Well, here we are in a bus for a change. Bound to Nicaragua's boarder. It is the place where we were most under the impression of being ripped off. On the one side of the boarder to get out, you need to go pay in little shabby shop with a steel grid in front that doesn't seem in least like an official office the exit tax. They take one dollar more to pay for the service. We do notice a machine inside the official office (out of order when we passed through) where you could pay this tax. Moreover, the boarder control agent doesn't care at all about our receipt, it is as if we could have gone through without paying. You never know and the waiting queue is long. Getting out, we are directed to a luggage check, where nothing is checked even if there is a big machine for it. Then there is a no-man's land which you have to cross on foot. Tom is tired to carry his very heavy bag so we pay a ride on a bicycle-trolley. He tells us it is one dollar. It will be two at the end, one for each person of course. Then we are told we need to pay for the city tax to a lady in a corner. We don't really know if that is for real but she is insisting so we end up paying. Then we have to pay o get in Nicaragua. Pay, pay, pay and it isn't over. We need to find a bus on the other side and there it is a complete mess. We find a bus to go north, we don't really know if we will manage to stop where we want to. We end up falling asleep and go all the way to the last stop! We arrive in Managua, the capital, not at all our destination. We get down, lost, find another bus immediately going the other way, take two more hours of travel but finally end up in Masaya.
We arrive in front of a big supermarket. We buy a few things and take some cash in local money at last. That will help not to give away full dollar bills at every step of the way. Prices are lower but if you pay in dollars it goes up fast. We find a taxi and ask him to bring us to the city center while we scout the streets looking for signs of hostels. The taxi leaves us out on the place at the center of the town. The city is really pretty compared to Costa Rica ones. Real buildings which to have a history, colonial inspired architecture, streets with a reasonable size to live in and not only to drive by. There are people outside, small mobile merchants, music, youngs and very youngs as well as old and older people. Some tourists but mostly loads of locals. A countryside city living peacefully. We feel at ease there right away. We go back on our track to a hostel I have noticed on the way, Hostel California, the front sign seemes nice. We are welcomed by a man who was a taxi driver in France for many years and then lived in Canada before coming back to his native city. He speaks very good French and is very welcoming.A friend of his, a French, chatts as well with us. Good draw.
We get out to visit the city and following his advice, we go to the park bordering the river. There are loads of people strolling, tasting stuff. In front, on the other bank, there is a volcano. In the black of the night, we can still make out its silhouette and we can even see, with the naked eye, the volcanic eruptions! There is red shining lava coming out spurting and slidding down its side. Impressive! The day after, we have agreed with our host that he will take us, for 10 bucks each, to the volcano crater where you can the lava up close. We then go to a mexican restaurant on the street of our hostel. Very nice and with a balcony, we eat well and it is good. After a chaotic and tiring travel, full of noise and dust, our first impressions of Nicaragua are very positive. Masaya seems to be a place where it is nice to live in.
The day after we are going to the bus station. It is a big park with an earth soil where the food market is next to the colourful buses. We get close to a bus with the open front to see the engine, impressive! The driver, cleaning the beast, smiles at us. It is buzzing full of activities here, people sell shouting, bus get loaded and seem to go everywhere in a completely chaotic order but everyone seems to know where each goes where. Destination is more les written on the front of the buses. These are old school buses from America which are finding a new life here in Nicaragua. They have been painted over to the local taste and decorated. They each have one or several religious signs, as if you needed to pray a lot when travelling inside those buses. Drivers buy licenses for a specific bus line from the government and then organise themselves to make a profit from this. This is normally a two-people job. One driver and one money-collector who goes through the crowd and collects the fee. According the distance you are traveling the fee varies and if you have a big backpack, you pay an additional fee for the bag though I am not sure locals with they huge sack of rice or other stuff do pay this fee but that is just how it is. The money-guy shouts through the door the destination and whistles to the driver when to stop and go, goes up the roof to hawl the bags and other mechandise. A lady in front of us has a small pig in a sack that is crying like hell, other passengers give her tips and chatt away on raising pigs. There are vendors going up and off the bus with all kinds of stuff to sell, you can get a snack, drink or buy a present for kids or even medicine. A few beggers also go through. Buses are full of lie and a joyous mix of young and old and newborns coming our of the maternity along with thei family, students wearing their universities' colours on their tees and pupils in uniform. It's a pretty great melting pot.
We are leaving for Apoyo lake. It is about an hour ride from Masaya. A pretty lake nestled in the middle of the green junggle. The development around the water is quite reasonnable, a few bar-restaurants, a hostel and a resort keep the peacefum aspect of the place. We have lunch in the hostel which offers everything and even sushi. We feel good in Nicaragua, we eat well here. In the evening we go visit the volcano with our host by car. His car is a French brand which he is reqlly proud of. He knows the people at the entrance and we go just right in. Only a define number of people are allowed to enter at one time because the gases up there are toxic so you go in every twenty minutes and rotate. We go up and watch this orange glowing material at the deep end of the crater, it's smoky, it sparkles and dives as a red orange warm river. Night has fallen so it shines even stronger. It is full of tourists that press each other to make pictures to freeze this moment. When we leave, we pass by an old bus which is stuck in the last uphill stretch of the way. The engine died apparently. The tourists ask us if the top is far away, it isn't, probably just a ten minutes walk but the way back will be a long one. Our host warn the guards at the entrance when we leave.
The next day we are on the roads again. We decide our way by what people we met told us about the country and according Tom's idea of the map. He divides our days here accordingly and attributes them to certain areas. This time it is Granada. Again another city but after this we will fo to Ometepe which is much more rural with farms and all. We looked for hostels on internet before going there since for once we would appreciate not having a hard time upon arriving in the city under the sun but anyhow we are lost when we come down of the bus and end up in the first hostel we find. It's a nice building with the same style as the rest of the city. Colonial style with warm colours on the walls. The city is even more beautiful than Masaya with pretty monuments and tall buildings. It makes me think a bit about La Havana in Cuba or even Sardinia in some areas. Tom will enjoy there a cooking class to learn the receipe of a local meal, the indio viejo, while i remain at the hostel after we have strolled all over the city. In the evening, we are back on track with out priorities, that is to say we go into a sports bar to eat burgers in front of a soccer game. Barcelona against PSG. Needless to say that the place was full of Braca fans of course and that the PSG lost by far. We had the right to sympathetic looks at the end of the game and went back quietly home. The next day we make a tour of the city market and find a local specialty our host in Masaya had told us about. The Bao, cooked in banana leaves for a long time, with greasy pork strips and loads of local vegetable including Yuca for example. It is really delicious, we eat, seated in the streets with our hands and give the rest to the stray dogs. The market looks like a Morrocan souk with its little specialised qurters, its generous food, beautiful vegetables and thousands of spices stands. We go to the bus station, Ometepe it is.
Ometepe is an island made up of two volcanoes and surrounded by a lake. The landscape seems to have escaped from the brain of some graphic artist for animes. We take two buses to get there, the second one is pretty expensive for such a short ride and is calculated on purpose for tourists but in the end we do arrive at the port. Here we are on small oat covered by tarp in case of bad weather. The volcanoes slowly become bigger as we move forward. We get off. From there we share a taxi with two women travelling as well to get closer to our hostel. This one we have noticed for a good while, the Zopilote (more here) is presented as a hostel and permaculture farm with the possibility to volunteer there. We even contacted them and called to ask if we could do some volunteer work and we were told to see once arrived there with a certain lady whose name I don't recall.
For once we know where we are going. Well more or less. Arriving on-site, there is an old bus transformed into a welcome desk and shop which is manned by youngs who tell us to go up to get to the hostel. We follow the more or less rocky path up. It twists and turns and goes up but in the end we get there at the check-in desk. There we explain why we are here. It goes more or less up and above the lady's head who doesn't care much and we are both tired and not in a very good mood so we end up resting at the restaurant. Strange feeling of being isolated in the middle of the community without understanding what is going on. In the end we do not find this lady we were supposed to contact but take two beds in a dormitory for the night. A young local takes us there, very nice, and we go through an open-air kitchen where local women are baking bread and find out that the accomodations are all of natural building, in bamboo or wood. The dormitory is a platform with a roof where hamcs and bunk beds are protected with mosquitoe net. Rough and nice. I like the bathroom which is close, the so-called "japanese bathroom", where a bamboo wall keeps it pricate but the shower is open air and the soil covered in nice plants and big flat rocks. The toilets are all composting toilets of course. They are not very clean though, perhaps because of the number of people or the warmth. The restaurant seems to be vegan or vegetarian with some products from the farm. We stay. Tom tries to chat with people we meet, and some are friendly enough, including a French couple we meet briefly. In the end, we ask if we can make a tour of the farm as this is an activity offered at the check-in desk. The volunteers there we notice don't seem to have much to do appart from manning the shop and one of them working with the gardens.He will take care of the visit. During this visit we meet a couple, Connor and Courtney. Courtney met Connor travelling a few weeks ago and goes back to the US soon, she is very connected with the social medias and is quickly enthusiastic about our project to share permaculture and traditional farming techniques. Connor works as an apprentice at the Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica and had to do his visa run so he is enjoying a few days off in Nicaragua. He recommands the Rancho Mastatal (where we will go) and the Finca Bona Fide , next door to the Zopilote, which is a sister farm to the Rancho. The two farms are experimental farms in permaculture with the objectives to learn and teach. Perfect, we will go there to visit! The Zopilote visit is a disappointment.
To go around the island easily, we decide to rent a scooter. It is the cheapest way to get around easily because buses are still quite rare. The motos are even better as some of the trails of dust and rocks are not practicable in scooter to go through certain villages. However, the scooter does allow to go a little further and go see for example, Ojo de Agua, a very commercial palce but which seems to be the local city pool for the locals, a king of concreted over swimming pool in the middle of the jungle, to go watch a beautiful sunset on a strip of sand that goes into the water and to stop by a barbecue evening at a restaurant not too far from the Zopilote. The meals look delicious but they took over too many orders compares to the food they have and I end up with a half full place while everyone else is eating just-out-of-the-oven focaccias that seems deliciously spiced with aromats and good pieces of meat. When comes the bill time, I am a bit cranky and the bill goes down significantly. Too bad, it would have been good I think. We ate close to a German couple which will also have the same issues as us but still i will let them have the last full plate as the guy next to me is so big he must be famished with the long wait. He tells us about their misadventures on the motorcycle. Apparently while driving the motorcycle, the key fell off! And it was still running but he couldn't turn it off anymore! In the Zopilote parking, during pizza night, someone steals our rear mirrors. We'll have to pay for them, and not cheap, 30$ for two plastic mirrors. Anyhow. The pizza night is okay but then again we have this feeling of not being in phase with the people here. Something is bothering that I just cannot put my finger on. Tom says these pseudo-roots people, not really people who live close to nature and with sobriety, but who pretend to be for a short time during their stay. Perhaps that's what I find weird. We are not unhappy to get out of this island in the end. It's oscillating between beautiful nature and authentic farms and local villages with highly touristic areas and hostels. Its lake is so polluted, in general, no one bathe there anymore. The future will tell how this island will move forward but it doesn't look so good seeing what is already there.
Visited Venues:
Finca Bona Fide
Portrait:
Technical videos made during this time: