Report from Nicaragua

Posted: April 6, 2008 
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Thomas mi hijo fabuloso!!!

Gracias por tu e-mail e como estas?

En doce dias tu e uno año mas curado – perdone maduro! Junto – vosotros celebrarle aniversarios en N.Y. tu y Sara?

Tengo vuelta da Nicaragua ayer, y tengo mucho que contaros pero en ingles………..My Spanish lessons are starting on the 10th in Cartagena and my limits are obvious – see above.

Going to Nicaragua I left it too late to do it the cheap way so I had to take a one way flight to Panama City to catch up with some American friends I met in Medellin. The funny thing was that I also booked a cheap hostel via the internet and paid for it online. When I arrived in Panama City no one had heard of the Hostel / Hotel. Hours of enquiries and searching resulted in finding out that I had booked the hotel Panama City, Florida, USA. Anyway I got my full refund and booked into an alternative place in Panama City, Panama this time.

Panama City is awful (big skyscrapers and many McDonalds; they are doing up the old city but in the process drive out everyone who had a right to live there) to me Panama is a waste of time – and too American for my liking – the food consumption seems to be going up here too.

My friends bought a car in Panama to drive it back to the States but we missed each other by a couple of days so I organised myself a bus ticket on the famous ´´TICA´´ bus that travels daily through Central America. You can hop on and off in different cities and in different countries. From Panama it goes north to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, San Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. The bus ride is 30h from Panama to Managua and costs US$ 62.- plus taxes at the different boarders. From Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, to Leon is another 2h.

By luck we arrived all on the same day in Leon and had dinner together.

Leon and Granada are little gems and worth a visit. (In Leon stay at La Casona Colonial – very reasonable and in Granada Hotel Alhambra or Hotel Francia if you have too much money) The coast near Leon is well known for surfing (Las Penitas) – it´s only 20km to the coast and as Matt and Kelly had their ‘new’ Jeep it was easy to reach. Fantastic waves, great beaches and cheap good food make it a surfer’s paradise.

Talking to some other travellers we heard the Caribbean Coast is also very beautiful particularly, Big Corn and Little Corn Island. (the airline to book is on www.lacostena.com )

There are direct flights from Managua to Big Corn Island for US$190 but there is also an exciting and a much cheaper way of getting to the islands.

An 8h bus ride to Rama, followed by a 2h speed boat ride through the Jungle to Bluefield (there are no roads linking up to the coast) followed by an overnight stay at a small hotel in Bluefield. (Bluefield I think was a English pirate)

There was no ferry service to the islands for 2 days so we took a flight across the water for US$60 from Bluefield to Little Corn. The whole trip including the hostel in Bluefield came to less than $100. By ferry the whole trip would have cost $55.

We decided on Little Corn which has no cars, no telephones except in the main village, no internet except on Big Corn. Little Corn, a 30 minutes boat ride away from it´s bigger sister is Paradise and at $56 per day including great food there is no reason to live anywhere else on this planet. You need to be able to get on with yourself, enjoy the jungle with its snakes (boas, huge blue crabs, ants and more) and the water and bingo, you are a King. We stayed at Ramon´s place called ´´Ensueños´´. Ramon is a biologist and has lectured at Managua University. If you want he will always find you a job or two in his hotel – I cleaned the beach every morning for unlimited supply of Mangos and Coconuts. I could have had them without raking the white sand at sunrise (5.30) but what better work could one do.

Returning back to Panama City was less than $130 but took 60 hours.

If I hadn´t booked my Spanish course I´d still be on the island and I will return to it.

Yes you can spend $20000 in the Maldives in a week but I much rather do this at just over $200. If you want to be extravagant you can do your PADI Open Water Course for $330, you can eat a lobster during the lobster season from June to late autumn for $20 a shot, you can go horse riding for $30 or take a boat out for snorkelling. (if the lagoon isn´t big enough take a boat for $20 with 3 others for 5 hours)

A good book, local snorkelling, walking and bird watching are free and highly entertaining.

Going back to Cartagena, Colombia will involve air, boat and a bus ride and will not cost more than $190 incl. One night in a hotel in Capurgana versus the direct flight I took from Cartagena to Panama of just over $290.

There is a small plane service to the boarder of Panama and Colombia, you can walk across into Colombia if you find a guide and it’s not the rainy season or you take a small fishing boat from Puerto Obaldia to Capurgana. From Capurgana to Turbo is a daily speed boat and local buses from there to Cartagena. (About 12 hours)

There are no roads linking Panama and Colombia and the whole boarder territory is dangerous due to Guerrilla activities and dense forests but the route described to me by a Mexican, I met in Medellin, is fairly well travelled.

I hope this has given you a little taste. As you speak Spanish you would have a great time here and can most likely explore even more than I did / do – ah, we snow boarded down a Volcano, spent hours in yet another police search (this time living the surf beach near Leon, we had to pay them off again – same story as in Colombia) Ah, and Matt saw the POOanamanian police shoot someone on the street in the City and I think that´s all but you can have all of this and more in London or NY except the volcano bit.

Te deso lo mejor, hasta pronto and I´ll call you on your b´day my darling, dulce boubou, herzlichst….Papa