Sun of a Beach!

So, Nicaragua was a lot of fun, but it is time for us to make another change. We're heading into Costa Rica, and what better place to go in Costa Rica than the beach?

But first, there are a few minor details to take care of. Like crossing the border. It was a slightly chaotic crossing, because the border is just full of people trying to swindle you. For instance, there are entry/exit info cards that you need to fill out anytime you enter into a new country. These little sheets of paper should be provided at the immigration window, seeing as they require them to be filled out. However, as you line up, several people will approach you with pads and pads of these little necessary papers, and attempt to sell them to you. When you tell them you don't want to buy one because they are free at the window, the response is that there are not any left up at the window. At this point, you look them up and down, noticing that they have literally hundreds of these things, and the thought that comes to mind is "I wonder why there aren't any left?" We called one guy out on this, and even after he admitted that there were sheets available for free, he simply asked for a tip for the convenience he was providing. They have no shame.

In then end, one of two things will happen: you either pay up and have a card filled out and ready to go to speed up the entire process, or wait and piss off the immigration officer because you arrive at the front of his line unready. So we went ahead and told him ok. He gave us 2 papers, and I gave him the last of the coins in my pocket after having exchanged our money; 4 cordobas($.20). He was asking for 20 cordobas($1), and complained to me that it wasn't enough. He already gave me the cards, so I just shrugged and asked him if he wanted it or not. He took it.

Above, Laura is extremely happy to be just about done and free to travel around in Costa Rica.

After that, another 3 buses (2 already) to get to the beach. So a mere 8 hours after leaving San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, we arrived in Samara, Costa Rica. We quickly found a nice cheap hostel on the beach (our room was literally 13 steps to the sand) and enjoyed our first Costa Rican sunset.

Early the next morning, we made the long haul all the way to the beach to begin enjoying all that was around us.

Laura was so excited to be on here that she was literally jumping for joy!

Below, Laura is sitting in one of our favorite spots on the beach. The shade. Yeah, I know, you go to the beach to enjoy the sun, but it doesn't take long to burn down here. We're not boring, I swear. Just wise beyond our years. It's just us and the parents and the retirees hanging out in the shade, while the silly little children and the rest of the 20-somethings burn. But I'll have the last laugh when they look like lobsters! Plus, who can afford sun screen when it's $17!?! Talk about gouging the tourists! Also, it's widely unavailable.

Which reminds me. Have you ever tried to buy Kids SPF 30 sunscreen in Costa Rica when you are clearly not a child nor have one? Well they won't let you. Seriously. Not totally, but.....

On our way to the city of Samara, we thought it would be wise to buy some sunscreen in Nicoya before we got to the beach where they would jack the price up even more. So, we entered a small convenience store to inquire about sunscreen. Unfortunately, the store was mostly sold out, except for one bottle of Kids SPF 30.

The ensuing conversation was all too hilarious to argue over. (Although this took place in Spanish, I have translated)

Laura: Could we see that bottle of Sunscreen?

Young woman: Yes, (begins to grab a bottle that is SPF 4)

La: No, not that one, the blue one.

YW: (Pauses, looks up at us) But that one is for kids.

La: (Laura and I silently look at each other wondering why this matters) Yes, but it works the same, right?

YW: (Audibly giggles while speaking) Noooo.

Without a word, we left, laughing to ourselves. It was just so amusing to us that this just happened, and we looked so foolish. Right? We were silly to think that the kids version would protect our grown up skin?

Anyway, the beach was an excellent and easy place to relax. So easy, that even though we only intended to stay for maybe 2-3 days, we stayed for 5 days. Every time the conversation came up that we could move along, one more day just sounded better. We just had so much left to do.

For example, reading on the beach.

And having breakfast on the beach.

And eating fruit on the beach. We had fresh watermelons and pineapples daily.

And exploring near the beach

And surfing

(However, that's not me, and we didn't surf.)

And swimming in the ocean

Sorry, no pictures, camera isn't waterproof. But let me describe it. Every 15 minutes or so, while swimming, Laura exclaims "I love the ocean!" Add the ocean to that image. You get the picture.

And reading on the beach.

Did I say that one? Well, it occupied a lot of our time.

Eventually, we decided that we were, in fact, going to leave and had one more full day to enjoy. We had one more pineapple left, and also a little bit of rum that we had stowed away in our bag from Nicaragua.(Never hurts to have a little booze on hand. Never.) Then, I had a great idea.

It involved cutting up the pineapple as usual.

Then, putting the chunks into an empty water bottle, and pouring rum over it.

We let that soak for a few hours.

And, BOOM! Amazing tropical treat. The pineapple had a little rum flavor, and the rum had a lot of pineapple flavor!

It made Laura jump for joy once again!

And finally, one more memorable sunset to end the visit to Samara.

The next day, we had to pass through the city of Nicoya and spend a night before we could catch another bus elsewhere. The last day or so on the beach were really hot and dry, so when we got to our hotel room, we were pleased to be able to enjoy a little luxury called aire condicionado! Oh, so nice!

Not only that, but they had cable TV, and I as able to watch a little NFL playoffs as well. Felt just like home! Then we went across the street and had Chinese food as well!

Nicaragua: Ometepe and San Juan del Sur

After Granada, we headed to the magical island of Ometepe on Lake Nicaragua. Ometepe island is the largest freshwater island in the world. What makes it so cool is that it is formed by two volcanoes. There sure are a lot of volcanoes in Central America! In order to get to Ometepe, we had to take a bus, taxi, ferry and another bus. Since we like riding around in boats so much, we were excited for the hour long ferry ride to the island.

We spent the first couple of nights in Altagracia, one of the larger towns on the island. The funny thing about that is that it was a tiny little village with little more than a town square. Lots of locals get around the island using bicycles and we decided it would be fun to do a 25km round trip ride to a place called Charco Verde. Our rented bikes didn't have the best brakes or gears so it made for some really tough going sometimes. Yes, it's true. I walked it up more than one hill.

It was a scenic ride, though and we got to see lots of local life.

The cows of Central America are so cute: they have lopped ears. We love them!

When we got to charco verde, we decided to do a hike that went through some beautiful tropical gardens...

Past a family of howler monkeys...

And to the top of a hill where we had a scenic view of lake Nicaragua. We have discovered on our travels that we feel compelled to climb to the tops of things. It just feels like the thing to do.

The ride back was just as challenging, but we were rewarded with views like this:

We were completely exhausted when we got back so we were excited that we had a really nice place to stay. It was a great way to spend the day!

After a couple of nights in Altagracia, we decided to move on to the other side of the island, to a place called Finca Magdalena. It is an organic farming cooperative run by 26 families. They grow bananas, coffee, honey, and other fruits. We had to take a doozy of a bus ride and then hiked about 20 minutes uphill to get there because it is situated on the side of Volcano Maderas. We stayed in the white barn building, which was partitioned into rooms and had shared co-ed bathrooms. It was pretty rustic but they did provide mosquito nets and had yummy food at great prices. I was a fan of the palm tree jutting through the barn roof.

The views of Volcano Concepcion were incredible!

Finca Magdalena is located right by the entrance to the trail leading to the top of Volcano Maderas. People who hiked to the summit came back covered in mud from head to toe with tales of an "Ewok like forest", a lake where you sunk into silt up to your waist, and slippery muddy trails. We decided the summit wasn't for us but still hiked up for a couple of hours. We were accompanied by blue morphos butterflies and the sounds of howler monkeys. At one point, the path went through the middle of this fallen tree. It was pretty cool.

After a few days of chilling, we decided to leave Ometepe Island and head to the beach, which of course required lots of bus rides. There was a fair amount of waiting on the side of the road. Luckily, backpacks make great seats!

We finally arrived at San Juan del Sur and it was beautiful. It is situated on a half moon bay dotted with fishing boats and framed by big cliffs on each side of the bay. Although it is well set up for tourism, it still has it's charm.

We stayed at a hostel called Hotel Estrella, which gave a new meaning to the phrase "sea breezes". Our room in particular was kind of annexed onto the building and was more of an indoor - outdoor room. The walls didn't go all the way up to meet the tin ceiling and there were very large spaces between the wall boards. We were a bit concerned about bugs, since there were no mosquito nets, but the breezes from the ocean kept the bugs out the first night. On the second day, those breezes turned into an incredible wind that wouldn't quit! At night, we were genuinely concerned that the wind was going to pull the roof off of our room, or suck some of the loose wall boards away. We moved our bags against the interior wall and stuck in ear plugs to block the sound of the howling wind. I was still kept awake by the thought of a tree falling over on the building. We had to shake out our blankets every night because the wind blew all sorts of things onto our bed but the structure held up to the wind!

Despite the wind, the sunsets were pretty.

Since it was so windy when we woke up on our first full day there, we decided to wait to go to the nearby surfing beaches. Lucky for us, San Juan del Sur has something you can climb up! We had our activity for the day.

The views of the Pacific from the top were gorgeous.

The story of the statue is that a local man successfully fought cancer and decided to erect a statue of Jesus as a thank you to God for healing him. He paid a Costa Rican architect to design and build the statue, which is pointing to the local Catholic church in town. It was built in 194 pieces and then put together on top on the hill.

Here you can get an idea of the town.

And the wind!

I mean, it just wouldn't quit!

We were hoping the wind would subside, but it never did. In fact, it got worse. Eventually, you couldn't even walk near the beach because it kicked up so much sand into your eyes. We decided that Mother Nature just wasn't going to cooperate with us and scrapped our plans of going to the nearby surfing beaches. A travel agency told us the beaches would be a bad idea and that the wind would make swimming dangerous. Bummer!

We took things into stride. Things don't always work out the way you plan when you travel and we still had a great time together. The sunsets really were quite lovely.

On Sunday, we found a bar that was showing what would turn out to be the final Packers game. We sipped on beers and Tim made friends with this guy.

Although he is allergic to cats, he loves them and they love him. He is even known by some as the cat whisperer. Who else gets away with repeatedly doing this to a cat?!?

Nicaragua, Sans Maria (Leon and Granada)

After having been pampered by Maria and her family so much, Laura and I decided we should get away for a few days and give them a break from us. We decided upon nearby Leon. But before letting us get away, Maria and her mother did us one more huge favor. They drove us there.

Above is a picture of a large cathedral in the main square of Leon. The main square or plaza in every city we go to is usually the first place we head. And after a short walk to this particular plaza, we were dripping in sweat. We visited Leon for three days. Every day reached 90 degrees. I was hot. I know that everyone back in Wisconsin feels sorry for us.

In front of the cathedral are statues of lions. Legend has it that they come alive at night to protect the cathedral. Laura is trying to inspire them to come alive a little earlier.

There isn't all that much to do in Leon, except take a tour of the rooftop of the cathedral. Only other thing we could find was to climb a volcano, or sand board down the side of a volcano. We were hot enough, so we settled for the visit to the rooftop.

From the roof, pretty much all of Leon is visible. In the background are a few volcanoes.

Here is a shot of the roof itself. Pretty neat. We would have a shot of Laura on top of one of the domes if she hadn't been scolded to get down off of them because there were no supports under them.

Another shot from above.

Here is a shot of Laura looking over the central plaza. It's quite windy.

Another shot of the plaza from above.

And here is the main reason why we didn't do very much in Leon. Below is a shot of the inside of our hostel. Need I say more?

After our short stay in Leon, we spent a few more days with Maria's family, and headed off for good this time. Our next stop was to Granada.

First shot - central plaza. We like to take pictures of the giant Christmas trees in all the cities we've been to, because of how weird it is to see one in such a warm climate. It doesn't make sense to me.

Then we took a walk down to Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in the country. There was a small park along side the shore, which we walked along, and discovered a cow grazing in the middle of a playground. Which seemed odd to no one other than ourselves.

Later that night, we strolled along a pedestrian street and had a bite to eat. As it was New Year's Eve, we hung around this street until midnight, waiting for the crowds of people to begin lighting off fireworks. There were kids throwing firecrackers in the street, plenty of roman candles, and even a stuffed dummy with firecrackers in it and a sign with 2009 written on it. It went up in flames pretty quick. Happy New Year!

After all of the festivities died down a bit, we headed back to our hostel. Once we began to get ready for bed in our room, we noticed some bugs on the wall. Well, we did a bed bug check when we first looked at the room, but only on the actual bed. It appeared that they were instead in the walls, and once we were in the room, sensed our presence and began a slow descent to eat us alive. We immediately did a google search online to compare these bugs to other pictures to confirm our suspicions. Then, we captured a few in a bag, showed the night attendant, and asked if they were in fact, bed bugs. He told us he didn't know because he had never seen them before(which we believe was a total lie), but he got us into another, cleaner room. The next day, we looked online for reviews of the hostal, and sure enough, a lot of people had complaints of bed bugs. It was a close one, but we managed to avoid that problem!

One of the can't miss things in Granada is a trip out to see the isletas. The isletas are a collection of small islands that are just off the shore of Granada within Lake Nicaragua.

Of course, any chance to get onto a boat, we really enjoy!

Here is a shot of one of the smaller islands. It is literally not any bigger than a small to medium sized lot in the U.S. We were told an island of this size would probably go for $400,000-500,000.
This next island, is a bit larger, and has an amazing tropical home built on top of it.

There are a total of 365 islands that make up this collection. One for every day of the year.

Luckily, not every one of the 365 little islands are developed. There is even one for the monkeys! (And by the way, in case you haven't figured it out yet, every time I see a monkey, you are going to see a monkey. I don't care if you get tired of it, though I don't see how you could. They are just so exciting!)

Below, another mansion on a little island. Jerks.

Upon our return, the sun was setting, and we caught a pretty neat glimpse of the city. This church looks a little run down, but it is still fully functioning. In the background is the cathedral in the central plaza, with the pedestrian street leading up to it.
Here is a shot of the wallpaper in our new room. Unforgettable is a word that comes to mind.

Well, it's been far too long since we've visited a volcano, so we did that too. This is a view from atop Mombacho. In the distance on the left is the city of Granada, and just right of my head, are the isletas and Lake Nicaragua.

This was our first encounter with a cloud forest, so we went on a guided tour, which took us through some fun places.
The path was pretty difficult at times, but the views were more than worthwhile.
After a few hours of hiking, we were getting close to the best lookout point on the mountain. Seeing as this is a cloud forest, sometimes the view is not so great.
But if you sit down and have a little lunch, maybe it will clear up. We were there for about 15 minutes surrounded in a haze, but for 10 minutes or so, it cleared up and we got what we came for.

(Quick disclaimer to Laura's sister Sarah: Don't look at the picture following this next one. I don't know how you might do this, but just avoid it.)

There wasn't much for wildlife along the hike, but we did almost step on this little guy. He was probably no more than a foot and a half long, but that didn't stop him from nipping at our feet as we went by. In fact, the guide, Laura, and myself didn't even see him at first. The nice Canadians who we were on the tour with had to point him out.

After the tour and following the descent from the mountain, we weren't all that excited about having to wait for a bus to get back to town.(or the accompanying pleasures of bus travel in Central America). So we hitch-hiked. So far, the people in Nicaragua have been extremely nice hosts, and it is not uncommon for them to pick up people on the side of the road and load them into the back of their trucks. We were back to town much quicker, and it saved us a few bucks as well!

It just so happened that our transport was headed back to the main plaza, but when we got there, we weren't quite sure if were back in Granada, or Disneyland.

This tractor and cars with Mickey and the gang painted on the side is literally used to take people to and from the lake, almost as a public transport.