We knew that Semana Santa (week long Easter celebration) in Latin America would be a crazy, crowded week, full of parties late into the evening, closed businesses and intense traffic, some of it impaired by too many Easter cervezas. Everyone we consulted advised that we would be smart to find somewhere quiet to hang out for the week and to stay off of the roads. But we thought the week began on Good Friday. We found out at the last hostel that the week actually begins the weekend prior to Good Friday, leaving us only one week to make plans as to where to stay before Semana Santa celebrations started.
We decided that we needed to make some miles first and then that evening we would try and figure something out. We drove to a place close to the border of Guatemala and Honduras, camping at a ranch that has a large swimming pool where locals pay to play in the water during the day, but would empty out later in the evening. We shared the large grassy camping area with one other vehicle, a couple from Germany who had been on the road for about 2.5 years. They had spent almost a year in Canada and they loved it!
The internet didn’t reach our camping area, so very little research was done. We decided to head to Honduras the next day, and we were sent on our way by the German couple laughing as they waved a small souvenir Canadian flag on a stick.
The border crossing only took a few hours, and then 20 minutes later we arrived at a finca, named Sian Ka’an, near the small town of Copan, next to the famous ruins of the same name. We set up in the shade next to cement pad where a man was raking several batches of coffee beans at different stage of the process of drying and deshelling them. There was a van from Michigan parked closer to the farmhouse, but we didn’t see the occupants anywhere around.
Coffee beans. The workers would walk back and forth over the beans dragging a rake. Their feet crushed the shells and the rake separated and removed the shells of the beans. The beans at the far end of this concrete pad look paler as more of them have had the husk completely removed.
The internet was strong and fast, and we were able to search through AirBnB listings, email campgrounds, look at pet-friendly hotels. One campground on the beach returned our email saying that Semana Santa would be absolutely nuts at any place near to a beach, a lake or a waterfall. They described all night parties, fireworks, tremendous crowds, no peace or quiet at any time of day or night, that if they personally weren’t campground owners that they would get the heck out of there, but if we still wanted to come, we were welcome. Hmmm…didn’t really seem to be what we were looking for.
We took a break from the internet and headed into town for some shopping and an appetizer at one of the local restaurants. We came home, had a swim in the pool, and headed back to the wifi zone for some more research. Meanwhile, the couple that belonged to the other overland vehicle came back after a day of sight seeing. Introductions were made and we ended up chatting with Melissa and Edd well into the evening, comparing notes, routes and experiences.
This is anafre, a bean, cheese and chorizo dip. A bowl of dip was placed into the lower bowl that is filled with hot coals….mayan fondue.
We had gone back and forth in our minds about whether we wanted to visit the ruins of Copan or not. They are supposed to be amazing, but truth be told, we were getting a little tired of visiting ruins….or a little ruined by ruins as we like to say. But we would literally be driving right past the park entrance when we left, and wondered if we would later regret a decision not to visit them. In the end, super fast internet won out over the ruins and we spent the morning researching places to stay for Semana Santa. After a failed attempt to rent a place on a private beach for the week, we ended up finding a little group of cabins in the mountains of Nicaragua run by a Dutchman that seemed to be what we were looking for. We are booked in there for 8 nights, so we will see how it goes…it will be the longest we have stayed in one place since we started driving.
The drive from the finca to our next camping spot at D&D Brewery was supposed to take about 5 hours, but the first 80 kilometres or so had so many construction zones, it ended up taking us longer. We arrived at D&D Brewery to find a lovely outdoor covered seating area with a restaurant, a reasonably priced menu, good quality, cold, interesting beers made on location, friendly staff and a nice grassy field with a gate that is locked at night for us to park in (a camper can’t ask for too much more).
The view from where we were camped.
There are beautiful flowering bushes all over the property at D&D Brewery.
Chairs around the fire pit by the restaurant.
D&D Brewery caters to the backpacking crowd and has a wall covered with information about local tours that you can take. We decided the next day to rent one of the kayaks and we spent about 3.5 hours paddling down the canal and into Lago Yojoa to see the view from the lake and watch some birds.
On our last night at the hostel a group of German overlanders arrived (obviously attracted by the beer) dwarfing our truck with their serious expedition vehicles.
Two of the four German rigs that pulled in.
We decided we needed to make our way towards Nicaragua. We had heard that the border can be a challenging one, and we wanted to make sure we were across it a day before our reservation in the mountains. We spent the night before the border crossing a few kilometres away in a gas station parking lot, under the watchful eye of the armed night guard and in the company of a few semi-trucks and their drivers. For a gas station, it was actually a pretty peaceful place to spend the night.
Our gas station camping spot. Derek talked about motors and vehicles with the owner of the LandCruiser in the background after he voluntarily moved out of this shady spot so that we could set up out of the sun.
The border crossing the next day was a bit confusing, but we were through both sides in a little more than two hours and every person we dealt with pointed out the next steps for us. We drove another 30 minutes or so to our camp for the night, El Divisadero, on the edge of the small town of Ocotal, which turned out to be a lovely spot for the night with super friendly hosts. They surprised us in the morning with a nice cup of coffee and a pastry, then gave us a bag of tamarind and carambola (star fruit) fruit picked from trees on their property as we were leaving.
The view from our camper.
They had a nice covered sitting area and really fast WIFI.
Our first impressions of Nicaragua have been very positive. The people are friendly and helpful, the countryside is fairly litter free, and even though Nicaragua is a very poor country, we both have very good feelings about what we have seen so far.