Central America: Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras
¡Hola todos!
¿Que tal? Ahora estoy en San Pedro Guatemala. Pero primero fui a Costa Rica, Nicaragua y también Honduras. Lunes de por ocho dÃas estudio Español y vive con Guatemallian familia. Central America es muy interesante y mucho bien personas. ¡Ahora no bien habla Español, pero en uno o dos semana quiero mucho bien!
Hi Everyone
How are you? Now, I´m in San Pedro Guatemala. But first I went to Costa Rica, Nicaragua and also Honduras. From Monday for 1 week I´ll study Spanish and live with a Gutemallian family. Central America is very interesting and there are many nice people. Now I can´t speak Spanish well but in one or two weeks I hope I am very good!
Here´s my latest photos:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=scx1gz5.9xgth26d&x=0&y=rmsih0&localeid=en_US
Central America so far has been a myriad of bright colours, new tastes, fantastic local activities and lots of amazing things to see and do. It´s not as cheap as Asia, but it´s still a great destination for anyone not wanting to spend heaps. I started learning Spanish from a book a few months ago, and this was definitely a good idea. You could probably get by speaking just English, but life becomes so much easier if you can say a few things in Spanish. At this stage, I can order food, look for a room, talk about future plans, get where I want to and answer generic questions. After a week or two studying Spanish and doing a homestay I´m hoping my Spanish will see a leap in improvement.
San Jose in Costa Rica was the first place I flew into, and pretty much for the first time, I had no real concrete ideas about exactly what I´d do after I landed. I spent the first night in a cheap hotel, and by the next day had decided to move to a more touristy backpackers, so I could get my hands on a Lonely Planet (bible of all backpackers!) and talk to other travellers about where they´d been. I was feeling slightly overwhelmed and a bit confused about exactly where to head off to in Central America, but then I met two great French Canadian girls, Gene & Andree, and started my Central American adventure by heading to La Fortuna in Costa Rica.
La Fortuna is a pretty little town, surrounded by picturesque rivers and waterfalls, and with a skyline dominated by a volcano. On the bus taking us there, I met two Austrians Steffan and Tom, and we ended up hanging out for about a week. In La Fortuna, we all did this walk out to the local waterfalls, and were lucky enough to get soaked in a torrential down pour on the way there. The Austrians, being forward thinkers had come prepared with beer, so we all sat down in a shelter and after polishing off several bottles continued the walk. We arrived, wetter than wet, but the waterfall was amazing. At about 30m high, and with the torrential rain bucketing down, it was a display of nature at it´s best. The water just thundered over the crest and crashed into the river with such might ... it was pretty humbling to be standing so close and watching such power in it´s purest form.
Tom, Steffan and myself headed off the next day to Nicaragua. An uneventful 4 hour bus ride was followed by a lengthy 3 hour wait to get across the border, from where we caught a taxi with a couple English girls to San Juan del Sur on the South West coast of Nicaragua. San Juan del Sur is a reasonably touristy town, with accommodation and food prices reflecting this. The beaches, and general landscape were a little reminiscent of New Zealand, but it was a nice stop over, and my liver got a real work out thanks to the Austrians!! Spent a day pottering round the local surf beach and met Dave from the UK there, who I ended up meeting again later on, and travelling with for around 2 weeks.
Ometepe, which is a volcanic Island in Nicaragua was our next stop. People I´d talked to had really built up this place in my mind, and to be honest, I was a bit dissapointed. I found it expensive and really gearded towards the tourist market. The beach was over run with mosquitos and the neighbouring restaurant listed all prices is $USD (a sure sign you´re being ripped off!). Steffan, Tom and I did a guided walk up the volcano, and again, it left me dissapointed. The walk started off through some really nice pasture and bush, and from about a third of the way up we had an amazing view of the second volcano, and the bays which framed the Island. Unfortunately, after this, the walk turned into a muddy and very steep climb, which at it´s peak left us surrounded by bush, without any view to speak of.
After Omptepe, I travelled on alone to Granda, which was probably the first real place in Nicaragua that I was captured by and really liked. Checked into a place called the Bearded Monkey, which was a cheerful hostel, over run with gringos on the gringo trail and with free internet. My first night there, I headed out to see a baseball game at a local stadium with two American girls, and this was just awesome! The crowd got right behind the teams, cheering and shouting on their feet whenever a home run or good defensive move was made. Granada is a vibrant, colourful town populated by a lot of locals, which is great as you don´t feel like you´re just there with other foreigners. A lot of the buildings are cheerful pastel colours, there´s a great local market and the whole place seems to have such a really nice atmosphere.
Dave, who I again met here, and myself, spent a great night at the local pool hall. You can´t beat having a beer with locals, playing pool and really feeling like you´re just hanging out with the people who actually live there. Now, we´ve travelled together for about 2 weeks, and I can honestly say my liver is really looking forward to tomorrow when we part company!! Ha ha! We woke up one day in Granada, and as we were unsure about what to do on a cloudy, rainy day, we recruited two Americans Hilary and Neeraja, and at about 1pm set about demolishing a bottle of tequila and numerous beers. Subsequently, Dave and I were on form in the pool hall again that night! Think we lost 2 games in about 4 hours. We went to a salsa club another night, and even though it was seriously over run by foreigners we got to hear some really good live Nicaraguan music.
On the way to the Honduras border we spent a few days in Estelli. Dubbed the cowboy town of Nicaragua, we did not really see much to back this up. More time was spent in the local pool halls and we did a really long walk out to another waterfall. Lonely Planet claimed the walk could be done in an hour, but we were hard pressed to get there in under 2.
At the Hondurus border we found out that the public bus service had gone on strike, so it looked like out only option from the border to the capital was to pay a $50USD taxi ride. I suggested hitching, and although Dave was was initially a bit against the idea, he eventually caved and we started off.
Hitching in Central America is pretty common, and you do it with a open hand held out, rather than just extending your thumb. And, its common to ask after the ride "Cuanto le debo" (how much do I owe you?), which is normally answered by "De nada" (nothing, you are welcome). So, first ride was in the back of a truck with a guy who didnt speak English. My Spanish is still muy mal (very bad) and I can only say muy pokito (very little), but we got by. The second ride we caught, when I asked the polite "Cuanto le debo" was answered by "Quarenta" (40 Limpira) ... so that cost us $1USD each. Not too bad for a 40km ride.
Ride three was in a flash ute with a construction project manager who worked in Florida, but lived in Hondurus. He took us about 3 hours, and didn´t want a cent ... then a funny thing happened. He had dropped us off at a turn off and talked to a policeman. He told us he´d asked the policemen to to give us a lift to our detination which was about 50km away. I thought there was no way the policeman would do this, and when we saw him start to flag down traffic and talk to the car owners, we thought he was just back to doing his work. How wrong we were! After maybe 10 minutes of flagging down cars in the rain, the cop had sorted us out a ride, that took us all theway to where we went. It made me laugh that a policemen had been flagging down cars just to find a lift for two gringos!
Dave and I spent about 5 days in Copan in Honduras, and this felt and looked like the cowboy town I had been expecting from Estelli. Lots of locals wearing leather boots, jeans, flambouyant belts and cowboy hats. And, quite a few security guards holding shot guns outside banks. Copan was a really nice place to just hang out and relax - the town had cobled roads, cheap accommodation, a local pool hall, and a nice mix of foreigners and locals. It was easy to find a gringo bar, talk to travellors and get the low down on where to go and what to see, but it was just as easy to get away from everyone and spend time hanging out with the locals.
I decided to go on a horse ride one day, and made the mistake of going with a random local from the town square, rather than booking it through an agency, which is the reccomended way. The horses were not very well looked after, and had a few open sores from the bridle rubbing against their skin. Apart from that, the ride only lasted 90 minutes, as oppossed to 3 hours. On the upside it only cost $10USD though.
Then, the day before we left, a bar man tried to start a fight with me and Dave. After a pretty long night boozing, dancing salsa (FAIL!) and doing other stuff, me and Dave ended up at this small bar, which seemed to be frequented by locals. We thought we´d settle in there for a final few drinks, and seemed to be pretty welcomed. This guy (who later turned out to be the owner), asked my mate if he´d buy him a drink. After a quick think about it, a drink was bought and the good times continued. Then, just as we were about to leave the bar woman (wife of the owner) said we owed 80 Lempiar (about $4USD). We weren´t very boozed and were sure we´d paid for everything as we´d drunk it, but the owner got involved and went from mellow to fully agro in about 10 seconds flat. We were both being polite, but saying we were sure we didn´t owe anything; then the owner takes a real shining to me and starts going on (in a very drunken ramble) about New Zealanders ... he didn´t actually say anything bad, he just rambled. Anyway, we´re trying to difuse the situation, but the owner pulls off his t shirt, tells us he´ll smash us if we don´t pay, and takes a swing at me.
At this stage, a fight could have easily broken out. The owner was fat and probably late 40s, and there were two other oldish guys in the bar who would of almost certainly joined the fray on his side. Without a doubt, I reckon we could of taken them all out, but I kept thinking it´d be stupid to start a fight in a rough Central American town, where it was entirely possible we´d get stabbed or worse.
So, after finally settling the bill we legged it pretty quickly away
.
Well, that´s about all I´ve been up to in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Hondurus. Just having a blast over here, and doing a pretty good job of experiencing all I can and mixing it up with some great local experiences.
I´m in San Pedro Guatemala now, but slow internet means I´ll have to write another email and upload moe photos later.
¡Buen dia y hasta pronto!
Have a good day and talk to you soon!
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