Nicaragua

So, you can only be in Costa Rica for 3 months without a visa and none of the students at the institute have visas...so to solve that little problem our school took us to Nicaragua for a long weekend, and I fell in love with Nicaragua. But, I don't think I saw any of what the real Nicaragua is like because it is one of the poorest Latin American countries and the I think the children I saw begging in the street was only scratching the surface.

We left at 3 a.m. from San Joaquin for Nicaragua and had a 9 hour bus ride to get to Granada, Nicaragua. On the way we stopped at the biggest fresh water lake in Latin America and had a great view of two volcanos. When we got to Granada we went straight to our hotel, which was absolutely beautiful (no staying in gross hostels when you travel with school!). From there we went to some markets where you could literally buy anything you could want. I bought two hammocks, a painting of an indigenous god, a carved flute and sunglasses for about $40.

After that huge market we went to a smaller one that also had a restaraunt and a show with some traditional Nicaraguan dancing. Our professors that came on the trip with us said that we weren't leaving any later than 9 because we had to get up at 7 the next day, but after students started buying them rounds of beer, that time got pushed back until about 10:30. We watched the whole show which had a bunch of different kinds of dancing and had a great time.

The next day was pretty interesting. We drove about 2 and a half hours to San Juan del Sur which is a beach town in Nicaragua. While we were trying to get down to the best beach, our bus got stuck on the electrical wires hanging over the road. Obviously this road doesn't often have large vehicles driving down it. We ended up having to reverse down the road and go to a different beach that our bus could get to. Although I love Nicaragua, I much prefer the beaches in Costa Rica. The beach in Nicaragua was very, very windy so you were constantly getting slapped in the face with sand. Also, the water was freezing. However, the beach was beautiful to look at so I hid out at a beachside bar drinking tropical drinks and just staring at the beach.

On Saturday we went in the morning to a place called Las Isletas. It is basically the Lake Geneva of Nicaragua. All the millionaires in Central America have vacation homes here and each home is on a seperate island and there are tons of these little islands. There was a little one big enough for a small house that was going for about $40,000...if only I had that money. We saw tons of spider monkeys while we were in our boat touring Las Isletas and lots of beautiful flora.

After that we went to a town called Catarina (named after me of course!) and it had a gorgeous view of a laguna that was inside a sunken volcano. Beyond the laguna you could see the lake stretching for miles and miles. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip and the picture to the left does not do the beauty of this place justice. After the laguna we went to an old convent that had a bunch of old stone carvings from indigenous tribes and different artifacts.


On Sunday we went back to Costa Rica on a long, long bus ride.

Volcan Arenal and La Fortuna

So it has been a long, long time since I have written on my blog...I've become surprisingly busy in Costa Rica. Since I went bungee jumping I have visited many places in Costa Rica, the first being Arenal. Volcan Arenal is about 3 hours outside of San Jose but it took us six hours to get there by public bus because our bus broke down on the side of the road for about 3 hours...oh Costa Rican transportation...

Volcan Arenal is located just outside the town of Fortuna and is still active. The last time that there was a major eruption was in the 60s and it wiped out an entire town. Since the Volcano is still active you can see the lava shooting out of the top of the Volcano at night. There are also lots of natural hotsprings around the Volcano.

Our group stayed at a place called Gringo Pete's for $6. It was a wonderful place but Gringo Pete was very grumpy and old. The first day we got there we just walked around La Fortuna which is a very cute town with lots of souvenir shops in it and a beautiful central park.

On Saturday we went to hike an inactive volcano called Cerro Chato which is supposed to have a laguna at the very top. It rains quite a bit in Arenal but it was raining an unusual amount on this Saturday which made our attempted hike very interesting. The rain actually felt pretty good because I imagine that if it had been hot out the hike would have been really uncomfortable, but the rain made it more bearable. The downside of the rain was that we didn't get to see a whole lot of wildlife other than lots of beautiful flowers. The rain made the walk very eerie and foggy as you can see from the pictures.

We hiked for about two hours up and then decided to turn around come down which only took about 45 minutes. From there we just returned to the hostel and laid low for the afternoon, listening to the rain.

That night we went on a tour called the "See Red Lava" tour. We left from our hostel and drove closer to the Volcano. From there we got flashlights and took a night hike and had to cross a very looong swinging bridge. But we figured if we survived bunjee jumping we could survive the bridge. Once across the bridge, we hiked a little further to a viewing point for the Volcano. It had been cloudy all day so we weren't very hopeful that we would get to see any lava. All of the sudden you could hear a distant rumbling kind of like thunder and then see some red spurts of lava shooting into the air...definitely something everyone should see sometime. From the viewing point we drove a little further to where the nice hot spring hotels are that you have to pay $35 dollars to get into. We walked across the street from these and climbed down this little hill in the dark and then waded across a river with a very strong current. After that, with flashlights between our teeth or tucked under arms we attempted to climb over some rocks that had very strong water gushing down them. Thankfully, we made it over without any injuries. Once over the rocks we were in water the temperature of a hot tub with different little pools that you could sit in. When you looked up there were thousands of stars. I'm really not sure if I've ever been anywhere so naturally pretty in my entire life. Unfortunately I didn't want to risk dropping my camera in the water so I have no pictures of this beautiful place, you'll just have to go experience it for yourself.

The next day we left for San Jose, very satisfied with our trip to Arenal.