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.