As we say goodbye to our seventh country, we’re starting to hit similar climatic territory, and making strategic decisions with our time and money. There’s a few main things we skipped in Nicaragua, especially as this country seems to be at the start of its tourism boom, and tourists realise all the wonderful places on offer here. Talk to any backpacker and suddenly you find out about x and y that is just amazing! No doubt this will only grow for Nicaragua and we’ll wonder why we didn’t go to x or y before it got ruined.
Well actually, what we’ve come to realise is that it is not only all relative to what you like as a person, but what your route is. If you’ve seen a bunch of waterfalls, are you really going to do an expensive dog-leg to see yet another one? If you’ve been to, and have more gorgeous beaches to come, are you going to spend your entire country budget flying to a gorgeous island? If you’re about to see an active volcano, are you about to take a shuttle-boat-bike one way to climb an inactive one? We’re getting more confident in prioritising our sanity and our budget, at the potential expense of missing the next big thing.
This is merely to reassure our future selves that what we missed, we missed for good reasons for us at this time. That we skipped anything is no reflection at all on those locations, we continue to hear amazing things of places we skipped, and that’s fine with us. You can’t see or do it all!
So, about our time here. Well it really was nothing that we expected. Our expectations were that after Costa Rica we would essentially go back to ‘familiar’ ground like South America, but poorer. I thought political instability would have slowed down development here, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Nicaragua has been greener, more beautiful, more expensive, with more history, more culture, more stunning beaches, and so much more variety and things to do than I ever imagined or knew it had going for it. Also a lot hotter. When we arrived to Granada, from the naturally abundant but culturally less-so Costa Rica, we were pleasantly surprised with how clean, pretty, and colonial-esque it was.
If only the price tags hadn’t increased far beyond my expectations as well! Which I hope is a good thing for the country, but everyone we’ve met has been surprised by how expensive it has been here, after all, we’re not in Costa Rica anymore. It’s a fine balance between tourists accepting a good fleecing for an experience, and just choosing to go somewhere more affordable. There’s plenty of people on the ground here ready to tap into the burgeoning tourist market, but the prices already feel far beyond their worth. We’ve been in a fair range of Latin-American countries now. This has felt like the first cheap country where we’ve had to live expensively (as in, paying well over the odds for something that, in real terms, costs hardly anything), like you’re getting charged Costa Rican prices when wages, services and goods cost nothing like what they do there that ‘justify’ those prices.
Another surprise has been the lack of any middle-of-the-road mode of transport. Here, your only travel options seem to be on a $2 ‘chicken bus’ (where again, there are ample scams of people being charged double the locals), an extremely pricey private shuttle (minivan) or an over-priced shared shuttle. How we miss South American luxury coaches at affordable prices.
And so it’s a tricky one. It’s been nothing like we expected, in good and bad ways. It was a lovely breath of Latin-American air after Costa Rica, but admittedly now we’re in Guatemala we realise just how far the country still has to go to compete with its northern neighbours on the tourism front. That said, we seem to be at the beginning of the boom, where perhaps there isn’t enough competition to even things out, or maybe it’ll end up like Costa Rica. A lot depends on the government I fear, and Antonio hints that the Nicaragua us tourists see isn’t the full situation, with much of the population still living in poverty and unemployment. Another wait and see for which way the pendulum swings here, and how much tourism grows and keeps feeding into the economy in the meantime.
Rule of Three
Highlights (Alex): Eden, seeing lava, sitting on the vast beaches watching the sun go down and the stars come up with a rum and coke in hand
HIghlights (James): Eden experience, hunting lava at dusk, getting thrown around in the waves of the Pacific Ocean
Lowlights (Alex): getting in my head too much in Popoyo, our hosts being friendly and unwelcoming at the same time, our shuttle driver who hadn’t slept and drove like a lunatic out of the country
Lowlights (James): A bit of a mood dip at Popoyo, chafing on the long walk along the beach, fellow travellers shouting conversation at each other the entire long ride from Granada to Leon
Takeaways (Alex): there’s still hope for me yet. Central America has become hugely more expensive in the last few years, it’s not just Costa Rica anymore. Further exposure to the extent of US government influence and power on Latin America, and the impact of those actions still prevalent to this day.
Takeaways (James): Nicaragua was fine but if anyone is visiting Cental America for a holiday there are better options with more interesting activities, even if you have to pay more. Yoga retreats have a lot more to offer than just a bit of downward dog. It’s OK to feel deflated/tired/anxious while traveling, as lucky as we are to do this, there are still challenges and I shouldn’t feel guilty about that.
Description (Alex): more expensive than you think, glorious untapped beaches, not what you expect
Description (James): worth a visit if travelling long term, if not possibly a skip. Surprisingly expensive. Hot.
Entertainment
TV & Film: All Quiet on the Western Front, Black Mirror, The King
Books: The Dark Tower Series – The Gunslinger
Podcasts: More or Less, Criminal, This Is Love, Infinite Monkey Cage, Science VS, Freakonomics, Talk of the Devils, You’re Dead to Me, Eden on the Chocolata, Behind the Bastards
Where we stayed:
A new segment where we thought we would like to keep track of where we stayed and give an honest rating.
Hotel Il Padrino (Granada) ⭐️ 4.5
Aloha Bungalows (Popoyo) ⭐️ 2
Eden on the Chocolata (San Juan del Sur) ⭐️ 5
Harvest House (Leon) ⭐️ 1.5
Cutting Room Floor
- Horse and carts still a viable mode of transport
- A guy walking his bull down the road like any other vehicle
- Cats in small spaces
- Seeing men slowly struggle to pedal their tuc-tucs with passengers going no faster than a walk, trying to consolidate the unfairness of it alongside knowing this gives them money when maybe they can’t in other ways for whatever reason?
- It’s not just British tourists that can be loud and obnoxious, yes I’m looking at you loud shuttle Germans
- Luna, the cat, jumping out from the pedal bin. No idea how she got in there still!
- The nose snort seems to be spreading, even a Brit was doing it on our shuttle!
- Sand flies are actually fleas, and unlike animal fleas they live on humans
- Walking into Eden and my first meeting of Chelsea is as she does a bomb into the pool to soak fellow-Edener Jack. Awesome first impressions!
- Seeing another Edener light up as she talked about trying to be the best aunt for her neice, so heart-warming.
- Damn dogs. Damn fighting cats. Damn cockerells.
- Siren going off at 8am and midday in Leon on Sunday, why?
- Bumping into the frenchies from Popoyo in the street
- Meeting a British couple, Sacha and Paul who were doing the opposite route and trading tips and currency
- Thinking we were smuggling a young woman across the borders, when actually it was just because you need to give 7 days’ notice for Honduras and she hadn’t done it. So still smuggling, but not nearly for as nefarious reasons as we worried about!
A car on a flat-bed truck on another flat-bed truck:
If I fits, I sits:
Why did the chicken cross the road?:
Chasing lava:
Skies:
Night-shots:
The cute little black kitten who joined the family when we arrived and we had to trick Luna so she wouldn’t steal the food we wanted to give the kitten:
Views from Eden:
The garden and cat at Harvest House:
Being ready for our 2am pickup:
19 hour shuttle bus ride from Nicaragua, through Honduras, stopping off at a garage to change the brakes, through El Salvador, finally into Guatemala:
1 Comment
“If I fits, I sits” I love that.
The 19hr shuttle sounds pretty grim!