January 3rd-15th, 2015
I hopped on the local bus from the kite surfing farm up to
La Cruz. From there it was another local
bus, albeit a fancier one, to Penas Blancas, the border to Nicaragua which was
only about 20 kilometres away. Ulf, the
restaurant manager, had told me that the border could be busy with many
Nicaraguans returning from Christmas vacation after visiting their families in
Costa Rica, and he was definitely right.
Exiting Costa Rica was no problem but there was an insanely long line to
enter into Nicaragua. On first glances I
figured it might take 4-5 hours, if I was lucky. Most of the queue was in the exposed sunlight
and I wasn’t sure how I would make it in the heat. A local approached me and after a short
verbal exchange he told me to follow him and he’d get me through quickly. I wasn’t sure about the whole deal and didn’t
like the idea of budding in line just because I was a foreigner but I soon
realized that I didn’t actually need his help, that only Nicaraguans were in
the massive line-up and I could head straight to another building to get my
entry stamp. I paid the guy a $5 tip
which I realized later that I didn’t really need to but oh well, he had made me
feel like I had saved hours of waiting.
In the immigration building there were only two officers
working. The lineup snaked to the
entrance of the building and one would think that the single queue would then
break into two for each operating window.
However from my previous experience crossing this border I knew that
there would be two separate lineups and if you pushed your way inside the
building you could get into the second line which was much shorter, which is
what I did even though I knew I was receiving evil stares from other foreigners
who thought I was budding in line. After
almost an hour in the “shorter” line, I noticed that there was a sign at the
counter that said “Solo Nicas” (only Nicaraguans). The sign had been obscured by people standing
at the front of the line and I decided that I was not going to start over in
the other line at this point, I was going to take my chances. This border crossing was filled with
inefficiencies, many of which could easily fixed and one of the blatant ones
was that any non-Nicaraguan had to pay a $2 entry fee and the immigration
officer had to handwrite out a receipt which took close to a minute to do. The reason for this queue being only for
Nicaraguans was that it was quick for them to have their passports scanned and
be on their way, this being after they had waited 4-5 hours in that outside line
for something else. So you could imagine
their frustration when foreigners were taking up extra time in their line,
where they shouldn’t have been. The Nicaraguans
were starting to get to their boiling point as a couple of Costa Ricans took
more than five minutes at the immigration window. I could feel the wrath approaching me so I
explained to the nearby Nicaraguans, in my broken Spanglish, that I hadn’t seen
the sign for “Solo Nicas” until last minute.
They seemed to appreciate my situation and thankfully the immigration
officers opened up another window and the tension was defused.
I hopped onto a chicken bus towards La Rivas and transferred
to another one on the highway to San Juan del Sur. There I had a nice pizza lunch, got some
money and took a shuttle out to Casa Maderas, about 10 kilometres north where
Jeff was holding his yoga classes.
Casa Maderas was a lovely place, about a 10 minute walk from
the Maderas Beach, a popular surfing spot. One foreigner did say that it
looked like a cocaine king pin’s complex with its pool and terra cotta
buildings but it did make for a great place to stay for the next 10 days or
so. Almost immediately I ran into Jeff
and soon the beers were flowing. Over
the next week I attended yoga sessions at either 8 or 11am. The courses were held at a covered pavilion up
the hill that the buildings were situated.
Unfortunately at this time of the year the wind blows hard from Lake
Nicaragua so this resulted in challenging yoga sessions where keeping your mat
from flying away added to the difficulty of the practice. It also made poses that much harder,
especially ones like the tree pose where you stand on one foot as the blasts of
winds would threaten to topple you over.
Nevertheless my back and body were grateful for the exercise and
stretching and the rigors of the kite surfing lessons began to fade away.
Casa Maderas:
The restaurant:
Maderas Beach:
Jeff soaking it up:
As am I...
One of many sunset pics:
Jeff upside down kicking the sun...nice yoga move:
I walked the 10km to San Juan del Sur one day and passed by the local dump, where the vultures and dogs like to hang out:
The Christ of Mercy statue in San Juan that is one of the tallest Jesus statues in the world:
Knuffle getting a blessing:
The bay of San Juan del Sur:
Carolyne enjoying sunset at Maderas:
I started to meet some other characters staying at Casa
Maderas. There was Carolyne from Quebec
who was on her first big trip outside of Canada for two weeks with her father
joining her for the second week. And
Ifenea (pronounced like “a funny”, that’s how I remembered it…it’s “a funny”
name”) who was an incredibly brilliant and interesting American living in
Berlin. Later I met Steve, a doctor from
Quebec with his young Russian girlfriend Anya from Moscow. And finally there was Lee and Naomi, a couple
from Point Roberts which is a strange little geographical anomaly near
Vancouver Island. It’s a little
peninsula which is part of the US but it occupies only 12 square kilometres and
its inhabitants must drive into Canada in order to get into the continental US,
even though Point Roberts is part of the continent.
Lee lovin' life:
And so is Naomi:
We heard of a local secret of a pizzeria near Casa Maderas
which was a must visit. It turns out
that “Bluues Munchies” (yes, that’s the correct spelling) is run by Sergio,
formally from Rome. He only opens the
place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights and you must, must have a
reservation or you will not be fed. And
for your reservation it doesn’t matter how many people you are, just how many
pizzas you want. Sergio runs the place
by himself and there’s not even a waiter or waitress so it’s an honor system
with self-serve drinks. It’s best to
arrive before 6:30pm, the official opening time as it’s first come, first
served. The first night we went there we
didn’t arrive until close to 7 and that meant that we were one of the last
groups to receive our pizzas…which took over 2 hours…but it was worth the
wait. So worth it that I went every
night it was open after that until I left Nicaragua!
Sergio working his pizza magic:
Cooking up nicely...
The awesome finished product...okay, this one looks a bit burned on the crust but still yummy.
One day a group of us went in Steve’s rental car to Hermosa
Beach (which means “Beautiful Beach”), about 10 kilometres south of San Juan del
Sur. It happens to be where the American
TV show Survivor shot one of its series.
It was a large sandy beach and quite devoid of humans and made for a
lovely afternoon out.
As we first walked on to Hermosa Beach, they had about a hundred baby Leatherback turtles that they were going to release later in the afternoon. The are really making an attempt to help the population of the turtles.
Chillin' in the shade at Hermosa:
Naomi, Lee and Carolyne showing their handstand skills:
Now jump!
Looking back at Hermosa Beach:
Nice form Carolyne:
Lee's going to love that I posted this one...it's Naomi's shirt which says "Do Yoga".
Time to chillax:
Doctor Steve and Anya:
Madkot anyone? Oh, actually this are for making pizzas...at a pizzeria we stopped at in San Juan returning from Hermosa:
So Lisseth, one of the staff at Casa Maderas thought that I looked like McGyver from that old TV show. One night I got my bill at the restaurant and at the top it said "McGyber"...this became my nickname for the rest of my stay at Casa Maderas...pretty funny.
Max the waiter showing where the McGyber inspiration came from:
And this is Lilleth who started it all:
Sergio’s landlord is an American named Vince how lives next door. Vince has a large property and he has turned most of it into the “Marsella Valley Disk Golf Course”. I haven’t played much Frisbee golf in the last five years and in the late 90s I was hooked on it so one day Lee and I went to check it out. It only cost 50 Cordobas ($2) to play the 12 hole course, and you could play as many rounds as you wanted, and Vince could also hook you up with a small cooler of beer with ice for super cheap. We ended up playing a round with a couple of Canadian guys, Ian and Tyler and Vince even joined us. It was a super sweet afternoon…well worth the price of admission!
The entrance to the course:
Interesting baskets unlike any I had played before...but they worked fairly especially for putting but almost impossible to get a hole in one:
On the course...there is a basket somewhere in the distance:
My tee off shot got stuck in bamboo:
Final sunset at Maderas:
The next day was Lee’s birthday and unfortunately in an
alcohol fuelled celebration, he did a flip into the shallow four feet deep pool
and hit his head on the bottom of the pool.
The small gash required stitches and luckily Doctor Steve had medical
equipment to do the trick and so Lee didn’t need to go to a hospital or clinic,
although he did make Lee wait until after he had finished dinner which I
thought was fair enough. Silly Lee.
Our crew getting a bit silly:
Nice finish:
Needless to say the “yoga retreat” turned into a “yoga/party
retreat” but a good time was had by all.
Time to head back to Costa Rica to finish my kite surfing lessons.
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