Nicaragua

A proper update is due, we are now in Nicaragua, we’ve already stayed for a few nights in Popoyo (pronounced po-poi-yah) where the surf was really good fun and the accomodation was more expensive than we’d have liked, but very nice.

Getting to Popoyo from Tamarindo was fairly straightforward, involving getting the 9am bus from outside the local bank to Liberia - the bus takes ages to get there, stopping at every tiny village and town on the way, often it would stop two or three times in the same 500 yard stretch as people waited outside their houses to be picked up.

From Liberia we walked in circles with a couple of New Zealand backpackers who had the lonely planet book, we’ve not had the best of luck with the lonely planet guide and I’m glad we didn’t buy one before leaving, the maps are usefull but the information is often out of date and their most recommended hostels have been pretty crappy so far.

After finding the right bus - one stop over from where we started, and loading our stuff on a very nice English speaking gantleman explained to us exactly what we needed to do at the border to get to Nicaragua.

Penas Blancas is the border city in Costa Rica, apparently they don’t get on with Nicaragua so you have to get out, get your passport stamped, walk 1km to the incredibly poorly signposted immigration office in Nicaragua and pay your $7 US to get in to the country.

When you approach the building you are accosted by half a dozen local entrepreneurs who wave the official customs form (which by now you’ve filled in four times already) at you and ask “Money, Tip, Cordobas, Dollar?”, Charlie and I have got used to this and were able to walk the last 5 feet to the window and pick up our completely free forms ourselves without the need for a paid guide.

The next hurdle is finding the bus station which they cleverly hide all the way on the other side of the immigration building, forcing you to walk past the incessant taxi drivers and the nurses in masks… hmm, not seen them before.

Taped to the wall is a hand written list of symptoms of Swine Flu, in front of it are two or three nurses with face masks on, fiddling with their stethoscopes and looking bored. By this point Charlies researcher routes had gotten the better of her and she probably knows more about swine flu than any of the nurses there, so we roll our eyes and bundle on with our stuff to find the buses.

You pay one US $ to get into the bus station, this is tax or something, who knows, it’s worth it to get the crazy bus people out of your personal space. Next we needed the bus to Rivas, the second Rivas slips from your mouth three conductors (the seemingly randomly appointed civilians who collect your money and heard you onto the bus) grab at your bag and shoulders and explain they are going to Rivas.

Inspecting the front of their bus, it says something completely different, you look quizzically at them and say “Solo Rivas?” - “Only Rivas?”, “well, I’m going somewhere else first, but I will definitely go to Rivas afterwards, I promise you, it will be the best bus ride of your life” they earnestly reply, so we ignored them and got on a bus which actually said Rivas on it. Phew.

The buses are like the ones in Panama, old US school buses, but not so lovingly made-up, we clatter along overtaking horse and cow-drawn carts and whole families on single pushbikes watching the huge Lake with the volcanoe in the middle roll past, the millions of midges and thousands of birds eating them and the suprisingly familiar site of wind farms.

Rivas is a transport hub, the bus stop is, as always, in the sketchiest neighbourhood, making even the toothless taxi drivers and their death-trap vehicles look inviting to any tired tourist arriving there.

We negotiated, mostly through sign language and counting on fingers, a taxi ride first to a supermarket to get some supplies, then to Popoyo, our next destination.

Our taxi driver was helpfull, he went in to the market with Charlie while I waited with all our gear in his unlocked taxi parked in a side street, expecting any minute to be threatened or just stabbed when someone fancied making off with all our possessions.

After a bum-numbing 2 hour ride along the worst roads we’ve experienced so far - (the dirt roads are OK, it’s the ones they tried to pave but have given up on which are the problem, the only way to navigate them is to drive in the potholes avoiding the odd island of tarmac which sticks up, you end up doing a painfully slow slalom along whole stretches of what should be decent roads) - you pass a salt extraction field with massive piles of salt waiting to be taken away.

Popoyo itself is a dusty street with occasional glimpses of waves breaking between the hostels, hotels and aboandoned houses.

The hotel we had decided on has a website called: hotelpopoyo.com, understandably we were therefore looking for Hotel Popoyo - after driving the length of the dirt road, which ends at a river with two or three run-down hotels overlooking it, we discovered that it doesn’t exist.

It was about 5:30pm, about to get dark, quickly, so we thought for a minute and decided to try the hotel right on the end, spectacular sea views gauranteed. We stuck our heads in and asked about a room, there were many available, for good rates.

We were ushered upstairs and into the bleakest looking room you could imagine, no mossie nets, sketchy looking bed, bare dusty floorboards, no other furniture, err thanks, we’ll settle in, do you have internet? “no, down the street” OK, thanks.

It was desperate, one look at Charlie and I knew we weren’t going to be staying here tonight, some digging on the computer revealed the rest of the URL - it included “El Toro restaurant” - something new to go on, we politely declined the offer of the room from hell, queue confused: “you no like?” - err no, we don’t like. Adios.

We set off with our big packs, small packs, board and four tearing carrier bags of shopping down the dusty dirt track, sure we’d passed some nicer looking places on the way to the end of the road.

By now it was getting pretty dark, and we didn’t know where we were going to sleep, asking the next guy who rode past on his bike about the El Toro restaurant was useless “I’m not from round here” he said in Spanish, I understood him but had to wonder what he was doing cycling around a dirt track in a village in the middle of no-where that he didn’t live in.

The next pair of people were drinking a beer in a hammock outside a partially built house, they knew where it was and we established that it was down the track 500m on the right.

Eventually we got there, tired, emotional and covered in a course layer of dust. We were shown to our room and instantly perked up when we felt the air conditioning pumping cool air around the room.

Downstairs for some dinner then to bed.

We were at the El Toro Restaurant/hotel, which is a stones-throw from the beach and offers private rooms and dorms, we opted for the cheaper dorms and shared with a couple of E-coast USA surfers called Nate and Matt.

They were good company, each night we’d have a meal in the restuarant for around $5 US each, beer was $1.50 US, then watch VH1 classics or American sports and discuss Swine Flu.

During the day we’d head for a surf in the morning, come back and eat an improvised picnic lunch using food we bought in Rivas (there are no supermarkets, cashpoints or anything apart from hostels and hotels in Popoyo), swim in the pool, lounge around in the hammocks and play with the hostels puppies before going to the beach for another surf and repeating the restuarant routine.

Having originally planned to stay for 4 nights we were starting to think that Popoyo was not the most exciting place to be for any length of time, Luckily Nate and Matt were leaving for the capital on Friday and had arranged a shuttle through the hotel, it would cost $120 in total so they were keen to get a couple of people in to spread the cost.

$30 each took us to Managua in record time in a 4x4, these are the roads 4x4’s were made for, fording rivers, climbing hedges to avoid rubble and beating along the dirt tracks was fairly comfortable.

We’d been warned off staying in Nicaraguas capital by Marcus from the hostel in Tamarindo with a few scary stories, it looked pretty nice at this end as we were dropped outside a swish hotel, the porter eager to carry our bags for us before we told him we weren’t staying there.

The taxi driver deserves credit for translating my garbled Spanish and taking us to the collectivo station for Leon, where we happily joined the other 10 passengers in a tiny mini-bus, our ridiculous amount of luggage somehow squeezed into the spave behind our seats.

We sat facing backwards, a blessing as the driver wound around the queues of cars and trucks along the highway, several near misses when overtaking has de-sensitised even me,  a nervous passenger at the best of times, but I appreciated the view out of the back window on the trip.

we arrived in Leon and some cocky young taxi driver tried to squeeze my board into the boot, twice he tried and twice he battered it with the boot, I winced after the fourth time he slammed the boot down on soft foam and told him we’d put it on our laps.

Bigfoot hostel was the call, but they didn’t have a private room, so we stayed in a dorm, then moved to our current address, Lazy Bones hostel, which seems very nice and relaxed, has a good internet connection, and is located near to the bus station and cinema, the plan for tonight is to watch a film and get some nice cheap food.

More updates as we move on, the weather is supposed to be stormy for our last few days in Nica’, which we are spending on the North West coast at an American run surf hostel/hotel, should be fun.