Nicaragua: San Juan del Sur

Having to flee Costa Rica due to immigration issues, I traveled to Nicaragua last weekend. Early Thursday morning Gabrielle, Frank and I set out on an awesome adventure full of border crossings, beaches, and good times. 

Sitting in a charter bus for seven hours really isn't that bad. The guy on the bus selling empanadas out of a cooler made it worth while. He saved me from starving to death. 

Crossing the border was an experience I'll try to describe but I think it might be a "you had to be there" moment... The bus pulled up to Costa Rica immigration at the border. Every one gets out, waits in line, gets their passport stamped and then files back in line to get on the bus. During the period of time spent between the bus and the immigration building, we were bombarded by hoards of people wanting to exchange money for us. Back on the bus we filled out a form and waited to arrive at Nicaraguan immigration. It didn't take long to get there. We handed our passports over to the bus employees so they could take them to be stamped while we headed outside to have out bags checked. The concrete platform in the middle of a parking lot was crowed with vendors, money exchangers, and people asking for monedas (coins). An immigration official checked our bags. I unzipped the top zipper of my backpack. After that the process went like this:  

The immigration guy looked at my bag...

"Ropa?" (Clothes?)

"Sí." (Yes.)

"Bueno." (Ok.)

And that was the end of that.

Good thing I'm not a drug smuggling cartel member... 

After about an hour of waiting outside in the hot sun we got back on the bus. Frank, Gabrielle and I got off the bus in a town called Rivas and took a taxi to San Juan del Sur.

We went to three different beaches during our trip...

The first beach

This picture was taken from our hostel.

Playa Ramones 

This beach is great, minus the jellyfish... Gabrielle and I both were stung multiple times. Our blistered jelly stings definitely gave us some beach cred. 

Gabrielle and I took a surfing lesson at Playa Ramones. It was so much fun! I spent a fair amount of time falling every direction into the water, but by the end of the day I could successfully stand up on the board! I'm practically a pro now. 

Playa Hermosa 

We visited Playa Hermosa on our last day in Nicaragua. This beach definitely lives up to it's name (hermosa means beautiful)! The water, sand, sky, everything was picture perfect. We spent the entire day hanging out on the beach and playing in the waves (we had to watch out for stingrays though...). The show Survivor was filmed on this beach a couple years ago. 

Sand Dollars! 

A street in town

Córdobas 

(Exchange rate 23 córdobas to 1 dollar)

Sunday morning we had to get back on a bus to reality. The bus had been over booked... somehow Gabrielle and I ended up having to be the people who had to sit on the floor at the back of the bus. That was a longgg bus ride. The important thing is that we made it back to Costa Rica safely and had a great time in Nicaragua.