Welcome to Nicaragua - San Juan del Sur

Last week we stopped in Los Angeles for a few days and our friends Sally & Chris were kind enough to allow us to unload all of our “Ecuador treasurers.” After reprovisioning, we flew into San Jose, Costa Rica and took the Tica Bus to Nicaragua. Overall, the bus trip was uneventful, very comfortable and shorter than we had anticipated. The border crossing was a little helter skelter. They took all our passports, made us get off the bus and take all of our baggage off the bus and drag it up onto the bus terminal deck. We waited in line and when it was finally our turn the guy asked us what was in our box and we told him beach chairs. He said okay, push the green button to ring the bell and put your stuff back on the bus. What was that all about?? Then we stood around for 30-40 minutes waiting to get our stamped passports back. One poor fellow had an expired passport and wasn’t allowed back on the bus….wonder what happened to him?

Our first stop in country was San Juan del Sur. Mission, to find a long board. Got lucky and the 2^nd shop we went into had a 10 footer…hurray! Strange thing is, the board was made in Germany. Is there surf in Germany? Got to try it out the next day at a spot called Medaras. Gentle little beach break in a small bay about 35 minutes north of San Juan del Sur on a mud road most sane people wouldn’t consider driving on. The rainy season here just ended and the roads are horrendous. Locals say it was worst wet season in 50 years, good thing we didn’t come earlier!

San Juan del Sur is a classic Latin American surf town. Lots of gringos visiting and living there, mostly younger crowd but there are a few old hippies/beach bums like us too. By American standards everything is cheap here but is at least twice the cost of what we were paying in Ecuador. Gasoline was as high as $5/gal. but has come down a little. In the rural areas (which is where we live!), the only “green” veggies you can get are cabbage & green peppers. Maybe we will write an international cookbook titled, “Siempre Berza” in Latin America, “To Vadza” in Romania and “Choke Cabbage” in Hawaii. However, there is a benefit, makes cooking easy with limited choices. We now have a new appreciation for the abundance of fresh produce in Ecuador, wish we would have eaten more of it!

We lucked out on the hotel Grey picked out on the internet. It was a block off the main street and had a nice interior courtyard so our room was set back off the street. Our second night in San Juan was Halloween and they closed the malacon (beach front street) and put up tables & chairs and every restaurant set up big speakers and blasted music most of the night. Most people wore costumes and the gringos went Greek, lots of “togas.” Think the hotels lost a lot of sheets that night. We were snug in our room and didn’t have any problem sleeping, especially Grey, after surfing for the 1^st time in 7 months.