Our latest report on Sera has her doing her best to keep Danielle safe from the other neighborhood cats and even raccoons! Here is a shot of her doing some anti-raccoon training.
Posted by Matthew on August 29th, 2007 | Filed under: Cat Blogging | 2 Comments »
After taking a freezing cold night bus from David to Panama City, we arrived before dawn at the bus station. We had originally contemplated riding our bikes from the bus station to our hotel in the financial district where we were going to stay with Cindy’s dad, so we waited at the bus station until the sun came up. But by that time, we were both feeling a little tired after having not slept so well and not up to dealing with Panama City traffic, so we cheated and threw the bikes in the back of a pickup cab. We hung out at the hotel until Cindy’s dad arrived, and then celebrated his arrival with some, um, traditional Panamanian cuisine at a nearby Pizza Hut (it was Sunday, and everything else was closed, I swear!).
We took in both of the “old” sections of Panama City. The oldest chronologically is Panama Viejo, which is basically the ruins of some brick buildings that remained after the city was sacked and burned to the ground by pirates. The city is working to restore some of the ruins and just finished a renovation of the Cathedral Tower, which affords a nice view of the city and the Pacific Ocean. But among the other ruins, there wasn’t too much interesting to see. Two years after the city was sacked, it was moved 2 kms to the west; this section of town is known as Casco Antiguo. Here was some very interesting colonial architecture—very reminiscent of New Orleans, with lots of French influence. We went inside the National Theatre of Panama, and the building was absolutely gorgeous, done in old european style with fantastic . There happened to be a clarinet quartet practicing, and the acoustics of the building were amazing as well. I’m sure it’s an excellent place to see a concert!
After having talked about the older parts of the city, I have to address the newer parts as well. As you can see from the picture, the Panama skyline is quite impressive—perhaps even larger than the Seattle skyline. One of our cab drivers as one point told us there were 400 buildings under construction in the city! I’m not so sure about the exact number, but there certainly were plenty more skyscrapers under construction, mostly condominiums. Panama (the country) is pushing really
hard for foreigners, especially people from the US, to retire there (it was nearly impossible to escape the advertising); hence the need for more condos! On a couple of our cab rides, we rode past the housing projects in the city, that were often in the shadows of these enormous buildings and the affluence they represent…very sad.
We also got up close and personal with that marvel of engineering known as the Panama Canal. The canal uses three sets of locks to raise and lower boats the 26 meters required to cross the continental divide. We visited the Miraflores locks, the set of locks closest to Panama City and the Pacific Ocean. Before we went, I was thinking to myself, “Eh, we got , how different can it be?” Well, it’s not that different, except for the massive increase in scale. Boats that barely fit in each stage of the locks carrying thousands of cargo trailers. Boats so big that they need mini-train engines to pull them through the locks and tugboats to get them across the isthmus. Boats who save so much time and money on their passage that the $200K passage fee is actually a bargain. And of course, to my knowledge, 30,000 people didn’t die making the Ballard locks.
On another day, we took a jungle boat tour out on Gatun Lake, the lake that was artificially created to provide water for the canal passage. We got to see all sorts of fun wildlife: crocodiles, three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, white-faced capuchins, a basilisk lizard, an iguana, and some toucans (and a bunch of other birds I can’t remember the names of).
After Cindy’s dad left, we had to get ready to fly to Colombia, which meant getting the bikes (partially) disassembled and into boxes. Anybody who is interested in the gory details can check out our post on the . The short version is that the bikes arrived mostly without incident—one arrived on the next flight and we had to pick it up the next day, and when it arrived, the pedals mysteriously disappeared from the box, so we needed to pick up some new ones.
We have been enjoying Bogota so far (although we are finding it really cold!), and are staying with another new friend from Couchsurfing. We are planning on riding as much as we can between here and Cali before bussing to Quito for our trip to the Galapagos!
Posted by Matthew on August 27th, 2007 | Filed under: Panama | Comments Off
Our new bike/bus strategy has been working well, though not exactly as planned. The last segment of Central America began by bussing out of San Jose and the Central Valley to the Carribbean coast and the city of Limon from where we planned to ride down the coast to Panama, cross the continental divide and head into Panama City along the Pacific. We were a bit nervous about getting back on the bikes, but on our first day riding, a fellow cyclist going the opposite direction turned around and caught up with us for the sole reason of giving us some of his energy bars!
After 3 days of riding and enjoying the beaches and Carribbean food, we crossed into Panama. Because we had new passports without an entrance stamp, the officer had to check the system to ensure we hadn’t overstayed our welcome. Unfortunately, the system was down, which meant we had to hang out at the border for about an hour while waiting for him to verify our entry date. There was an Israeli guy in the same situation, so we had someone with whom to commiserate and converse. When we finally were stamped and allowed to leave Costa Rica, we rode on to Changuinola where we caught the last boat to Bocas del Toro, an archipelago just off the coast near the border.
The island was beautiful and there is supposed to be great snorkling/diving. Sadly, we don’t have a report on the snorkeling as the day we had set aside for snorkling was rainy, which means low visibilty. We ended up staying in Bocas an extra day because Matt had a sore throat. The second day of sore throat we decided that we needed to get off of the island because it was pretty expensive and our cheap room was really mildewy and it seemed as though the mold might be the cause of the illness.
It didn’t take much riding up steep hills in 90 degree weather before our month off of the bikes in cool mountain weather caught up to us. I was close to overheating when we decided to catch the bus to the next town with a hotel. When we had started thinking straight again, we decided to take advantage of the final destination of the bus-David-since Matt was getting sick and the next day of riding would have been over the continental divide, which we clearly would not be able to do.
We have been in David for about a week now, staying at the . It has been a good place to be held up. It feels kinda like we are at home, but have rotating housemates. We have met a lot of interesting people. We have been pretty derailed from our plans lately, but we are hoping to get a fresh start in South America. It almost feels like we are back at home, preparing to leave.
Tonight we are taking the bus to Panama City, where we are meeting my dad. Then we will be flying to Bogota!
Posted by cindy on August 18th, 2007 | Filed under: Panama | 1 Comment »
It´s good that it seems the guy doesn’t have much support here, but he probably does have a lot of money, and that may help his situation out quite a bit.
Update on us: I’ve been sidelined by a cold with a pretty nasty cough, so we’ve been laying low in David, Panama after busing over the continental divide from Bocas del Toro. More updates soon…
Posted by Matthew on August 15th, 2007 | Filed under: Panama | 1 Comment »
We posted some picture from Costa Rica for y’all, taken with the new camera! Hope you like them. They can be seen in the photo gallery here.
Posted by Matthew on August 14th, 2007 | Filed under: Costa Rica | Comments Off
After our last post, we left our bikes and extra baggage with our friends in Heredia and headed to the village of Parismina on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. We had to take two buses and a boat to get there;the second bus drove us through two large Del Monte banana plantations (the bus actually stopped once to let a conveyor belt with bananas on it cross the road). Parismina is just south of the Tortuguero National Park and Tortuguero Village, which is a more famous place to encounter sea turtles. When you get to the end of the road in Caño Blanco, it’s like being in the bayou—there are canals and rivers that connect small communities that are only reachable by boat.
We had decided to volunteer with (Association to Save the Turtles of Parismina) for several reasons. One was that they offered homestay opportunities with local families in the village; the other was that it was one of the more reasonable in terms of costs (some organizations charge thousands of dollars per week to volunteer!). Soon after we arrived, we were acquainted with our host family, two sisters with four children between them. We were told by the volunteer coordinator that our family had asked for volunteers because one of the children had broken her arm when she was younger, and the doctor somehow managed to reverse the two bones of her forearm when he set the break (it didn’t seem to bother her, but it was somewhat disturbing to behold when she moved it). Anyway, they were trying to save money to take her to San Jose to consult with a doctor to try to fix her arm.
They began putting us to work right away—we spent a couple of hours that afternoon (and over the next several days) helping build a new turtle egg nursery on the beach because the old one was at capacity. This organization is a little different than some of the other ones we looked into because of the high level of community involvement. We found that this had advantages and disadvantages. About 50-60 people participate in the program, mostly as guides who walk the beaches at night with the volunteers. Having a sense of ownership of the program, as well as seeing how the turtles can be a tourist attraction, bringing money into the village, are some of the good things. However, the population is not particularly well educated, which means that it is difficult to collect consistent, meaningful scientific data on the animals that could be used to bring in research money.
Our first night ended with the event we had been waiting for—the beach patrol. Usually there were two 4-hour patrols each night, from 8-12 pm and from 12-4 am (patrols were more frequent when more volunteers were available). We started on the late shift, not knowing what to expect. We knew that July was a transition month, as the egg laying season for Leatherback turtles was ending and the season for Green turtles was just beginning. The Parismina group patrols a 6 km stretch of beach, and each night we just walked up to one end, and then turned around and came back. The first night we walked, it was so dark (the moon had gone down below the horizon and it was cloudy) that I thought we would never see anything. I shouldn’t have worried—when we saw our first tracks they were so big we nearly fell into them! A Green turtle had come up on the beach, but decided for some reason not to lay eggs, just turning around and heading back into the ocean. We were excited and ready for more, but we didn’t see anything else that night. After our day of manual labor and walking 12 km of beach, we were quite ready to go to bed at 4 am when we returned.
The rest of the week basically followed the same pattern; we would get up late, eat breakfast, watch some telenovelas, eat lunch, work on the nursery, eat dinner, watch some telenovelas, go walk the beach—all the while trying to stay cool and avoid getting bitten by mosquitos. We also had our hands full during the days trying to keep the kids entertained. Although three of the four were of school age, they never had more than 2-3 hours of school a day, so there was plenty of time to play soccer/tag/cards, wrestle, swim on the beach, etc. There was a “turtle hut” that served as the group’s headquarters; we would escape there for a little while during the afternoons when we were exhausted from playing with the kids. We would ask the other volunteers how their patrols went, and it seemed for a while that the turtles would always show up during the shift that we weren’t on. We saw tracks of various turtles, but no turtles and no nests over the next few days.
By the end of the week, we were starting to get disheartened (and really tired). We could have taken a night off from patrolling, but we were convinced that if we did, we would somehow miss out on something. But then finally on our penultimate night, we came upon a Green turtle that had already dug out a nest and was laying eggs. They say that the turtles can be really jumpy about deciding to nest when they come up on the beach, but once they actually start laying eggs, they go into a sort of trance, where you can touch them without disturbing them. And this one was absolutely deathly still as it was laying eggs. We let the turtle finish laying, cover the eggs with sand, and head back out to sea before we took action. Our guide started digging into the sand to recover the eggs—ordinarily, they would go to the nursery if there was room, but tonight they would have to be moved to a hidden nest so that poachers wouldn’t discover the nest. When the guide got to the eggs, he asked me if I wanted to pull them out of the nest, so I got down and reached into the hole he had dug (which was just about the length of my arm). I started pulling out the eggs gently one at a time, but after digging around a bit, I realized that there were a LOT of eggs down there, and started pulling them up 2-3 at a time…they felt a little bit like squishy, deflated ping pong balls. There were 105 eggs in all! Our guide had dug another deep hole nearby, and into the hole the eggs went. This all took a long time, and the next patrol had caught up to us by that point, so we got to go home a little early, very elated that we didn’t take the day off.
On our last night of patrolling, we hit the jackpot again, this time seeing a Leatherback turtle on the beach. This was very unexpected, as they seemed to think that the season was pretty much over. The beast was immense; its shell alone was 1.5 meters long! This delivery would be a little trickier though…when we found the turtle she had come ashore where the beach was partially eroded, and there was a meter-high sand wall keeping her from getting up to the drier sand away from the water. So she started trying to dig a nest at the water’s edge, and every time she would start to make progress, a big wave would come in and fill the hole with seawater. Leatherbacks are one of the more endangered species of sea turtles, so we decided to take some extra measures to help her out. Our guide had the idea of trying to build a sand wall around her to try to block the waves, so we all (me, Cindy, the guide, and a couple from Australia) got down in the sand next to the turtle and made a wall. It helped a little, but wasn’t enough against the crashing waves. The turtle started to turn around toward the beach, and we thought she was giving up, but she managed to position herself in a way to help our dyke efforts, and then continued on her nest. The guide pulled the eggs out of the nest as she laid them, 3-4 at a time, and put them into a plastic grocery bag. As we were relocating the eggs, our guide told us that the eggs would have never survived being buried in sand so close to the water (essentially, they would have drowned).
Although we never did see any turtle hatchlings, we felt pretty good about our time in Parismina at the end of the week. Unfortunately, we heard from our Australian friends that on a bus along the coast after leaving Parismina somebody came on board offering them turtle eggs, so we’re definitely fighting an uphill battle 
But we were definitely ready to head back to the cool altitude and the unbugginess of Heredia. We’ve spent this week getting ready to hit the road again. We are going to be a bit lighter from now on, shipping some of our rarely used camping equipment back to the states. Hopefully, it will make us that more able to outrun the banditos 
From here it’s back to the Caribbean coast and the Panama border, and the archipelago Bocas del Toro. And then on to Panama City, and our next continent!
Posted by Matthew on August 2nd, 2007 | Filed under: Costa Rica | 1 Comment »
In our quest to get back on our feet and return to our travels, we needed some local help, so we contacted some people through CouchSurfing and asked to stay with them. We got a response from a friendly couple, Trevor (from Nebraska) and Mariana (from Argentina). They live in Heredia (just outside San Jose), which has a youthful populace due to the pair of universities in town. We’ve been able to leave our bikes and some bags with them as we’ve explored the central valley. After hanging out in Heredia a couple of days and enjoying the atmosphere, we took a bus to the nearby town of Alajuela, where we were planning on meeting our friends Becky and Sara. We stayed for a few days at the , home of a bar devoted to Marilyn Monroe and “the best breakfast in Costa Rica” (according to their website). The breakfast was actually pretty good, as far as typical Costa Rica food goes—gallo pinto (rice and beans), potatoes, plantains, and an omelet bar. Becky brought us a care package of things we needed from the states, including a new digital camera (a cheap one…you know what they say about fool me twice…). So we were very excited to start exploring and take pictures again!
Our first day in Alajuela was spent on a trip to the nearby town of Sarchi, which is supposed to be the best place to buy local handicrafts. Most of the items are made from the beautiful hardwoods found in the area. I feel somewhat ambivalent about the wood crafts—although the items are stunningly beautiful, you have to wonder whether or not you are supporting the destruction of rain forest by purchasing such items. Anyway, Becky and Sara were introduced to the wonders of Costa Rican bus travel; that is to say, wondering when the bus is going to roll over because it drives so fast on small, windy roads. And they were also introduced to the rainy season here, as it absolutely poured all afternoon, causing us to walk from awning to awning through the town in a futile attempt to stay dry. We eventually made it back to the hotel, where we warmed ourselves with some rum that Cindy and I brought from Nicaragua that was thankfully forgotten by our attackers there.
The next day we visited the nearby Volcano Poas. We again tried to get there by bus, but despite the help of several locals, we couldn’t figure out how to make it happen. So we returned to our hotel, and booked ourselves a guide to take us directly to the volcano. Our guide was a Tico named Luis, who was very friendly, spoke excellent English, and had lots to tell us about the area. Poas is one of the most visited national parks in Costa Rica; apparently the fees collected there are enough to subsidize the costs of the less traveled parks in the country. We went up on a Sunday, and sure enough, there were plenty of people there. Unfortunately, Poas is a bit of a crapshoot in terms of visibility. We got a glimpse of the just as we arrived, but within 10 minutes, it was enveloped again in clouds. Luis told us that some people don’t even get to see that, so we should consider ourselves lucky We took the short hike in the rain to the other crater, which is a lake (Botos Lagoon), and had to be satisfied with seeing the picture of the lake posted at the lookout, since that side was covered in clouds as well.
The day after our trip to Poas, we transferred to a hotel called , which is in the hills between Heredia and Alajuela. This hotel is amazingly beautiful, and we picked it because we had a little surprise planned for Becky and Sara…more on that later. That morning we took the coffee tour at . The tour was, shall we say, unique. We walked through a small area of coffee plants as three people (claiming to be coffee pickers) explained to us where the coffee beans come from, and how they are processed from cherries on the tree to the roasted beans that you put in the grinder. When we finished seeing the processing plant where the final product is bagged, we went into a small auditorium, where the three “coffee pickers” (who were at this point clearly actors) went into a full-blown stage production (complete with costume changes) explaining the history of coffee. It was like seeing a show at Disneyland…with an appropriate amount of caffeine added. Anyway, the tour ended in their gift shop (of course), where you could sample all their various blends of coffee. Since I don’t drink coffee, I wasn’t too interested in that, BUT they also had out samples of their various chocolates, which I was very interested in. You could also buy all the coffee your heart desired and have it shipped to the states for somewhat cheaper than their online prices, so we decided to send ourselves some coffee for our return.
That night we let Becky and Sara in on our surprise…they were going to be the witnesses for our wedding the next morning. We got married on July 17 by a lawyer overlooking the beautiful hotel pool, and we finished it before the rains came that day. This is something we’ve had planned since Mexico City, when we booked the hotel. We bought rings at a jade store in Antigua, Guatemala, and thankfully the robbers overlooked them when they were going through our stuff. The hotel did a really great job, preparing tropical flowers for us and a very yummy mango cake. But we had no time to sit around and congratulate ourselves—we had more stuff to see! After we killed the bottle of champagne and finished taking wedding photos, we jumped in a cab to visit . The gardens are set in the hills near an amazing chain of 5 waterfalls, and there is an aviary, butterfly house, hummingbird garden, snake house, and frog house. There is an abundance of beautiful flora and fauna to see (and photograph) as you walk through the park….I can’t wait to post some of our pictures. After wearing ourselves out in the park, we returned to the hotel for a celebratory wedding dinner. They serve all the guests at the same time with a 4-course meal in the main room of the hotel. Although our friends Trevor and Mariana weren’t able to get off work to come to the ceremony, they were able to join us for dinner. The next day we saw Becky and Sara off the the airport to return to Atlanta, while Cindy and I soaked up as much luxury as we could before returning to Heredia to stay with Trevor and Mariana.
We still haven’t made any binding decisions about our future travel directions yet, but in the meanwhile we are planning on leaving tomorrow by bus and boat to the Caribbean coast near Tortuguero National Park and spending a week volunteering to patrol the beach at night acting as midwives for the sea turtles. Then we’ll return to Heredia/San Jose and figure out what we’re going to do with the bikes.
Posted by Matthew on July 20th, 2007 | Filed under: Costa Rica | 13 Comments »
This is a post that I would hoped we wouldn´t have to write. We were robbed on July 5th on our way from Rivas, Nicaragua to the Costa Rica border. We are both okay, but our bikes are a lot lighter.
The short version is that 3 guys came out onto the road and blocked our path asking for water. It quickly became apparent that water was not actually what they wanted. After forcing us down into the ditch next to the road (Matt:
did we mention that they had a gun?), they went through our bags and took whatever appealed. Beyond the obvious stuff (computer, camera, money) they also found our shoes (except the ones we were wearing), swiss army knives and a bunch of other stuff to their liking. They made a point of giving us our passports so that they wouldn´t get lost in the mess. So, after they left we gathered up what was left, straightened out Matt´s bike and made a beeline for the border. On our arrival, we told the moneychangers (always the first people to greet us at borders) that we were robbed. They replied, ‘again?’ and pointed us towards the police, where we found out that we are the third group of cyclists to be robbed on that stretch of road. (We have since put the warning out on all the bike/travel forums we can find to try to prevent it from happening again.)
We wanted to get a police statement for insurance purposes, but we didn´t expect the police to actually do anything. I´m still not convinced that they are actually going to do anything to find these guys, though we did spend a huge amount of time making statements. We even went back to the scene with 6 armed police to show them the hiding spot. Some of our stuff was still there (things like small bags of cookies that we hadn´t bothered to pack up) so they took forever putting little numbers by everything, taking pictures and making a detailed list of what they found, all of which seemed pretty stupid to me. They should have been looking for stuff that wasn´t ours, right? They did try to dust some of the stuff for fingerprints, but didn´t find anything.
Next, they took us to the health clinic where a doctor looked at our scrapes and wrote a report, but didn´t actually put on bandages or anything (we had cleaned up while waiting for the police and they were just scrapes, but still, what a joke.) The best part was when the guy with the camera took a picture of us talking to the doctor to prove that they had taken us there. (Matt:
Everybody kept asking me whether or not the robbers had hit me…I wasn’t sure why everybody kept asking me that until I looked in a mirror later and saw that I had a pretty bad black eye.)
When we were finally free to move on, we dug out the money we had stashed in our bikes and other secret places and came up with about $90. Enough to get us over the border and on a bus to San Jose where we could deal with everything. We caught the last bus away from the border. Unfortunately, this meant that we arrived in San Jose after dark, a big no-no of traveling in Latin America. And, as they warn you, one of our bags was snatched as we were putting everything on the bikes to get to the hotel. The bag had been pretty much cleaned out already and only had a couple things in it. Unfortunately again, those things were Matt´s sunglasses, the police report and our passports. At least we were able to get into Costa Rica before losing the passports though, right?
We are working on getting back on our feet and excitedly waiting for Becky to show up on Friday. My dad wired us money and getting passports was pretty easy (Matt:
If you’re from the US you automatically get to go to the front of the lines at the embassy—now that’s service!). We also have managed to find some cheap new shoes to wear until we have credit cards again. San Jose isn´t the most beautiful city, but it is nice to be in a place that feels somewhat familiar. We visited the mall yesterday, which was just like being back in the States. Generally, we are doing well.
We haven´t decided what we will do after Becky leaves. We are comtemplating sending the bikes home and continuing by bus, maybe volunteering or doing some more language school, though really, the best part of the trip is the biking and all the nice people we have met. Can we really let 3 bad guys ruin that? We can´t decide. We lost enough stuff that is crucial to biking that it would take us a while (and a bunch of money) to get ready to ride. We go back and forth on the options hourly, so it will probably be a while before we are ready to make a decision.
(Matt:
We had a great time the week prior, in Granada and Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua. We may go back and fill in some more details on those days later on. It will help us to remember that not everyone in Nicaragua is bad.)
Posted by cindy on July 8th, 2007 | Filed under: Nicaragua | 7 Comments »
To the north of the city of Leon is a string of 10 volcanos which rise up out of seemingly nowhere from the flat coastal plain. The youngest of the volcanoes is Cerro Negro, which is only about 150 years old and around 700 meters tall. It is also covered in black rock and shale (the others are covered with vegetation). We decided to take a tour up Cerro Negro and try “,” which is like sledding, only on fast, sharp rocks for 400 meters at a 40-47 degree angle. You sit on this small plywood board with a sheet of aluminum attached to the bottom of it, holding on to a rope handle with one hand, and then shoot down the side of the volcano, with only Flintstone brakes (i.e., your feet) to slow you down. According to our guide (and his radar gun), the fastest boarders can reach up to 60 or so kph. Matt and I each got up to over 40 kph or so, which seemed plenty fast to us! In addition to the thrill of the descent, we also got to peer into an active crater (Matt even descended to the bottom of the crater- the sulfur fumes were too much for me). You can check out the promotional video for the tour here.
We also took advantage of Leon’s close proximity to the ocean to visit the beach towns of Poneloya and Las Penitas. There isn’t much to do in the towns, just a couple restarants and small hotels, but there is a nice beach and it was good to see the Pacific again. We have been within a few hundred kilometers of the ocean a couple times, but haven’t actually see it since Mazatlan.
In Xela, one of our fellow language students, who had lived in Managua for 6 months warned us against spending time in Nicaragua’s capital city. He claimed that you have to be there for at least a month before you enjoy it. Unfortunately, the only way to get from Leon to Granada, the next large city on our agenda is to go through Managua. We decided that we would try to stay in the small town of Mateare after Leon, then take the bypass highway to avoid Managua. The Footprint guidebook recommends visiting Mateare, but they don’t say whether there is lodging to be found. When we arrived in Mateare nice ladies at a refreshment stand informed that the only place near to us with hotels is Managua. So, we were forced to push on until we either ran into a roadside hotel, or reached Managua. About 13 km outside of Managua, we found a hotel called “Bubbles of Love,” an auto hotel (meaning you drive your car right into the private garage connected to your room, then close the garage and no one can see who is entering the room). Since it was pretty hot and we really didn’t want to navigate Managua traffic, we decided to check it out. Bubbles of Love is most definitely a first rate auto hotel priding themselves on customer service and privacy. They charge per 3 hours, but midnight-7am is one time period. Since we were not their typical type of customer, they agreed to knock off one of the time periods and give us a 50 cordoba discount and some free OJ in the morning as well. As for customer privacy, they have room service where you call and request your food or drinks, then they place it in the cubby and ring a bell signaling that your order is ready for you. The bill is also paid through the cubby system, so that you never have to actually see anybody while you are there. The room itself was also one of the nicest we have stayed in for a while, though we still lost electricity for a while.
It was at Bubbles of Love that we looked ahead to the ferry schedule for the boat that would take us from Granada to the Island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. We found out the the boats only sail twice a week giving us the choice of going directly to Granada and spending only a day there, or spending a week in/around Granada. Since the guidebooks had lots of good things to say about the region between Managua and Granada and we still had plenty of time before we need to meet Becky in Costa Rica, we decided to take our time.
The following day, we got lost in Managua before heading east 30 km to the arts and crafts center of Masaya. We passed the entrance to Volcan Masaya National Park on the way (6 km before Masaya) and stopped to get more info. We discovered that there is a paved road leading to the top of the crater. So the next morning, we set out on unloaded bikes to ride up to the top. The volcano is active, so after we paid our admission to the park, we received a flyer on what to do if the volcano starts throwing rocks—hide under your car. Hiding under the bikes it seemed wouldn’t be too much help, so we just hoped that the volcano was feeling calm that day. The park also contains a great museum on how volcanos form and erupt as well as some of the local ledgends concerning these volcanos (there are two volcanos, Masaya and Ninidri, with a total of 5 craters between them). The climb to the top was short but steep. We were very happy to see the park rangers selling cold sodas near the parking lot. We hiked around the top a bit exploring the two of the craters and getting some good views of the surrounding country side.
We decided to take two days to travel the 16 km between Masaya and Granada in order to take a little detour to swim in the crystal clear crater lake, Lake Apoyo. One of the Granada hostels owns a house on the lake (the Monkey Hut) with rooms for rent as well as a beach, dock, kayaks and inner tubes for enjoying the lake. We had a wonderful time swimming and floating in the lake and relaxing on the deck overlooking the lake. I took advantage of the library to read Tim Cahill’s book Road Fever , about his 23.5 day record breaking drive from Tierra de Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 1987. It was a good read and interesting to see how different the politics were in many countries 20 years ago. Anyway, after our day on the lake, we started with a brutal climb back out of the crater, followed by an easy downhill stretch to Granada, where we are enjoying the city until our ferry to Ometepe on Monday.
Posted by cindy on June 30th, 2007 | Filed under: Nicaragua | 1 Comment »