Hello Costa Rica!

I had a great time at the beach the last few days... no doubt. I fought my hangover this morning and decided to head south into Costa Rica in search of new vistas and beers. Unfortunately I can´t upload pictures here so this will have to be a brief update. I´m heading to Montezuma in the NW of Costa Rica tomorrow, but tonight I´m staying in the dusty travel hub of Liberia. I´ll do a propper update tomorrow =)

Fresh Off the Beach

I just popped into town to get some supplies and I thought it would be a swell time to give a quick update. Unfortunately my SD card reader isn´t working anymore so I can´t upload any more pictures. I´ll search around town to try and find a replacement but im not optomistic =( I just found out that this place has a mini UBS cable so I guess I´m in luck today but who knows about tomorrow... but back to the beach talk.

The deal is that I´m staying at this cool little spot down on the beach north of town. It´s got maybe 5 houses that each have a few rooms for rent and one house that will cook for you if you pay them. I think I´ve heard a word for that before... the beach there is amazing! Huge waves crash right in front of me and the sound of the surf in the morning is deafening from my bed. Everyone that I´ve met at this beach went there for just `a couple days´ and ended up seeing 5 weeks fly by so it was great fortune for me that I rolled in the day after a big group left and picked up the best room there for $25 a night.

Most people there cook their own meals and then spend the rest of the night drinking and what not so last night I hung out at the home of `mushroom mark´who is so well established that he built a bar/kitchen out of driftwood and entertains there. Actually he just talks endlessly but he´s fairly entertaining so I guess its ok. Also, on the bus ride into town today I ran into a girl who´s also from Moraga, CA! She said that her name is Julia Sakkis and that she´s a friend of my sister. She also mentioned that on the islands in Panama that I´m headed towards (Bocos del Toro) the owner of the most popular bar (Mondo Taitu) is from Orinda. Small world.

This morning I got woken up when Mario was running aroung shouting ´Tortuga´which means turtle. Turns out that baby turtles were popping up out of the sand and we all needed to see it. After the turtles do their thing on the beach at night, the owner of my hotel digs them up and reburries them in the yard so that the locals dont dig them up and eat them. So, the turtles were popping up in the sand filled yard and we helped by digging them out, putting them in buckets of water and helping them to the surf. I got lots of great pictures.

I think that this afternoon I may actually go surfing or maybe just swimming and get some reading done. I paid for 3 nights at this hotel and I think I´m going to regret not doing more. Most importantly though, I need to get a bottle of Flor de Cana, the best rum in the world by most accounts, and some coke for cuba libres on the beach. I met a bunch of other guys staying a few rooms away from myself and they showed me some of the other nearby beaches. The one just north of us is a small one entirely occupied by a walled compound belonging to the richest family in Nicaragua. That means that we get the whole place to ourselved and the sand has been meticulously combed of rubbish. Sweet.

Out to Lunch

Over lunch I decided that this town was full of old people and not so much with backpackers so I need to move on. Too bad... it´s a nice place. Anyways, I´m heading up to a surfing school a few beaches north that supposedly has a cool hostel. If there´s room I´ll stay there but I doubt that it has internet so I may not update for a few days. Sorry Sam =( ttyl

Off to the Beach

I find myself in a nice air conditioned net cafe near the beach, so it´s time to do a more legnthy update. I ended up deciding to stay in Grenada for an extra day so that I could hike the nearby `Volcan Masaya´. I met another gringo yesterday, Robin, who had come up from Costa Rica so that she could get her visa extended. She voulenteers on a Chocolate farm down there with a lot of other gringas. They don´t get paid for their work and in fact they have to pay out $10 a day to stay there. There´s no electricity and they all date the local Ticos. I think they might also be communist. Anyways, she didn´t seem so bad and we met up the next morning to catch a bus out to the volcano.

When we got to the volcano we vowed to hike the 7km from the road to the top and after a lot of sweating and swearing I made it there. Granted, it was one of the shortest volcanos that I´ve ever seen, but it´s also the first I did completely so whatever. The crater at the top has a very dramatic depth and the Spaniards considered it the mouth to hell itself. They put a big cross near the top for good measure but that didn´t stop it from eruping a few years later to wipe out a couple villages. Maybe they just provoked it. It´s been fairly tame for a while now, but last year it spat up some rocks and crushed a couple tourist vans but nobody was hurt somehow. Anyways, it still took a swipe at us with some killer heat but there were some girls selling cold cokes at the top so it didn´t bother me too much. At the bottom of the volcano was a rather large museum on the mountain that had mroe volcano maps and diagrams than I´ve seen in my life. They really went above and beyond. Robin turned out to be interesting in at least one aspect, she knows a lot about my new favorite historical figure, William Walker. Not that he was great in all aspects but he was an American Confederate who tried to conquor Central America with a band of mercenaries and was the president of Nicaragua for a while. He ended up losing a key battle (which is celebrated around here) after he pissed off one of the Vanderbilts who paid for another army of locals and mercs to fight him. Anyways, you should read a little about him... it´s a crazy story.

After the hike I returned to Grenada and wandered around town looking for a nice bar. While searching, Robin and I heard a lot of music and clapping coming from one building so we went in and watched what I´m guessing was a school talent competition for a while. There was some dancing, singing, poetry, and some funky costumes. After that got boring I found a bar with fantastic mojitos (my favorite) and I chatted up some welsh guy who´s sponsoring a local girl to go to university. Charitable fellow. I bought him a beer and headed back to the hostel so I could get to bed early for my ride out of town the next morning. I rode out to San Juan del Sur, the most popular beach town in Nicaragua. Oh, and on the way I got to stop by the lake and take a cool picture of the volcano island that sits in the middle. Some of the people in the van were going there and I was feeling a little jealous till I found out that they were going to hike up it. That thing is way too tall for me. Upon getting to the beach town I got a cheap hotel and started wandering. It´s pretty but seems kinda dead and I think that I´ll try to catch the ferry to a different beach a little ways north where there´s a famous surfing school. Lord knows I need it. The other thing that´s going on in this town is a diving school and if the prices are right I may try to get my certification here. I´m gonna go find some grup so ttyl.

Brief Update

I had a fun day today, but I´m writing from my hostel that doesnt let me upload pictures so I´ll do the real update tomorrow. Today I climbed a volcano and tomorrow I´m traveling to San Juan del Sur, a beach town in southern Nicaragua. Just wanted to say I´m still alive. ttyl

Another Long Day

I didn´t like waking up today. Last night I ate at the only restaurant close enough to my hotel that I though I wouldn´t get stabbed at: Wendys. That was kinda gross and when I got up to grab a shower I saw my first cockroach of the trip... in fact it was my first one ever outside of a zoo. I must live a privilaged life. When I got out to the bus stop at 6AM I got to test the limits of mf my Spanish skills when I found out that a bus going south to Nicaragua does not stop at my town despite what I had heard the night before. Maybe it´s because it´s a Sunday. I made clear my needs to anyone who´d listen to me nearby the bus stop and they indicated that I should take a `chicken bus´ north and get off in some town that sounded like Jicama at the Oasis Hotel. I was falling asleep on the ride out there, but the bus driver kindly informed me when to get off and I found a very nice bus to Managua waiting for me. Quite literaly because I was the last person there and it took off the moment I stepped on board. Oh, about chicked busses... I don´t think that I´ve explained them before, but they´re old american school busses refitted with more seats, bigger engines, extremely tackey paint jobs and lots of chrome. They´re the cheapest busses and they´re so fast that they pass everyone on the road. I like em but they´re a bit crowded.

After changing busses a few more times I eventually got to Granada, a fairly famous city in Nicaragua. It´s supposedly the oldest European city in the new world, whatever that means. It´s very pretty, built on a lake, it´s been sacked by pirates no less than 3 times, and it once faught a civil war against the city of Leon a hundred miles away in an attempt to become the capital of Central America. They´re full of pride around here. That and Regetone music, the most vile kind of music there is.

After I found a cool hostel to stay at, the `Bearded Monkey´, I wandered around for a little while and watched a small concery being held in the town square. It was a bit of live ranchero music and I thought it was pretty good. Also I got Erika a preasent here but don´t tell her that ;) Shortly thereafter I ran into someone that I saw at the hostel eating alone so I had some beers with them and wandered around the city some more. It´s fiercely hot today and I don´t think that it´s gonna get any better when the two of us climb up some volcano tomorrow. I don´t recal what it´s called but I´m pretty sure that there´s no lava. It´s late now so I´m gonna go catch a shower... there´s a draught here so the city shuts off the water during daylight hours and you have to catch up on your bathing late at night. ttyl

Travel Day

Today I covered a lot of ground. I bid a silent goodbye to my roommates at the hostel in Copan as I left to catch my bus at 5AM. I loved this bus from the moment I saw it. It was decked out with huge seats with enough room for even my knees, movie screens (would you believe they played Apocolypto?), and drink service. I mostlt slept thru the 7 hour ride, and when I woke up I was in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. In my few waking moments, I noticed that the countryside was try and mostly forected with pine trees... one would be forgiven if they mistook it for the hills of california between Sacramento and Tahoe.

When I got off the bus finally I found myself at the bus station in the capital of the most dangerous country in Central America without a guide book and no other gringos in sight. I´ll admit that I felt a little vunerable. I knew that I could catch the direct bus to the capital of Nicaragua to the south but i´d have to spend the night in Tegucigalpa and wait for the morning. Without a guide book I´d be at the mercy of the taxi drivers who are known for scams. I decided to catch a shorter ride south on a different bus immediatly rather than wait out the rest of the day in the city. So, I rode that one another 4 hours south and ended up in Choluteca, 45 minutes north of the Nicaragua border.

I´m writing from the net cafe across the street from my hotel. I pushed the limits of my poor spanish skills and found the time and location of the bus to Nicaragua the next morning and got this hotel recomendation close to the bus station. Its a little smelly but I did get AC with it for a total of $10. Actually thats a really high price for around these parts but I didnt see any alternatives and it´s hot as holy hell here. I´ll write again when I´m actually inside Nicaragua. No idea where I´ll end up, but at least I´ll have a guide book.