Last day at Bekuo hostel I was planning on heading to Jaco, with enough criticism from people complaining about how the place was overrun by ex-pacts and hookers, I decided to go past Jaco and head towards Dominical. I found a new friend "Eetu" from Finland who was also going to Dominical, so we headed to the bus stations together.
From the get go, we had the right bus station information but each time we went to order our ticket the lady said our destination didn't exist. Even though the buses had the name of the area we were going on, she still didn't sell us the ticket. She insisted on us taking another route...So we did.
Every 1/2 hour the bus that was going to Dominical would load up people (without us) and drive off. The reason is we were on another bus...remember. About 2 hours later we finally landed on our bus and we took off. They pulled there standard $2 surfboard baggage rule, while not charging anyone else for anything. That part gets hard to get used to.
Five or so hours later we saw signs for Dominical. Since the bus driver didn't know we were going there (other destination) we ended up yelling at the bus driver to stop while passing the city at the same time. About 20 minutes later, he decided to stop and drop us off at the next town. Stranded, my new friend Eetu looked stressed. He started to look for a taxi, while I stood outside the grocery store asking people for rides. Soon, grabbed our stuff and put it next to the street to hitch-hike. Easy part was, this area was surrounded by gringos and Americans. Which was disturbing (sorry) but made things easier to negotiate the communication of us being stranded. About 15 minutes went by and found 2 girls loading up there giant car with groceries. They filled the back truck all the way, pushed the cart back and started to drive off. I waived them down, put on a puppy face and we were in! Definitely not enough room, we shoved my surfboard and backbacks around the food and jumped in the car. Luckily, they were heading in the right direction.
A few conversations later, they dropped us off in the town and we were set. We set foot and found a hostel called "Piramys". Which was set directly on the beach and was $10. Not too shabby. The hostel had a interesting layout: One large bungalow with all of the dorms open to the public. Meaning, there weren't and solid walls for privacy and each bed had a pretty serious mosquito net as well as another large mosquito net that wrapped around this large bungalow. But, good people and actually pretty good environment once you get used to it.
At this point, there was surf, but my arm was still damaged goods and couldn't set foot in the water (or set arm). Which meant, no surf but lots spectating. In the meantime, I caught up on work, daydreaming and exploring the surroundings. One of the workers was going fishing so I jumped on that and we headed to the river mouth to hopefully catch some dinner. We failed, but still amazing.
Couple of days pass, lots of ladies night (each night they say "its ladies night", even though every night is ladies night...great marketing folks) and plenty of stories being swapped. Finally my arm was pink and healed up enough to where I can jump in the water for a surf.
The break at Dominical is a large, wide sand break with plenty of room to be un-crowded. Thus, not ever having a problem to find some gems.
Anyways, this trip included hiking to some waterfalls, being super lazy and surfing as much as I could. Though, the pacific side this time of year doesn't pump out all of the surf you dream of, the Caribbean side was firing. At the hostel I found a new friend named "Stepan" from Germany. He was looking to head to the Caribbean side as well.
Next day, we packed our bags and left back to San Jose at 5 a.m. to catch a bus to Puerto Viejo. Let the games begin...again.
Last day at Bekuo hostel I was planning on heading to Jaco, with enough criticism from people complaining about how the place was overrun by ex-pacts and hookers, I decided to go past Jaco and head towards Dominical. I found a new friend "Eetu" from Finland who was also going to Dominical, so we headed to the bus stations together.
From the get go, we had the right bus station information but each time we went to order our ticket the lady said our destination didn't exist. Even though the buses had the name of the area we were going on, she still didn't sell us the ticket. She insisted on us taking another route...So we did.
Every 1/2 hour the bus that was going to Dominical would load up people (without us) and drive off. The reason is we were on another bus...remember. About 2 hours later we finally landed on our bus and we took off. They pulled there standard $2 surfboard baggage rule, while not charging anyone else for anything. That part gets hard to get used to.
Five or so hours later we saw signs for Dominical. Since the bus driver didn't know we were going there (other destination) we ended up yelling at the bus driver to stop while passing the city at the same time. About 20 minutes later, he decided to stop and drop us off at the next town. Stranded, my new friend Eetu looked stressed. He started to look for a taxi, while I stood outside the grocery store asking people for rides. Soon, grabbed our stuff and put it next to the street to hitch-hike. Easy part was, this area was surrounded by gringos and Americans. Which was disturbing (sorry) but made things easier to negotiate the communication of us being stranded. About 15 minutes went by and found 2 girls loading up there giant car with groceries. They filled the back truck all the way, pushed the cart back and started to drive off. I waived them down, put on a puppy face and we were in! Definitely not enough room, we shoved my surfboard and backbacks around the food and jumped in the car. Luckily, they were heading in the right direction.
A few conversations later, they dropped us off in the town and we were set. We set foot and found a hostel called "Piramys". Which was set directly on the beach and was $10. Not too shabby. The hostel had a interesting layout: One large bungalow with all of the dorms open to the public. Meaning, there weren't and solid walls for privacy and each bed had a pretty serious mosquito net as well as another large mosquito net that wrapped around this large bungalow. But, good people and actually pretty good environment once you get used to it.
At this point, there was surf, but my arm was still damaged goods and couldn't set foot in the water (or set arm). Which meant, no surf but lots spectating. In the meantime, I caught up on work, daydreaming and exploring the surroundings. One of the workers was going fishing so I jumped on that and we headed to the river mouth to hopefully catch some dinner. We failed, but still amazing.
Couple of days pass, lots of ladies night (each night they say "its ladies night", even though every night is ladies night...great marketing folks) and plenty of stories being swapped. Finally my arm was pink and healed up enough to where I can jump in the water for a surf.
The break at Dominical is a large, wide sand break with plenty of room to be un-crowded. Thus, not ever having a problem to find some gems.
Anyways, this trip included hiking to some waterfalls, being super lazy and surfing as much as I could. Though, the pacific side this time of year doesn't pump out all of the surf you dream of, the Caribbean side was firing. At the hostel I found a new friend named "Stepan" from Germany. He was looking to head to the Caribbean side as well.
Next day, we packed our bags and left back to San Jose at 5 a.m. to catch a bus to Puerto Viejo. Let the games begin...again.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Managua Bound! Again...
We paid our bills and parted ways with the hotel. Definitely going back. The setup there is unreal and a 2 week stay there would be worth it. The staff told us the bus shows up at 3 pm on the street down the road. Off we went. Got there at 3 and asked some local if they saw a bus. They said "no, the bus doesn't come until 4:30". What! The thing about these countries is you don't trust anyone. They don't even know when the buses come. You ask them anything and they say 10 minutes. How far are we? 10 minutes away. Hiking the volcano: 10 minutes = to 15 hours.
Walked down the street to grab some road sodas and ran into some big truck with plumbing pipes. Juan asked them "Hacia donde va?" (where are you going). They said La Paz. Perfect! This is on route to Managua and we can find some bus there. We hoped onto this working truck and headed off. Not knowing how much it cost I asked Juan why he didn't negotiate with them before hand. He said if you look at someone in the eye and they look back genuinely, then you don't ask the price until after. I said okay.
Arrived at La Paz, thanked the drivers and asked how much. They said free. Juan = a legend and learning countless tricks from this kid.
Within seconds the Managua bus drives by. Seconds. Every transportation in this whole country we have made within seconds. Perfect record so far and flawless connections. We ran over and jumped on the bus.
Arrived in Managua a few hours later. Found some shady hostel next to the Tica bus station (similar to greyhound station) and booked the room. 3 beds in the room and a loud fan that looked like it would fall off and kill someone. But good internet! who would have thought. At this point I needed to make a decision on where I was going. Garrett was leaving at 7 am the next day back home in San Diego while Juan was going back to work in El Salvador, then back to Spain. My decision was to head to San Jose, Costa Rica. Only problem the station was closed and the buses are too professional, so you can't just hop on these ones. So I needed to wake up at 4:30 (same time Juan was leaving) and try and book a ticket when they open.
This is where the nightmare on top of my fucked up arm came into play: the small case of bed bugs. Hands down the worst I've ever seen. While the other two were snoring I was cracked out holding my cell phone over the bed trying to catch these sneaky creatures infecting my arm with bites. The way these creatures work is they feast on your blood in multiple locations. They can run and bite at the same time. If you get bit, you get bit about 10 times in the same area. All with a similar sting like a mosquito but itch for a solid week. So, I'm pulling a scanner darkly and freaking out. Each time I put my arm down something would jump on me and bite me. I easily had 100 bites on me...and still do. That night, I didn't sleep. I was freaking out so much, I tried to stand up and sleep but was still getting bit. I would kill them, and would explode with my blood. Freaky shit. I would go into the bathroom and just watch these bites swell up. Horrible night.
Watched the time tic toc and turned off my alarm before it had a chance to make some chicken noise. Some serious nightmares in the next few days are going to merge with the surfing accident and bed bugs.
I grabbed my gear and headed over to the tica bus with Juan to try and get a ticket for the 5 am bus to San Jose. Said my goodbyes to my new good friend Juan and wished him the best with his charity project. The 5 am bus was full and the guy put me on a waiting list just incase the someone didn't arrive. 5 came around and everyone showed up. I went back to the hostel and waited there until 6:30 for the 7 shuttle. 6:30 came around and Garret took off to the airport. Said my goodbyes and stoked he came out from SD to visit. Everyone is always busy and can't always travel so seeing a familiar face was refreshing. He left while I went back to the tica station hoping I would never return to that hostel.
I ordered some bread / egg sandwich and the guy called me over for an opening. Bought my ticket and jumped on the bus! Wahoo. Not sure how, but things always work out. 5 hours later in a freezing cold bus we got to the border. Supposedly you need a return ticket out of Costa Rica in order to return. I tried without it but got turned away with no exit ticket. Went back to the bus and told them my dilemma. I ended up paying the guy $20 for a open ended return ticket to Managua to trick the customs in thinking I was leaving the country. It worked like a charm. Few hours later ended up in San Jose. Typical move, I didn't know where to stay. Picked the first hostel in my book, hired a taxi and jetted off to a hostel called "bekuo". Taxi driver dropped me off and he started to take pictures of me. Must have thought I was someone else. haha, so I took pictures of him. Funny, funny taxi driver. Laughing the whole drive with this guy.
Bekuo Hostel is on a different level then other hostels. Extremely nice, modern home feel. Clean, pool table, back hard, living room with large flat screen American television. Very warm and inviting. A great place to post up and work and relax...and recover.
Been here for 3 days now and will head to Jaco tomorrow. Wahoo.
Walked down the street to grab some road sodas and ran into some big truck with plumbing pipes. Juan asked them "Hacia donde va?" (where are you going). They said La Paz. Perfect! This is on route to Managua and we can find some bus there. We hoped onto this working truck and headed off. Not knowing how much it cost I asked Juan why he didn't negotiate with them before hand. He said if you look at someone in the eye and they look back genuinely, then you don't ask the price until after. I said okay.
Arrived at La Paz, thanked the drivers and asked how much. They said free. Juan = a legend and learning countless tricks from this kid.
Within seconds the Managua bus drives by. Seconds. Every transportation in this whole country we have made within seconds. Perfect record so far and flawless connections. We ran over and jumped on the bus.
Arrived in Managua a few hours later. Found some shady hostel next to the Tica bus station (similar to greyhound station) and booked the room. 3 beds in the room and a loud fan that looked like it would fall off and kill someone. But good internet! who would have thought. At this point I needed to make a decision on where I was going. Garrett was leaving at 7 am the next day back home in San Diego while Juan was going back to work in El Salvador, then back to Spain. My decision was to head to San Jose, Costa Rica. Only problem the station was closed and the buses are too professional, so you can't just hop on these ones. So I needed to wake up at 4:30 (same time Juan was leaving) and try and book a ticket when they open.
This is where the nightmare on top of my fucked up arm came into play: the small case of bed bugs. Hands down the worst I've ever seen. While the other two were snoring I was cracked out holding my cell phone over the bed trying to catch these sneaky creatures infecting my arm with bites. The way these creatures work is they feast on your blood in multiple locations. They can run and bite at the same time. If you get bit, you get bit about 10 times in the same area. All with a similar sting like a mosquito but itch for a solid week. So, I'm pulling a scanner darkly and freaking out. Each time I put my arm down something would jump on me and bite me. I easily had 100 bites on me...and still do. That night, I didn't sleep. I was freaking out so much, I tried to stand up and sleep but was still getting bit. I would kill them, and would explode with my blood. Freaky shit. I would go into the bathroom and just watch these bites swell up. Horrible night.
Watched the time tic toc and turned off my alarm before it had a chance to make some chicken noise. Some serious nightmares in the next few days are going to merge with the surfing accident and bed bugs.
I grabbed my gear and headed over to the tica bus with Juan to try and get a ticket for the 5 am bus to San Jose. Said my goodbyes to my new good friend Juan and wished him the best with his charity project. The 5 am bus was full and the guy put me on a waiting list just incase the someone didn't arrive. 5 came around and everyone showed up. I went back to the hostel and waited there until 6:30 for the 7 shuttle. 6:30 came around and Garret took off to the airport. Said my goodbyes and stoked he came out from SD to visit. Everyone is always busy and can't always travel so seeing a familiar face was refreshing. He left while I went back to the tica station hoping I would never return to that hostel.
I ordered some bread / egg sandwich and the guy called me over for an opening. Bought my ticket and jumped on the bus! Wahoo. Not sure how, but things always work out. 5 hours later in a freezing cold bus we got to the border. Supposedly you need a return ticket out of Costa Rica in order to return. I tried without it but got turned away with no exit ticket. Went back to the bus and told them my dilemma. I ended up paying the guy $20 for a open ended return ticket to Managua to trick the customs in thinking I was leaving the country. It worked like a charm. Few hours later ended up in San Jose. Typical move, I didn't know where to stay. Picked the first hostel in my book, hired a taxi and jetted off to a hostel called "bekuo". Taxi driver dropped me off and he started to take pictures of me. Must have thought I was someone else. haha, so I took pictures of him. Funny, funny taxi driver. Laughing the whole drive with this guy.
Bekuo Hostel is on a different level then other hostels. Extremely nice, modern home feel. Clean, pool table, back hard, living room with large flat screen American television. Very warm and inviting. A great place to post up and work and relax...and recover.
Been here for 3 days now and will head to Jaco tomorrow. Wahoo.
Twilight adventure begins
Lack of studying our surf and lonely planet books we jumped onto this shuttle (large orange army bunker bus) and headed to the beach. Everyone on the shuttle was from Big Foot and 80% of the people were going for the day. The others including us were moving away from the hostel and staying at the beach...well we thought so. 30 minutes down the windy road we ended up at the coast. One road in, one road out. No side roads that potentially would wrap down the coast like we expected. Following the cow herd we took our gear off the monster truck and started to walk toward this island. Through our stuff onto this small paddle boat and some local took us over to the jungle covered island. We get to the other side and start to walk. About 1 mile of trekking next to the ocean we discovered the one and only hostel called "Turtle Lodge" that was smack down on the beach. Bungalows, bar, hammocks you name it. Excellent weather and okay waves. We screwed in our fins and headed to get some surf. While the beach was large and open to the winds, we were the only people in the water. That equals bonus for fun times. We surfed for a few hours and headed in to get some food.
While Turtle lodge tried to promote relaxation we were really bored. They had rules as well. Your not allowed to bring in outside food. You have to eat there. Plus they charge you $2 just to hang out there. This was pretty ridiculous a made us want to leave. Originally we thought this was a good surf spot but the way the beach was set up and the beaches we were looking for were far from here. What a mess. We talked to one of the workers to get more info and how to get out of here. The only way was to go back to Leon and then take a taxi to a town called Puerto Sandino. This is where we were originally tried to find and thought we could go there from here.
In the meantime the winds were picking up and a storm looked like it was rolling in. In the back of the hostel they had all of there boards on racks and I put my board my board back on the ground. While I was out there, I started to attempt to read some spanish flyer. Simultaneously, a gust of wind literally picked up my board about 5 feet straight up and smashed it hard on its tail. Instantly, blew out my tail! Scrambling around while the wind is throwing around my bored I finally grab it and put it on the racks and wrap some bungie cord around it. Pissed off at wind and getting my bored damaged for something I didn't do in the water. At this point, with all of the rules the lodge has plus this incident, I wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. The others were on board as well.
Only way out of here was the same shuttle back to Leon at 6. Double dang.
6 pm rolls around we pretty much the whole entire hostel at Turtle lodge leaves. End back up in Leon like a bunch of idiots. This time we had a better understanding of where we wanted to go: Puerto Sandino. We hired a taxi for $25 to take us to this world class surf spot. Little did we know, there were no hostels in the area.
We randomly found some surf lodge in Puerto Sandino but in a very sketchy neighborhood. Not one person was in the hotel except for the body guard. Juan ran out to speak with the locals to figure out where we should go. About 5 minutes later he came back saying there was no where else to go. He ran off again. Meantime the taxi driver is wondering what our plan was. First off we didn't want to stay in this hotel but had no idea where to go. Garrett spoke with the body guard and got the wifi password and started to look up hostels in the region. Nothing. Juan came back saying he found a "interesting" place to stay for the night. haha.
Paid the taxi and he zipped off. We grabbed our gear and followed Juan. haha. We walked into this sketchy local house. A bunch of kids playing pool and this monster of a mom greeting us with gratitude. Meaning her arms were the size of my entire stomach, her hands couldn't touch each other even if she wanted and a smirk on her face like everything she says was sarcastic. Not a good sign. We said hello and Juan said "follow me". Walked past the counter (kitchen) and went into the back yard where there was a pile full of garbage where our soon to be roommate was eating his food (pig). Walked past the rubbish and headed into this room where there was 3 beds. All full of potential nightmares. It was the classic grandma plastic wrap bed, springs blown out and you knew there were thousands of bed bugs waiting to feed on our rich blood. Fuck this.
We put our bags down in the room, discussed our situation and came to terms that we had no other solution and this lady was going to charge us $5. But a chance that we get robbed at any given point and eaten alive by our roommate. We went back and forth and decided we need to negotiate some terms with the lady...maybe free breakfast, massages, etc. Juan put his charm on and started to negotiate. The main lady listened, and her sidekick of a daughter mean mugged us all. Each time I looked at her she dug deeper into my soul and felt like she was taking a shit on me. It was awful. So, I retaliated and did the same thing back to her. Juan kept digging and digging, trying to crack this lady with information on where we were, where the surf break was, how we get there, cheap room rates, etc. The conversation got louder and worse. Some dude came over to answer questions and the sketchiness went to code red. Me and Garrett were just nodding our heads and smiling while Juan looked as if he was getting defeating in the debate. Finally, Juan stormed off and grabbed his gear. He said lets go guys.
Grabbed our gear once again, trying to figure out what just happened. Juan said the beach is close but we need to hire a boat in the morning to get to the waves. The lady offered to take us to another surf lodge down the road for $20. Thats why Juan was so pissed. We paid $25 for a hour taxi and this surf lodge was 2 minutes away. Fuck this lady. The whole time she was talking, you could tell she was ripping us off. We went back to the original surf hotel and posted up outside and poached the internet. Garrett found some surf lodge called Miramar Surf Lodge about 5 minutes away. $20 a night. Juan jetted off to some other locals and asked for a taxi. Anytime this guy talks he instantly makes friends with everyone. Within a couple of minutes a tuk tuk pulls up and we once again jet off into the unknown looking for some random surf lodge. Off we went. Dipping in and out of gravel roads and sort of waiting to get taking into some alley way to get jacked. But it didn't happen. We pulled up to some gnarly walled up gate with the sign saying "Miramar Surf Lodge". We knocked on the door and some Brazilian guys came out and greeted us in. Within seconds we realized we just fell into a golden garden. Incredible building overlooking some point break we didn't yet realize what it was. The outdoor living room filled with any type of surfboard you could think of and a kitchen that people dream of having. We instantly booked it.
At this point, it was around midnight and we have yet to eat all day from the travels. We asked them if they could make us some dinner but the kitchen was closed. They came out with cereal and yogurt. Again...we were in heaven and still didn't realize where we were. They asked us if we wanted to join the surf boat tomorrow. When? 5 am. haha. YES!
Woke up at 5 am and ran down to the living room. About 15 people all gearing up. Right in front of us was a serious left point break called Punta Miramar! Look that up. Waxed my used board (since my board was fucked) up and ran down to the beach to paddle out to the boat. The sunrise was starting to come up while we were driving into the abyss. Boat stopped at Puerto Sandino and just watched these sets come in from behind. Never have I seen a wave from behind like this. No idea how big the wave is or any sense of what your getting into. Everyone jumped out and started to paddle into the beast. Perfect head high waves were pealing past us. One after another people were grabbing waves. Even though 15 people were out there, seven of them were brazilian girls watching there boyfriends and getting a sweet tan, while the rest of us were enjoying both the eye candy and of course the waves. A three hours in, the boat picked us up and we headed back to the lodge. Breakfast waiting and an unreal view of Punta Miramar. A swimming pool overlooked the point so you could chill in the water while watching everyone surf. Best part is, you would go in a unspoken lineup of about 3-4 people max in the water. So, it was just me, Garrett and Juan each time we were surfing. That session was about 4-5 hours. Came back in, ate, rested and went back out for sunset. Jeez what a day!
Slept like a dog that night. No problem. Heat or bugs couldn't wake me that night.
Woke up at sunrise and headed back out. Due to time crunch, Garrett and Juan had to leave today. I decided to go with them. In the meantime the guys were fixing my surfboard and didn't want to rent again. Juan was busy emails so he lent me his. Now I think of it, I wish he didn't.
Me and Garrett paddled out. It was low tide and lots of dry rock was showing in the waves. It was really shallow, about 2 ft but the waves looked really fun. You can still catch the wave and pop out before the rocks if you were paying attention. About 1/2 hour in the waves were fun. I caught a good and got about 4-5 turns on it...Not paying attention to what was ahead of me. I got to the top of the lip and looked down. A huge rigged rock bed was exposed and I was about to land on all of it. I kicked my board out and dove into the dry rock. It was like diving head first 5 ft off the ground straight to your face. I dove, hit the rocks hands first. Instantly, got pounded by the wave, which ricocheted me further down more bed rock. All in shock I got up and grabbed my board. Looking to see how messed up the board was. Luckily it was perfect. But didn't realize how unperfected and jacked up I was. I looked at my arm, pouring blood, my wrist could barely move and was getting hit by the set coming in. I waiting for the timing and paddled back into the sets to get out of the rocks. Go through it and paddled around and into the beach. Two people from the hostel cam over to check in on me. My arm was pretty red mixing with the water so it looked way worse. If anyone knows me, they know I don't like blood. I kept walking back to the lodge. Walked up the path, past the pool and to the shower to rinse off. I was fine at this point until I finally realized what happened. Both of my arms were shocking and radiating while more blood was coming out of my arm. The whole hostel knew at this point and started to come closer to me. I turned the shower off and started to walk and soon realized I couldn't see 2 feet in front of me and passed out for a few seconds. They kept telling me to get up out of the sun and into the shade. Of course they helped me. Again, both hands fucked and couldn't see who was in front of me for about 20 minutes. All in shock. One of the brazilian girls came over and started to spray Iodine to fix infection. Finally snapped out of it but my arms were radiating for the next few hours. Overall, was actually fine. My right arms is all bruised up but it was the classic blood case where I just can't hang with the crowd. I wrapped it up and a few hours later we paid our bill and got out there towards Managua.
Photos couldn't capture this gem of a place so I decided to get some battle scars to remember forever. Next stop the main city before we all part ways.
While Turtle lodge tried to promote relaxation we were really bored. They had rules as well. Your not allowed to bring in outside food. You have to eat there. Plus they charge you $2 just to hang out there. This was pretty ridiculous a made us want to leave. Originally we thought this was a good surf spot but the way the beach was set up and the beaches we were looking for were far from here. What a mess. We talked to one of the workers to get more info and how to get out of here. The only way was to go back to Leon and then take a taxi to a town called Puerto Sandino. This is where we were originally tried to find and thought we could go there from here.
In the meantime the winds were picking up and a storm looked like it was rolling in. In the back of the hostel they had all of there boards on racks and I put my board my board back on the ground. While I was out there, I started to attempt to read some spanish flyer. Simultaneously, a gust of wind literally picked up my board about 5 feet straight up and smashed it hard on its tail. Instantly, blew out my tail! Scrambling around while the wind is throwing around my bored I finally grab it and put it on the racks and wrap some bungie cord around it. Pissed off at wind and getting my bored damaged for something I didn't do in the water. At this point, with all of the rules the lodge has plus this incident, I wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. The others were on board as well.
Only way out of here was the same shuttle back to Leon at 6. Double dang.
6 pm rolls around we pretty much the whole entire hostel at Turtle lodge leaves. End back up in Leon like a bunch of idiots. This time we had a better understanding of where we wanted to go: Puerto Sandino. We hired a taxi for $25 to take us to this world class surf spot. Little did we know, there were no hostels in the area.
We randomly found some surf lodge in Puerto Sandino but in a very sketchy neighborhood. Not one person was in the hotel except for the body guard. Juan ran out to speak with the locals to figure out where we should go. About 5 minutes later he came back saying there was no where else to go. He ran off again. Meantime the taxi driver is wondering what our plan was. First off we didn't want to stay in this hotel but had no idea where to go. Garrett spoke with the body guard and got the wifi password and started to look up hostels in the region. Nothing. Juan came back saying he found a "interesting" place to stay for the night. haha.
Paid the taxi and he zipped off. We grabbed our gear and followed Juan. haha. We walked into this sketchy local house. A bunch of kids playing pool and this monster of a mom greeting us with gratitude. Meaning her arms were the size of my entire stomach, her hands couldn't touch each other even if she wanted and a smirk on her face like everything she says was sarcastic. Not a good sign. We said hello and Juan said "follow me". Walked past the counter (kitchen) and went into the back yard where there was a pile full of garbage where our soon to be roommate was eating his food (pig). Walked past the rubbish and headed into this room where there was 3 beds. All full of potential nightmares. It was the classic grandma plastic wrap bed, springs blown out and you knew there were thousands of bed bugs waiting to feed on our rich blood. Fuck this.
We put our bags down in the room, discussed our situation and came to terms that we had no other solution and this lady was going to charge us $5. But a chance that we get robbed at any given point and eaten alive by our roommate. We went back and forth and decided we need to negotiate some terms with the lady...maybe free breakfast, massages, etc. Juan put his charm on and started to negotiate. The main lady listened, and her sidekick of a daughter mean mugged us all. Each time I looked at her she dug deeper into my soul and felt like she was taking a shit on me. It was awful. So, I retaliated and did the same thing back to her. Juan kept digging and digging, trying to crack this lady with information on where we were, where the surf break was, how we get there, cheap room rates, etc. The conversation got louder and worse. Some dude came over to answer questions and the sketchiness went to code red. Me and Garrett were just nodding our heads and smiling while Juan looked as if he was getting defeating in the debate. Finally, Juan stormed off and grabbed his gear. He said lets go guys.
Grabbed our gear once again, trying to figure out what just happened. Juan said the beach is close but we need to hire a boat in the morning to get to the waves. The lady offered to take us to another surf lodge down the road for $20. Thats why Juan was so pissed. We paid $25 for a hour taxi and this surf lodge was 2 minutes away. Fuck this lady. The whole time she was talking, you could tell she was ripping us off. We went back to the original surf hotel and posted up outside and poached the internet. Garrett found some surf lodge called Miramar Surf Lodge about 5 minutes away. $20 a night. Juan jetted off to some other locals and asked for a taxi. Anytime this guy talks he instantly makes friends with everyone. Within a couple of minutes a tuk tuk pulls up and we once again jet off into the unknown looking for some random surf lodge. Off we went. Dipping in and out of gravel roads and sort of waiting to get taking into some alley way to get jacked. But it didn't happen. We pulled up to some gnarly walled up gate with the sign saying "Miramar Surf Lodge". We knocked on the door and some Brazilian guys came out and greeted us in. Within seconds we realized we just fell into a golden garden. Incredible building overlooking some point break we didn't yet realize what it was. The outdoor living room filled with any type of surfboard you could think of and a kitchen that people dream of having. We instantly booked it.
At this point, it was around midnight and we have yet to eat all day from the travels. We asked them if they could make us some dinner but the kitchen was closed. They came out with cereal and yogurt. Again...we were in heaven and still didn't realize where we were. They asked us if we wanted to join the surf boat tomorrow. When? 5 am. haha. YES!
Woke up at 5 am and ran down to the living room. About 15 people all gearing up. Right in front of us was a serious left point break called Punta Miramar! Look that up. Waxed my used board (since my board was fucked) up and ran down to the beach to paddle out to the boat. The sunrise was starting to come up while we were driving into the abyss. Boat stopped at Puerto Sandino and just watched these sets come in from behind. Never have I seen a wave from behind like this. No idea how big the wave is or any sense of what your getting into. Everyone jumped out and started to paddle into the beast. Perfect head high waves were pealing past us. One after another people were grabbing waves. Even though 15 people were out there, seven of them were brazilian girls watching there boyfriends and getting a sweet tan, while the rest of us were enjoying both the eye candy and of course the waves. A three hours in, the boat picked us up and we headed back to the lodge. Breakfast waiting and an unreal view of Punta Miramar. A swimming pool overlooked the point so you could chill in the water while watching everyone surf. Best part is, you would go in a unspoken lineup of about 3-4 people max in the water. So, it was just me, Garrett and Juan each time we were surfing. That session was about 4-5 hours. Came back in, ate, rested and went back out for sunset. Jeez what a day!
Slept like a dog that night. No problem. Heat or bugs couldn't wake me that night.
Woke up at sunrise and headed back out. Due to time crunch, Garrett and Juan had to leave today. I decided to go with them. In the meantime the guys were fixing my surfboard and didn't want to rent again. Juan was busy emails so he lent me his. Now I think of it, I wish he didn't.
Me and Garrett paddled out. It was low tide and lots of dry rock was showing in the waves. It was really shallow, about 2 ft but the waves looked really fun. You can still catch the wave and pop out before the rocks if you were paying attention. About 1/2 hour in the waves were fun. I caught a good and got about 4-5 turns on it...Not paying attention to what was ahead of me. I got to the top of the lip and looked down. A huge rigged rock bed was exposed and I was about to land on all of it. I kicked my board out and dove into the dry rock. It was like diving head first 5 ft off the ground straight to your face. I dove, hit the rocks hands first. Instantly, got pounded by the wave, which ricocheted me further down more bed rock. All in shock I got up and grabbed my board. Looking to see how messed up the board was. Luckily it was perfect. But didn't realize how unperfected and jacked up I was. I looked at my arm, pouring blood, my wrist could barely move and was getting hit by the set coming in. I waiting for the timing and paddled back into the sets to get out of the rocks. Go through it and paddled around and into the beach. Two people from the hostel cam over to check in on me. My arm was pretty red mixing with the water so it looked way worse. If anyone knows me, they know I don't like blood. I kept walking back to the lodge. Walked up the path, past the pool and to the shower to rinse off. I was fine at this point until I finally realized what happened. Both of my arms were shocking and radiating while more blood was coming out of my arm. The whole hostel knew at this point and started to come closer to me. I turned the shower off and started to walk and soon realized I couldn't see 2 feet in front of me and passed out for a few seconds. They kept telling me to get up out of the sun and into the shade. Of course they helped me. Again, both hands fucked and couldn't see who was in front of me for about 20 minutes. All in shock. One of the brazilian girls came over and started to spray Iodine to fix infection. Finally snapped out of it but my arms were radiating for the next few hours. Overall, was actually fine. My right arms is all bruised up but it was the classic blood case where I just can't hang with the crowd. I wrapped it up and a few hours later we paid our bill and got out there towards Managua.
Photos couldn't capture this gem of a place so I decided to get some battle scars to remember forever. Next stop the main city before we all part ways.
Leon...again!
Like I said before. I got dropped off and started in Leon from El Salvador but to meet up with Garrett I had to dip down south that day. After Granada me, Garrett and Juan headed north to Leon. This time heading this direction to get closer to the waves and of course to check out this city. We hoped back on a Oca and let the adventure take us. These oca's are incredible. You never know what is going to happen. You pay $2 and jump in a van full of locals and drive. Sometimes its a one way fast ticket to your destination while the others are like a bus terminal. You end up stopping every 30 seconds to pick-up or drop-off someone. This particular trip was like this. From Granada to Managua we stopped every 5 minutes to pick up people. A 10 person van would fluctuate from 10 to 17 and back to 7 all in 10 minutes. Extremely uncomfortable. No a/c and lots of fat people. My solution was to act like I was sleeping so when new people came in, I wouldn't move. It worked like a charm...and ended up falling asleep.
Finally got dropped off in Managua. This time the Oca dropped us off a few blocks away from the oca station so we didn't really know where we were. Luckily another guy in the van got off and was heading to Leon, so we followed him. This time, it was a one way and fast. Got dropped off at the oca station and hired a bicycle taxi to cram 2 surfboard, 3 backpacks and 3 people in a small one person manual peddle bicycle. Pretty funny and somehow managed to pull it off.
Bicycle man dropped us off at Big foot hostel. This was the same hostel I went to previously for a few hours. This time we checked in. This was a party hostel and instantly the place was going off. Which typically ends in a good way and random adventures around town. This hostel didn't fail us at all. At 11 pm the hostel rounds up all of the people to head to the clubs. May is say in style? Instead of walking 10 minutes to the strip they pull up in a old 1950's army bunker bus. I mean large Mercades truck. You could fit 30 people in the back of this thing. If a bomb shot at this, the driver would be fine. If the driver decided to retaliate, it has the option to open a sewer top from the inside, pop out like Michelangelo and murc some people. Regardless, this beast was out of control. Everyone hoped on and we cruised the town like it was our high school prom. The driver dropped all of us off 10 minutes down the road to all of the clubs. 20 gringos pop out and we head into the clubs. Fashionably late and with mad style. Got into the clubs and they were fucking weak! Danced with some locals attempting Salsa, failed miserably. Laughing my ass off but overall turned the weird club environment into a memorable night. After this club we headed to the after party where apparently no locals are allowed to go to. Only tourist. Which is really strange. Hung out there for a bit and called it a night.
Next day hung around the hostel trying to figure out what to do next: head to the beach right away. Big foot has a shuttle to the beach so we booked it...and what a turnout this became...
Finally got dropped off in Managua. This time the Oca dropped us off a few blocks away from the oca station so we didn't really know where we were. Luckily another guy in the van got off and was heading to Leon, so we followed him. This time, it was a one way and fast. Got dropped off at the oca station and hired a bicycle taxi to cram 2 surfboard, 3 backpacks and 3 people in a small one person manual peddle bicycle. Pretty funny and somehow managed to pull it off.
Bicycle man dropped us off at Big foot hostel. This was the same hostel I went to previously for a few hours. This time we checked in. This was a party hostel and instantly the place was going off. Which typically ends in a good way and random adventures around town. This hostel didn't fail us at all. At 11 pm the hostel rounds up all of the people to head to the clubs. May is say in style? Instead of walking 10 minutes to the strip they pull up in a old 1950's army bunker bus. I mean large Mercades truck. You could fit 30 people in the back of this thing. If a bomb shot at this, the driver would be fine. If the driver decided to retaliate, it has the option to open a sewer top from the inside, pop out like Michelangelo and murc some people. Regardless, this beast was out of control. Everyone hoped on and we cruised the town like it was our high school prom. The driver dropped all of us off 10 minutes down the road to all of the clubs. 20 gringos pop out and we head into the clubs. Fashionably late and with mad style. Got into the clubs and they were fucking weak! Danced with some locals attempting Salsa, failed miserably. Laughing my ass off but overall turned the weird club environment into a memorable night. After this club we headed to the after party where apparently no locals are allowed to go to. Only tourist. Which is really strange. Hung out there for a bit and called it a night.
Next day hung around the hostel trying to figure out what to do next: head to the beach right away. Big foot has a shuttle to the beach so we booked it...and what a turnout this became...
Granada Bound
After Starting in Leon and trekking down to Granada at the beginning of the trip to meet up with Garrett we are now coming back to Granada to give it another chance...well at least stay for more than 6 hours.
As the group minused one member: Rose; me, Garrett and Juan headed to Granada to some sort of site seeing and see what the colonial city has to offer. We checked back into the Bearded Monkey, dropped off the bags and headed out. This time it was daytime so it was a whole new world. Lots of people in the streets, food carts everywhere and random, nice shops all dispersed inside the colonial buildings. We did typical touristy things by walking into every shop and taking photos of weird walls that locals couldn't wrap there heads around. One of the shops we ran into was a Nicaraguan Cigar factory/museum. Well thats what they called it. Pretty much was 4 tables, 2 people at each table making high quality cigars. Actually pretty rad b/c I've never seen how they do such magic. Before, I thought it was one paper and they stuff tobacco to make the cigar. I was wrong...They get about 10-15 flat tobacco leave and layer them on top of each other and then roll it like sushi at the same time. Thus, no cut up tobacco like I imagined. Cool right. I considered buying some for my once a year cigar smoking session but passed because my bag is just getting out of control.
After the museum or just standard work shop we ventured back into the city looking for beer tank tops to buy. Simple right? Not, because we are now stingy, and won't pay retail price for these 25 cent t-shirts they try and sell for $5. We probably walked to each shop and tried to barter but no response. Failure in Granada. Oh well.
Besides walking around all day, Granada is pretty basic colonial town. People relate it to Antigua, Guatemala but it really has no comparison. Antigua is way better. Better yet, just different. Granada has the same ideas with Spanish lessons around each corner but a bit more sketchy at night and not as safe. A few days here and you don't really need to come back but worth the visit. Two separate visits here was just about enough.
The night life on the other hand is pretty fun. Random stories of jumping around from cab to cab trying to find certain clubs ended in some crazy stories. Those stories need personal explanations from the source. Ask me when I get back.
As the group minused one member: Rose; me, Garrett and Juan headed to Granada to some sort of site seeing and see what the colonial city has to offer. We checked back into the Bearded Monkey, dropped off the bags and headed out. This time it was daytime so it was a whole new world. Lots of people in the streets, food carts everywhere and random, nice shops all dispersed inside the colonial buildings. We did typical touristy things by walking into every shop and taking photos of weird walls that locals couldn't wrap there heads around. One of the shops we ran into was a Nicaraguan Cigar factory/museum. Well thats what they called it. Pretty much was 4 tables, 2 people at each table making high quality cigars. Actually pretty rad b/c I've never seen how they do such magic. Before, I thought it was one paper and they stuff tobacco to make the cigar. I was wrong...They get about 10-15 flat tobacco leave and layer them on top of each other and then roll it like sushi at the same time. Thus, no cut up tobacco like I imagined. Cool right. I considered buying some for my once a year cigar smoking session but passed because my bag is just getting out of control.
After the museum or just standard work shop we ventured back into the city looking for beer tank tops to buy. Simple right? Not, because we are now stingy, and won't pay retail price for these 25 cent t-shirts they try and sell for $5. We probably walked to each shop and tried to barter but no response. Failure in Granada. Oh well.
Besides walking around all day, Granada is pretty basic colonial town. People relate it to Antigua, Guatemala but it really has no comparison. Antigua is way better. Better yet, just different. Granada has the same ideas with Spanish lessons around each corner but a bit more sketchy at night and not as safe. A few days here and you don't really need to come back but worth the visit. Two separate visits here was just about enough.
The night life on the other hand is pretty fun. Random stories of jumping around from cab to cab trying to find certain clubs ended in some crazy stories. Those stories need personal explanations from the source. Ask me when I get back.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Ometepe
After a much needed detox me and Garrett blasted out of the Naked Tiger. Hired a taxi and headed 30 minutes inland to a place called Ometepe. Ometepe is a large 2 volcano island surrounded by lake half the size of lake Michigan. Only way to get out there is by a ferry. After the taxi dropped us off we walked to the ferry and waited for it to arrive. Practiced my spanish with some local street vendor, laughed at him while he laughed at me. Finally the ferry pulls up. Crammed with people, cars and 2 large shipping trucks. Right when it docked everyone runs in. No lines, not even the word polite could possibly be in these locals vocabulary. To top it off, I have my surfboard, so running up and down the stairs on the ferry was fun. Got situated on the top of the ferry and waited. Some of the local kids were climbing up the ferry and jumping off. I went over to chat with them and laugh at there failed 2 rotation flips. One of the kids took a picture with me and his friend, must of thought I was somebody I'm not.
Still waiting for these 2 shipping trucks to drive off, one got stuck and nearly tipped the boat over. Everyone is on top of the boat and now two of the trucks were on one side of the bus and not evening things out. The caption kicked everyone off the bus so we wouldn't die. Once again, we waited and watched the truck struggle to get out of the ferry. To this day, me and Garrett still have no idea why the driver didn't just gas it and drive out. Nothing looked wrong what so ever. But they have there weird ways in Nicaragua.
2 hours later on the ferry we arrived at Ometepe. Like idiots we didn't read any books so we had no idea where to go on this island. The island had about 7 mini towns and we just didn't know which one to go to. We jumped onto some other tourist van and headed out. Met two new friends. One is Rose from San Francisco who is living in Columbia and on her holiday and another guy Juan from Spain. Both work together and travelling together for a few days. We all ended up at the same hostel in the town of Santa Domingo. Instant friends we went out and grabbed some pascada (fish) at some random restaurant. A long hour later we got our gi-normous fish and stuffed ourselves. Next day we all decided to venture the island.
Day 2
Woke up and rented some bikes and headed to ojo de agua (eye of water). This place was a really nice natural swimming pool full of locals. We swam and relaxed for a little bit and then headed out. Our main mission was to find this waterfall. The locals said it was impossible to do both ojo de agua and the waterfall in one day. We ventured out to prove them wrong. We road our bikes for a few hours down some sketchy gravel/large rock roads, never finding any end. Each time we asked a local how far it was they would say between 10 minutes and 2 hours. No one ever knew. By the way, that is how it works out here. You ask a question and they always say 10 minutes.
We finally ended up at some fruit stand and Juan chatted with these people for a while. They were selling bananas for 1 cordoba (maybe 10 cents), calalas (passion fruit), honey and naranjas (oranges). All for the cheapest I've seen on my trip. Finally saw a passion fruit tree for the first time and was in heaven. This is my favorite fruit so I pretty much bought the whole tree from them.
Long story short, Juan negotiated a volcano tour with this guy. Instead of going through a company we hired him to take 4 of us up for $15 total! After we settled our deal we took off looking for this waterfall. We road our bikes for another 1/2 hour on this unforgiving trail. We ended up at some random beach and decided to call it quits. Jumped in the water and noticed a few kids pulling fishing nets out of the water. We headed over to see what they were catching. A few photos later and a bunch of fish we decided to buy 7 of these bad boys off of them. Each fish was 10 cordobas each! (50 cents). Unreal deal we couldn't pass up. Only problem, our hostel didn't have a kitchen and we had not tools to gut the fish except for a small pocket knife. We bought them anyways.
Got back to the hostel and started to ask the lady if we could use there back kitchen to gut the fish. Well, better yet, Juan is doing all of this work. Fluent Spaniard using his charm with the village ladies. They said no. He would go back and say "can we use your knife?", then go back "can we use your cutting board", "yada yada". Finally the lady just says she will cook us dinner if we give her two of our fishes! What a deal. She ended up cooking this incredible fish soap and we ate it with her family. Juan suckered her in and she ended up doing everything for us.
Day 3:
Woke up at 4:30 to to hike this volcano. Word is, this is a really hard climb. I just did Acatanango and that was hard but easily do-able. We hoped on a chicken bus at 4:50 and headed to Santa Cruise. From Santa Cruise we walked down that gravel/rock road for the next hour. Finally arrived at the fruit stand where our 18 year old guide "Kevin" was waiting for us. We stocked up on fruits and bread and headed up the volcano. The first hour was flat but that was because we were walking towards the volcano. All of a sudden we passed all of the farmland and arrived into the deep forest. No path and only a machete making our pathway we started to go straight up. I mean straight up. The only stair sets were the roots of the trees. The noises we made woke up the monkeys in the distant and they would yell at the top of there lungs to scare us away! haha. This hike straight up didn't end for the next 6 hours. No reference on where you were except large drop-offs that would tear you up to your death. Sometimes you would get a sneak peak of where you were, but we were surrounded by clouds so visibility wasn't in our favor. It reminded me of medieval times, lord of the rings steez and plain old savage manly stuff. We were doing it. Half way up the clouds started to rain and all of the ground turned into clay and mud. My Nikes were destroyed at this point but there was no turning back. Rose was in so much pain she was just crying while she was hiking up. She actually thought she was going to die. Some of the crossings we had to balance on tree roots just to get pass quick sand. The earth was moving and the winds were howling. It was quite a surreal experience. All worth it. Everyones main concern was getting down this mountain. Its easy to climb up but going down looked like a mud slide to death.
Arrived to the peak with zero visibility. Nothing to see from the top except clouds rushing pass us about 50 mph an hour. I loved it. The top of the mountain had a crater that blasted off when the volcano exploded millions of years back. Now its covered with crazy looking trees and a lagoon at the bottom. From here on out we hiked down this trail to find this secret lagoon. Since the surrounds changed, new plants filled the ground. Fern like plants that were white and black instead of green. The ground turned into weird looking rock and again if you fell your sure of death. One hour into hiking down and into this majestic crater we arrived at this lagoon! Still covered with clouds moving like the lord all mighty just sneezed we relaxed our jello like legs and ate lunch. Photos upon photos were taking and a sense of relief was accomplished. Right when we were about to leave the clouds randomly lifted and the sun popped through. The area was open for us and we could see the whole lagoon! As we headed back up the crater the skies slowly but surely lifted and we could see the whole island. Across from us was the other volcano and massive amounts of trees.
So far we have had maybe 1/2 hour of rest and had to head back down the mountain before the sun set. The second half of the adventure began as we all turned our tarzan like instincts on and hurled ourselves down this volcano. If you were holding onto a tree root going down, you fell into mud and skidded down for a while. Funny but scary watching the others fall. My tarzan was like donkey kong. Still parts of my Nike's were clean and was proud of that. 13 hours into the decent the skies were going down and fast. We still had lots to climb. We had to make it down to the lake and we could still see boats that looks like ants. We were screwed. Luckily, I brought be headlamp. Finally got down after a 15 hour hike. Easily one of the hardest hikes I've done and completely volcanoed out for the next forever.
I still can't figure out which volcano was better. Both completely off the charts and different.
Still waiting for these 2 shipping trucks to drive off, one got stuck and nearly tipped the boat over. Everyone is on top of the boat and now two of the trucks were on one side of the bus and not evening things out. The caption kicked everyone off the bus so we wouldn't die. Once again, we waited and watched the truck struggle to get out of the ferry. To this day, me and Garrett still have no idea why the driver didn't just gas it and drive out. Nothing looked wrong what so ever. But they have there weird ways in Nicaragua.
2 hours later on the ferry we arrived at Ometepe. Like idiots we didn't read any books so we had no idea where to go on this island. The island had about 7 mini towns and we just didn't know which one to go to. We jumped onto some other tourist van and headed out. Met two new friends. One is Rose from San Francisco who is living in Columbia and on her holiday and another guy Juan from Spain. Both work together and travelling together for a few days. We all ended up at the same hostel in the town of Santa Domingo. Instant friends we went out and grabbed some pascada (fish) at some random restaurant. A long hour later we got our gi-normous fish and stuffed ourselves. Next day we all decided to venture the island.
Day 2
Woke up and rented some bikes and headed to ojo de agua (eye of water). This place was a really nice natural swimming pool full of locals. We swam and relaxed for a little bit and then headed out. Our main mission was to find this waterfall. The locals said it was impossible to do both ojo de agua and the waterfall in one day. We ventured out to prove them wrong. We road our bikes for a few hours down some sketchy gravel/large rock roads, never finding any end. Each time we asked a local how far it was they would say between 10 minutes and 2 hours. No one ever knew. By the way, that is how it works out here. You ask a question and they always say 10 minutes.
We finally ended up at some fruit stand and Juan chatted with these people for a while. They were selling bananas for 1 cordoba (maybe 10 cents), calalas (passion fruit), honey and naranjas (oranges). All for the cheapest I've seen on my trip. Finally saw a passion fruit tree for the first time and was in heaven. This is my favorite fruit so I pretty much bought the whole tree from them.
Long story short, Juan negotiated a volcano tour with this guy. Instead of going through a company we hired him to take 4 of us up for $15 total! After we settled our deal we took off looking for this waterfall. We road our bikes for another 1/2 hour on this unforgiving trail. We ended up at some random beach and decided to call it quits. Jumped in the water and noticed a few kids pulling fishing nets out of the water. We headed over to see what they were catching. A few photos later and a bunch of fish we decided to buy 7 of these bad boys off of them. Each fish was 10 cordobas each! (50 cents). Unreal deal we couldn't pass up. Only problem, our hostel didn't have a kitchen and we had not tools to gut the fish except for a small pocket knife. We bought them anyways.
Got back to the hostel and started to ask the lady if we could use there back kitchen to gut the fish. Well, better yet, Juan is doing all of this work. Fluent Spaniard using his charm with the village ladies. They said no. He would go back and say "can we use your knife?", then go back "can we use your cutting board", "yada yada". Finally the lady just says she will cook us dinner if we give her two of our fishes! What a deal. She ended up cooking this incredible fish soap and we ate it with her family. Juan suckered her in and she ended up doing everything for us.
Day 3:
Woke up at 4:30 to to hike this volcano. Word is, this is a really hard climb. I just did Acatanango and that was hard but easily do-able. We hoped on a chicken bus at 4:50 and headed to Santa Cruise. From Santa Cruise we walked down that gravel/rock road for the next hour. Finally arrived at the fruit stand where our 18 year old guide "Kevin" was waiting for us. We stocked up on fruits and bread and headed up the volcano. The first hour was flat but that was because we were walking towards the volcano. All of a sudden we passed all of the farmland and arrived into the deep forest. No path and only a machete making our pathway we started to go straight up. I mean straight up. The only stair sets were the roots of the trees. The noises we made woke up the monkeys in the distant and they would yell at the top of there lungs to scare us away! haha. This hike straight up didn't end for the next 6 hours. No reference on where you were except large drop-offs that would tear you up to your death. Sometimes you would get a sneak peak of where you were, but we were surrounded by clouds so visibility wasn't in our favor. It reminded me of medieval times, lord of the rings steez and plain old savage manly stuff. We were doing it. Half way up the clouds started to rain and all of the ground turned into clay and mud. My Nikes were destroyed at this point but there was no turning back. Rose was in so much pain she was just crying while she was hiking up. She actually thought she was going to die. Some of the crossings we had to balance on tree roots just to get pass quick sand. The earth was moving and the winds were howling. It was quite a surreal experience. All worth it. Everyones main concern was getting down this mountain. Its easy to climb up but going down looked like a mud slide to death.
Arrived to the peak with zero visibility. Nothing to see from the top except clouds rushing pass us about 50 mph an hour. I loved it. The top of the mountain had a crater that blasted off when the volcano exploded millions of years back. Now its covered with crazy looking trees and a lagoon at the bottom. From here on out we hiked down this trail to find this secret lagoon. Since the surrounds changed, new plants filled the ground. Fern like plants that were white and black instead of green. The ground turned into weird looking rock and again if you fell your sure of death. One hour into hiking down and into this majestic crater we arrived at this lagoon! Still covered with clouds moving like the lord all mighty just sneezed we relaxed our jello like legs and ate lunch. Photos upon photos were taking and a sense of relief was accomplished. Right when we were about to leave the clouds randomly lifted and the sun popped through. The area was open for us and we could see the whole lagoon! As we headed back up the crater the skies slowly but surely lifted and we could see the whole island. Across from us was the other volcano and massive amounts of trees.
So far we have had maybe 1/2 hour of rest and had to head back down the mountain before the sun set. The second half of the adventure began as we all turned our tarzan like instincts on and hurled ourselves down this volcano. If you were holding onto a tree root going down, you fell into mud and skidded down for a while. Funny but scary watching the others fall. My tarzan was like donkey kong. Still parts of my Nike's were clean and was proud of that. 13 hours into the decent the skies were going down and fast. We still had lots to climb. We had to make it down to the lake and we could still see boats that looks like ants. We were screwed. Luckily, I brought be headlamp. Finally got down after a 15 hour hike. Easily one of the hardest hikes I've done and completely volcanoed out for the next forever.
I still can't figure out which volcano was better. Both completely off the charts and different.
San Juan Del Sur
For the next 5 days we trained hard. The big 2013 year was just around the corner and knew San Juan Del Sur was the place to be for the new years. Even if you didn't want to party at the Naked Tiger you had no choice. Well, I guess you could just leave. The music starts at 9 a.m and doesn't end until 6 am. Do the right calculations and you get about 3 hours of sleep each night and try and take a few naps in the day time. This town was way more nightlife than anything else. People flock all over the world thinking San Juan Del Sur is a surf town but in reality its a port full of fishing boats. But 20 minutes north or south and you have Hermosa beach and Deltora (I know this is the wrong spelling but you get the idea).
Each day me and Garrett hoped on a bus to get to these beaches to surf. Waves were small but still really fun. The local vibe in the water was not too friendly but if you don't get in there way its all good.
Those days we were at the Naked Tiger met a lot of people. Some would stay for one day while others stayed like us until the new years. Ran into some old friends from Guatemala that randomly showed up and met some great new friends. Mostly Australians, Hawaiians, USA and Europe. Plus a lot of Israelis.
Anyways, the last day was New Years Eve and what a way to end the stay at the Naked Tiger and San Juan Del Sur. My body was aching but ready to push through it. The day started off with buying a $20 wristband that would get us unlimited drinks and a t-shirt. Wahoo. To be honest that day was amazing but bits and pieces are missing in my brain. A bit cloudy. I do know we all pre-gamed at the hostel until about 10 and then headed into town to the club. This time, I lost Garrett from the beginning of the night because I met some Israeli girls and wanted to hang out with them. The streets were crazy packed full of teenagers, families and lots of people. We got into the club and they gave us lanyards (which I guess was the t-shirt they promised us). Found some spot and danced the night away! The rest goes in my black book or in my cloudy brain, but 2013 was fun.
Each day me and Garrett hoped on a bus to get to these beaches to surf. Waves were small but still really fun. The local vibe in the water was not too friendly but if you don't get in there way its all good.
Those days we were at the Naked Tiger met a lot of people. Some would stay for one day while others stayed like us until the new years. Ran into some old friends from Guatemala that randomly showed up and met some great new friends. Mostly Australians, Hawaiians, USA and Europe. Plus a lot of Israelis.
Anyways, the last day was New Years Eve and what a way to end the stay at the Naked Tiger and San Juan Del Sur. My body was aching but ready to push through it. The day started off with buying a $20 wristband that would get us unlimited drinks and a t-shirt. Wahoo. To be honest that day was amazing but bits and pieces are missing in my brain. A bit cloudy. I do know we all pre-gamed at the hostel until about 10 and then headed into town to the club. This time, I lost Garrett from the beginning of the night because I met some Israeli girls and wanted to hang out with them. The streets were crazy packed full of teenagers, families and lots of people. We got into the club and they gave us lanyards (which I guess was the t-shirt they promised us). Found some spot and danced the night away! The rest goes in my black book or in my cloudy brain, but 2013 was fun.
Grenada to San Juan Del Sur
Best part is, that guy in the room was Garrett! First time I've seen a familiar face in a few months. Wahoo. He booked a room and we headed out into town. Cultured shocked, he ended up getting a taxi to get out here because all of the buses were closed and just wanted to get to Grenada that night.
Next day we woke up earlier, packed our bags again and grabbed a chicken bus to Rivas. Rivas is the closest town you can get to San Juan Del Sur. From there we jumped onto another bus to get into San Juan. After easily 25 hours of travelling we made it to town. Booked into the hostel "Naked Tiger" and let the games begin. The hostel was owned by one of my old college friends. He turned this old gangster mobsters mansion into a hostel. Large old villa, swimming pool and lots of people. The hostel was just outside of town on the hill. Overlooks the whole town and beach. Its an incredible view.
Next day we woke up earlier, packed our bags again and grabbed a chicken bus to Rivas. Rivas is the closest town you can get to San Juan Del Sur. From there we jumped onto another bus to get into San Juan. After easily 25 hours of travelling we made it to town. Booked into the hostel "Naked Tiger" and let the games begin. The hostel was owned by one of my old college friends. He turned this old gangster mobsters mansion into a hostel. Large old villa, swimming pool and lots of people. The hostel was just outside of town on the hill. Overlooks the whole town and beach. Its an incredible view.
El Salvador to Nicaragua
5 a.m got picked up by a small shuttle van crammed with 9 other tourist. The driver grabbed my gear and threw my surfboard on the top along with everyones backpacks. Roped it up and we took off. The bus was dropping me off in Leon. Leon is a colonial city at the north part of Nicaragua. To get there we had drive through 3 countries: El Salvador, Honduras and finally Nicaragua. Best part is the alliance the countries have with each other means none of us needed to get out of the bus. We just pass our passports to the driver and he does the rest. 10 hours later we ended up in Leon.
Today Garrett arrives in Nicaragua and I'm supposed to meet him in San Juan Del Sur. Which is the southern part of the country. I figured I could get a shuttle bus straight there but talking with the hostels they said there is no such shuttle available. This is where the fun begins. I get on my phone and skype Garrett to figure out a solution. I was hoping I could convince him to come up to Leon and start the trip here but he was flying into Managua and it didn't make any sense. The solution was for me to find a "oca" local shuttle bus, drive to Managua, from Managua jump on another oca and go to Grenada. Thats where Garrett and I would meet up. Pretty ridiculous. I already spent 10 hours on a bus and about to do another 6 just to get to Grenada.
To get to the oca I flagged down a bicycle taxi and he peddled me over to the terminal at about 2 mph an hour. Super funny with a surfboard blocking his view and dodging traffic. After this guy taking me down some sketchy allies we arrived at the oca station. Which in reality is dirt road with school buses, trash, ladies selling drinks out of a pouch and of course oca's. I started to walk with my gear and some oca guy started to yell "Managua". I laugh and start heading his direction. He grabbed my board and tossed it up top of the van. Grabbed some rope and tied it up. 5 minutes later we hit the road. Me, the white gringo and 10 locals crammed in this van. Again, absolutely ridiculous. The whole entire time I for sure thought my board was gonna fly off. It was the only thing on the van and was making loud noises the whole trip.
Anyways, 3 hours in we ended up in Managua. At this point I had no idea how to get from Managua to Grenada but thats part of the fun. I got off the bus, paid my $3 taxi fee and walked about 10 feet before some dude yelled "Grenada. Hoped on this new oca and took off within 5 minutes. Crazy organized caos but it works so well.
Somehow ended up in Grenada and jumped off the bus in central park. Walked around for a half hour, aimlessly looking for a hostel. Ended up on the wrong side of town and finally asked a few people where the good hostels were. Huffing and puffing around I finally found a hostel called the "Bearded Monkey". Checked in and emailed Garrett letting him know where to meet me. It was about 8 pm at this point and had no idea how Garrett was even going to get here.
For me, I unloaded my gear and hit the town looking for some food and check out the surroundings. Found some good "buffet" style Nicaraguan food. Rice, beans, plantains, pork and salad. Fast and easy. Went back to the hostel and fell asleep.
Woke up around 11 pm to some guy walking around the room. Looked over and yelled "Garrett!". He goes "Sean?"
New adventure begins...
Today Garrett arrives in Nicaragua and I'm supposed to meet him in San Juan Del Sur. Which is the southern part of the country. I figured I could get a shuttle bus straight there but talking with the hostels they said there is no such shuttle available. This is where the fun begins. I get on my phone and skype Garrett to figure out a solution. I was hoping I could convince him to come up to Leon and start the trip here but he was flying into Managua and it didn't make any sense. The solution was for me to find a "oca" local shuttle bus, drive to Managua, from Managua jump on another oca and go to Grenada. Thats where Garrett and I would meet up. Pretty ridiculous. I already spent 10 hours on a bus and about to do another 6 just to get to Grenada.
To get to the oca I flagged down a bicycle taxi and he peddled me over to the terminal at about 2 mph an hour. Super funny with a surfboard blocking his view and dodging traffic. After this guy taking me down some sketchy allies we arrived at the oca station. Which in reality is dirt road with school buses, trash, ladies selling drinks out of a pouch and of course oca's. I started to walk with my gear and some oca guy started to yell "Managua". I laugh and start heading his direction. He grabbed my board and tossed it up top of the van. Grabbed some rope and tied it up. 5 minutes later we hit the road. Me, the white gringo and 10 locals crammed in this van. Again, absolutely ridiculous. The whole entire time I for sure thought my board was gonna fly off. It was the only thing on the van and was making loud noises the whole trip.
Anyways, 3 hours in we ended up in Managua. At this point I had no idea how to get from Managua to Grenada but thats part of the fun. I got off the bus, paid my $3 taxi fee and walked about 10 feet before some dude yelled "Grenada. Hoped on this new oca and took off within 5 minutes. Crazy organized caos but it works so well.
Somehow ended up in Grenada and jumped off the bus in central park. Walked around for a half hour, aimlessly looking for a hostel. Ended up on the wrong side of town and finally asked a few people where the good hostels were. Huffing and puffing around I finally found a hostel called the "Bearded Monkey". Checked in and emailed Garrett letting him know where to meet me. It was about 8 pm at this point and had no idea how Garrett was even going to get here.
For me, I unloaded my gear and hit the town looking for some food and check out the surroundings. Found some good "buffet" style Nicaraguan food. Rice, beans, plantains, pork and salad. Fast and easy. Went back to the hostel and fell asleep.
Woke up around 11 pm to some guy walking around the room. Looked over and yelled "Garrett!". He goes "Sean?"
New adventure begins...
Guatemala back to El Salvador
Quite the predicament this next few weeks. The end of the world ends on the 21st, and Christmas and new years are just around the corner. My old roommate Garrett from San Diego is coming to visit on the 27th in Nicaragua and said I would meet him out there. Problem is I'm 30 hours away from Nicaragua and the buses close on the holidays. This is where the fun began:
After destroying the volcano and Guatemala in general, I decided to bypass the end of the world party in the city. I said my goodbyes to all of my new friends at the Terrace and booked a bus ticket back to El Salvador. 5 hours later I got dropped off back at Sunzal Point to stay for Christmas and get some surf in. This ended up being a great idea because the end of the world was a huge bust.
For the five days I caught up with some well needed sleep and surf. The hostel was fully booked with some great people. Christmas eve we all decided to have a cookout and eat dinner together. To top that off with lots of drinks and rowdy conversations, 3 of us ended up driving out to San Salvador for a Christmas party that started at 1 a.m. Insane party that ended around 8 in the morning. Long night!
Next day or in reality that day just slept and made some good Christmas food to recover. Skyped with my family and called it a day.
The following day I leave for a long bus ride to Nicaragua...
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