Nicaragua

@Margriet: dat is inderdaad het idee dat ik probeerde over te brengen, uiteraard had ik toch wel een lichte voorkeur voor het juiste land, maar ja, het gevoel van vrijheid en flexibiliteit is er wel, het enige wat me bindt is mijn vlucht Mexico-Nederland op 13 augustus (en zelfs die kan ik eventueel nog veranderen, maar wees niet bang mama, zal ik niet doen)

I fixed the link to my pictures in the previous blog, but here it is again for convenience: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11895&id=226700492&l=1cd5229d86 (no new pictures btw).    

When the Tica Bus from San Jose had dropped me off in Rivas in the south of Nicaragua, where I watched the last half hour of Germany-Spain and then negotiated a price with a taxi to take me to an ATM and the ferry to Isla de Ometepe, my actual destination (Rivas is nothing). So we drove to the center and I saw familiar views of poor people and horse and carriage, it was obvious that I had come closer to Guatemala again. At the ferry harbour I had to wait an hour, so I tried the national beer. Each Central American country (as far as I've seen) has its national beer brand and they're very proud of it. In Guatemala it's Gallo, in Mexico it's.. well, don't need to tell you that, in Panama it's mainly Balboa and Panama and in Nicaragua it's Tuña. I have considered to buy a t-shirt of the national brand in each country, but decided against it, my bag is already big enough. Anyway, I drank my beer and took the ferry to Isla de Ometepe over Lago de Nicaragua, the largest lake of Central America, so it took us quite a while to get to the island that consists of just 2 volcanoes and where there is a complete electricity black out every few hours. I found a hostel and a bed with the best matress of the world (no joke) and I slept a little (the trip was tiring), managed to convince myself to go and eat a little (couldn't even finish half of a small pizza, fortunately it's normal to ask for a doggy bag here, so I had my breakfast ready). 

The next day (I should find a substitute for these 3 words...) I took it easy, because I felt a little tired from the trip still, but decided that I could not waste my time there and took a bus to the middle of the island, where the sides of the volcanoes just touch each other. There was a place recommended to me by a few people, Ojo de Agua, Eye of Water, they told me it's a natural swimming pool formed by volcanic hotsprings. So I went there and literally found a swimming pool, which, I guess, was indeed supplied by a natural source, but it had nothing of the charm and beauty of the natural hotsprings that I visited in Guatemala (again, I'm spoiled..). Anyway, it was a relaxed place, so I stayed for a while and then walked to the beach, probably the worst beach I've seen so far, it was a muddy, dirty place that happened to be on the side of the lake, so I didn't stay long and I went back to the village of my hotel, where I sleep a little (still tired from the trip I guess), try to eat a little bit (still not really hungry) and go back to sleep. 

The following day (same for these 3 words), I take the ferry to the mainland (this is a different ferry on the same route and offers the same service but charges $3 instead of $2, I don't know how to make micro-economic sense of that.. Krista?), from there a taxi to a place where the buses for Granada pass and a little over an hour later I'm in Granada and I feel a little worse again, still tired and maybe fever.. Anyway, I'll have enough chances in my life to get sick, but probably only one to see Granada, so I check out the friendly city centre, but again.. I'm spoiled and if I make the comparison with Antigua, that definitely wins.. That also means I need to spend less time in the centre and I have more time to rest, so I go to bed and don't really wake up before the next day. 

When I wake up, I feel better, take a walk and suddenly feel a lot worse, so I decide to take a break and skip my next destination (Masaya) and stay in my bed and a hammack the rest of the day. 

The day after is the day of the finals and the Dutch embassy organizes something in Managua, Nicaragua's capital. So even if I'm about to die, I'll go there, but fortunately I feel a little better thanks to my aspirine (although I'm sweating more than necessary with this temperature), so I put on my orange shirt and take the bus to Managua, arrange my hotel and go to the Dutch meeting place, where there's quite some people already, but fortunately I find a chair with reasonable view and then watch the match with about 150 orange people (majority Dutch, but also Nicas, probably they work with the Dutch in NGOs or so). I don't need to tell about the game, but it seems that the distraction and the adrenaline made me feel a lot better, so I take a small tour around the monumental area and decide that Managua is even worse than Guatemala City, so I return to the hotel, try to find a restaurant, but end up in the local Pollo Campero, the least terrible option. Afterwards I go to a shopping mall, use the Internet and watch a bad romantic comedy (anything for a little distraction).

So I didn't stay in Managua the next day, I had seen enough, I preferred to go to Leon, known as the other nice city in Nicaragua, next to Granada. So I went to the bus station, spent my last Córdobas (the local currency) on the bus ticket (at least they wouldn't get anything if they robbed me) and one hour later I was in Leon (I felt a lot better already, by the way). Leon turned out be a lot better than Managua, as expected, and similar to Granada, and I think I liked it more than Granada, but that might be because of the way I felt. I just wandered around the city center, saw the largest cathedral of Central America that seems twice as small as the one in Guate, some stuff related to Rubén Darío who is from Leon (I'm sure you know more about him than I do) ate some and returned to the bus station. There I got in a "colectivo", a minivan that waits for it to fill up and then leaves. The problem, though, was that it wasn't really filling up (it was already late), after half an hour people even started to leave. So I was already imagining myself staying in Leon for the night without anything and then missing my bus from Managua of 5am the next morning (now I wasn't so flexible). Fortunately there turned out to be another colectivo that was filling up and the same evening I got safely to my hostel in Managua. There I stayed up talking with some chapines, a gringo and a nica (Guatemalans, an American and somebody from Nicaragua), slept a few hours and at 4am I went to the bus station next door to check in. At 5am we left and I do remember that we stopped at the borders, but I was so sleepy that I didn't really wake up before we arrived in Honduras' capital, Tegucigalpa...

So that's it for today and for as far Nicaragua is concerned.. I didn't see anything extraordinary there in the touristic sense of the word, but I was really impressed by how nice everybody is. I'm constructing my ideal Central American country in my mind, I've already got the food of Mexico, the climate of Guate and the people of Nicaragua (it doesn't look like Panama will contribute anything...). 

I'm safely in Utila, Honduras now, doing my open water PADI diving course, but I'll tell you about that later.