NICARAGUA – SAN JUAN DEL SUR

FEBRUARY 18-21, 2024

We caught a chicken bus to Rivas, where they managed to fit 80+ people in a 48 passenger bus. Then we had to switch to another bus to take us to San Juan del Sur. As usual, there were lots of taxis lingering about, just waiting to rip you off. The one we caught had to work for his money.

I have gotten into the habit of taking a screen shot of the directions, translate them to Spanish, and the phone number of the host. I have found that Google Maps is nearly useless with the addresses supplied by the host. One set of directions said they were 200 metres east of the post office. Another said they were behind the church. In this case the taxi didn’t know and his buddy didn’t know either, so he called the hostess. Even after talking to her, I could tell he was still a bit confused. With reason.

He took us to a dead end street, got out of the car, and pointed up a hill that was behind a wall. What the hell? He gestured again and kind of shrugged his shoulders. Ok, I guess this is it! We grabbed our bags and headed up the not-so-nice path up.

Our hostess greeted us and motioned to follow her. We had to go up a steeper hill that was covered in pea sized gravel. It was slippery. We were carrying our backpacks, which made it a bit treacherous. Thankfully, neither path was very long.

The hill was quite steep and the buildings were built into the side of it. Our short walk from the gravel path to the actual guesthouse was along the top edge of her roof.

The floor of our little apartment was the same height as her roof.

We dumped our stuff and headed out to find groceries. Sometimes I feel like a wild beast, always on the hunt for food. We found ice cream shops every 50 feet, but had a hard time finding a proper store. We found some fruit and veggies at a green grocer. When we finally found a proper store, we asked if they had hamburger or chicken. No. Where can we find that? Impossible. Huh!? Sure enough, we never did find any. We bought some turkey slices and called it good

We stopped at a restaurant on the beach and had a light dinner. Heading back home we passed through the Malecon. There was a statue of Sandino.

A park bench with two statues, one was of Mark Twain and the other was Ruben Dario. They sat on the bench looking at each other as if they were discussing what was in the books they were reading.

The next day was real windy, but we decided to take a walk along the beach on our way to Cristo de la Misericordia that was way up on a hill on the opposite side of the bay.

We got sand blasted. By the time we returned later that afternoon, I even had grit in my armpits.

Cristo de la Misericordia is a 15 metre high fibreglass structure with a metal frame inside. It stands on a 9 metre high pedestal. which houses a small chapel. It is on a high hill, making it a total of 134 metres above sea level. Jesus point to the south.

The trek up was no small accomplishment. It was only about 2 kilometres, but it was steep! We paid our $2 entrance fee and continued to the top. It was WINDY! We went up the last 9 metres to the base of the statue. It was so windy we had to time our exit between gusts. There were times the gusts literally had us grasping for the railing.

We could see out over the bay and onto the hills beyond.

There were lots of beautiful homes that we passed on our way up.

From this vantage point we could see how many there were. There was one house / villa that caught our eye. It seemed to sit alone and had a swimming pool.

We met a couple from Canada on the pedestal. We took pictures for each other. They were from Toronto. They invited us to their place for a refreshment when we were heading back down the hill. It was the villa we had taken a picture of when we were up the hill! We were gobsmacked.!

Fernando is originally from Chile and Arianowa was originally from Nicaragua. She filled us in on the political situation currently in Nicaragua. She told us how people who go against the government still disappear in the middle of the night. How a friend of hers is an activist and her mother is afraid to visit lest she get associated with her daughter’s political beliefs. We sat there in disbelief as she told us story after story. She said she would normally not speak about such things out of fear; but she felt comfortable with us. I think she needed to get stuff off her chest.

Back in town we stopped for a lobster dinner in a beach restaurant and got sand blasted further.

|We had only booked 3 nights in San Juan del Sur, and it was enough. The beach was not as nice as we had been led to believe. The sand was dirty sand and there was garbage all along the beach. I guess they counted on the tide to just wash it away. We found it expensive, too. A lemonade that cost under a dollar in every other town we had stayed, was suddenly $3 here. The sunsets were nice, however.

Maybe we were getting heat exhaustion, but the location of our guesthouse and the poor quality of it was wearing on our nerves. It was time to leave Nicaragua. Hopefully Costa Rica will be better.