Monthly Archives: April 2018

Costa Rica, Good to See you Again!

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April 16 – April 19, 2018

The crossing into Costa Rica on the Nicaraguan side was chaotic to say the least. We had no idea where we were supposed to park, which building we needed to head to first and we were immediately approached by “helpers”, people who hang out at the border, walk you from one building to another and tell you what you need to do next, all for a propina (tip). We had not used one since we had accidentally used one when crossing into Belize (we thought he worked for the border agency and didn’t realize we needed to tip him until the process was almost complete).

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La Isla de Ometepe

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April 13 – April 14, 2018

We headed back to towards Lago Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua) to take the ferry to La Isla de Ometepe. Ometepe consists of two volcanos, the active Concepcion (which hasn’t done anything in probably about 70 years) and the inactive Maderas, which ages ago became joined to form a single island.

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Granada and Popoyo

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April 8 – April 12, 2018

We left Lago de Apoyo and headed towards the city of Granada, only 20 or so kilometres away.  We had planned to camp in the parking lot of the Red Cross in Granada, as we had read that they allowed overlanders to stay there for only 100 Cordoba a night (about $4) and it was close to the city centre and had some facilities.

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Volcan Masaya and Lago de Apoyo

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April 6 – April 8, 2018

We headed towards the capital city of Managua, hoping to avoid the city as much as possible on our way to Volcan Masaya, and active volcano that you can drive to the rim of.  We arrived at the gates and they explained that we would only be able to stay at the rim for 5 minutes and that we would not be allowed to do any of the hikes in the park, as the volcano was particularly active right now.

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Somoto Canyon

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April 1 – April 3, 2018

We were happy to be back on the road and after a few hours of driving on good roads we arrived at our campsite at Somoto Canyon. We parked in a green field next to the river with a great variety of birds, including the national bird of Nicaragua, the Guardabarranco, which looks like this, I have yet to get a good picture of one, but, as you can see, they are pretty gorgeous. Feathers like that and you may imagine that this beauty lives in an elegant nest, surrounded by eider down throw pillows and firefly lanterns, but no, they live in a hole in the dirt banks alongside roads, trails and rivers (thus the name which translates to the guard of the bank). Could be quite nice inside I guess….

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Finca de San Antonio

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We did manage to do one of the tours while we were at El Pantano, and that was the tour of Finca de San Antonio.  The finca is run by four brothers and is home to them, their families and their 80 year old parents.  Manuel, one of the brothers, picked us up at El Pantano and we began the walk from there to the finca.  The dirt road was steep and the day, even at 8 am, was already hot and muggy.

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Killing time in Jalapa

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March 24 – April 1, 2018

The drive to the small town of Jalapa near the border of Honduras and Nicaragua took us through several small villages.  The road was so much better than the ones in Honduras….it was made of paving stones and we came across a few crews working on repairing sections of it along the way.  All along the road, power poles, traffic signs, trees and boulders were painted black and red with the letters FSLN painted on them, a reminder of the recent civil war in the country and the highly political nature of life in Nicaragua. Very often, even peoples’ clothing seems to reflect this colour combination with red shirts and grey pants or skirts.

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