Nicaragua Pt. II

As if my day of cycling to the other side of the island wasn’t enough, I decided it was time for more sightseeing combined with physical activity so I went to climb the Volcano called Conception. This could only be done with a guide, so I checked with the lady at the hotel and she organized me a local man who knew the way.

As this wasn’t really an official “tour” and I was the only participant my man switched straight to sports mode, maybe trying to impress me, maybe just trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. As a result we sprinted up the volcano from about 200m to the top roughly at 1600m passing all the vegetation zones from plantations through the jungle all the way to the ash and volcanic rock at the top in a couple of hours. Once we arrived it turned out to be foggy and there wasn’t much to see. I felt a bit pressured by the man to get back down again so we didn’t stay up there as long as I would’ve liked or would’ve stayed if it was just me. Maybe the clouds would’ve passed for a minute and given away the view of the crater or the surrounding landscapes. The whole trip took about 5,5 h, we were about 1,5 hours quicker than people normally would be.
After all these strenuous activities it was time to get back onto the ferry and the chicken buses and I was off to one of the colonial towns for a bit of city life, Granada was the first stop. This also must’ve been the time I had the glorious idea to get some chicken on the chicken bus, I bought it off one of the many vendors walking through the bus at the different stops. Somewhat fried chicken in a plastic bag with a bit of spicy sauce. It wasn’t a good idea from the start, especially in retrospect. I barely made it to the hotel, luckily the room was pretty sweet. It was located in one of the colonial buildings in the centre. The host was nice, a bit too gay for my taste, but he made me feel very welcome and tried to help me out where he could. He even had one of his little boy-toys run off and get me a bit of weed one night, the only I had in Nicaragua. It is always easy to find around the beach towns with all the rasta-reggae surf type of people hanging out, but it didn’t seem as common to me, I rarely smelled it in any of the town’s and nobody really offered it to me apart from people in beach bum town SJDS.

The room in Granada reminded me of Berlin, high ceilings decorated with stucco, tasteful furniture and a large wooden desk to work from. I had to stay for a couple of nights longer than I anticipated, sleeping off the food poisoning took a couple of days, I walked around the city like a zombie only looking to have smoothies in different “stations” along the way because I wasn’t ready to eat again.

I lounged around the city, trying to take some photographs, enjoying the colourful colonial buildings, churches, beautiful plazas and the very authentic market. I would just sit down somewhere and enjoy the hustle and bustle of a normal day in Nicaragua, watching the people deal with their work, traffic, vendors and of course the hustlers. I would walk to the lake but not do any of the tours on offer, it just didn’t look great. On the way back some kids tried to scare me by acting as if they all would run towards me screaming, it worked for a second. Nicaragua was definitely a authentic country again, so much more than Costa Rica. The places to visit as a traveller were also not just created for the tourists, they were functioning cities or villages with a bit of tourism on the side. Due to the colonial buildings and old churches all the cities had their own charm, unlike in Costa Rica where I don’t think a pretty city even exists. This was the case for every place I visited, except maybe the tourist centre of San Juan del Sur, the place I visited first.
From here I moved on to Leon, supposedly the hottest city in central America. I had to look for new shoes (I had broken mine running up the volcano on Ometepe) and as it turned out a lot of the second hand, or now third hand clothes (all the second hand stuff from Canada and the United States that couldn’t be sold there landed here.) Ropa Americana for the win, even though on the third level not much good stuff (if any) was left over. I spent a good day walking around the various shops in town looking for a nice pair of shoes I needed to climb the second Volcano in this country. With second hand stuff sizing is always tough, finding a nice pair of shoes is hard enough and then the size will probably be wrong. As this was Nicaragua the new shoes originality was at least questionable, whereas the second hand shoes were used but at least original. Fake shoes might look great for the first week, but they just don’t last if used and considering that they are not that cheap it just doesn’t make sense to buy them.

Once I had a new used pair of shoes I started to shop around for a bit and from ratings and comments I chose Quetzaltrekkers for my excursion up the vulcano. It didn’t cost much but it wasn’t really a professional operation either. They’ll give you a guide (basically some backpacker kid that they convinced to stay for 3-6 months in town, feed him and let him lounge for free and in return he’ll be a guide for the Vulcano hike every 2-3 days) who knows which bus to take and then guide the way.

Our group consisted of a bunch of American kids and me. The trip was pretty straightforward, climb up the vulcano, set up camp, watch the sunset, get up early to watch the sunrise and then get back to town, with a bit of food and a couple of beers inbetween. We were pretty lucky as we had an absolutely stunning sunset as well as a pretty sweet sunrise. The walk up wasn’t too hard, maybe all the water that was mandatory to bring was a bit annoying to carry but all in all it was pretty chill. There were no weak links in the chain, so we ascended quite quickly. Once we reached the top the dudes handed out some food and we set up our tents. The Americans had been travelling together in a group as a trio so they must’ve been well aware when they put the Asian kid into my tent. He was a massive snorer, I don’t understand how such a little guy can be so loud at such a young age. It was a horrible night, not only sleeping in a shitty tent high up the mountain on a yoga mat but as I couldn’t find my earplugs or had forgotten them, the noise that damn kid made snorring loud as two 60 year old drunks kept me awake for quite a few hours.
Right after lunchtime we went to check out the crater of the Vulcano while a crazy thunderstorm came over us. It was very stupid walking around the edge of the crater highly exposed to the elements while there was thunder and lightning everywhere. I would’ve expected the guide to act more professional, stress a little bit, but he was just like do whatever, just don’t get hit by lightning. In the end he was just some random kid but should’ve known better. So we started to explore until the rain hit hard and had to sprint back to camp. Even the cows grazing were running for cover.  It kept thinderstorming for a while but luckily for sunset the rain stopped and the weather cleared up, so that we were still able to hike to the other side of the crater and check out the sunset spot. Incredible views over quite a few of the other vulcanos and the landscape below all the way to the Pacific ocean. The sunset was epic, great color and quite a few clouds to add some depth to it. Once the sun set we went back to our camp and had a few beers over the fire we lit to dry some of our clothes and made the obligatory fried marshmallows on a stick. Seems to be a very common thing to do on these sort of trips. After a night with very little sleep because of the little Chinese man-kid snorring like a world champion we got up early to see the sun rise, this time from the other side of the vulcano. In general I’d say I prefer the sunrise, but on this trip the sunset was definitely more brautiful. We hung around the little weather station and played with the dogs until the sun was high enough to call it finished, went back to the camp, put it back into our bags and went on our way. Eventhough we were going down it was quite exhausting and it took a while to reach the bus stop where we had to wait to get back to Leon. Definitly happy to be back on the bus, I don’t like doing these overnight hiking trips, but once done they’re always great, a few good fotos and a nice level of exhaustion is always a good feeling, eventhough I had to deal with a bunch of dumb Americans for two days.

I switched colonial towns one more time and lounged around Granada for a couple more days. To my luck there was some sort of horse festival in town. Farmers from all over the country would bring in their finest horses and show them off by riding them through town. I couldn’t have hoped for a better photo opportunity, especially towards the end of the day, when the sun set the people riding their horses through town just looked amazing. Great way to finish off my stay in Nicaragua.

I didn’t really know what else to do in Nicaragua, the options were more beaches, colonial towns, or vulcanos. I had enough of all of them, so I figured going to Panama to go to Columbia via a sailing trip through the San Blas islands was a good idea. All it took was a 36 hour bus from Managua to Panama city, crossing two boarders. In the end it wasn’t that bad, the bus was as luxurious as it gets, double-decker with airplane style seats and entertainment system. Somehow I managed to get a seat with the panoramic window in the front of the 2nd double decker floor. This made the trip, other than that it was a long and exhausting ride. I remember on the drive through southern Costa Rica that I regretted not having visited this part of the country as it seemed pretty epic. Boarders were easy, the man in Costa Rica wasn’t as nice and only gave me a transit visa, but entering Panama was pretty easy.