I was pretty excited to leave Costa Rica and finally get to Nicaragua! I was looking forward to cheaper prices and surfing and diving in San Juan del Sur. We awoke at 5:40 on Friday, May 2, 2014 in La Fortuna and caught a 6:00 bus to El Tanque, the next town over. We had been told that there would be a bus from El Tanque to the border at Peñas Blancas, but nobody seemed to know when the bus would arrive. Some people said 6:30; others said 7:00. We were there at 6:10 which gave us plenty of time to find the bus stop and wait for the bus to arrive at no-one-is-really-quite-sure o'clock. While we were searching for the bus stop, which was of course an unlabeled street corner, we met two Québécoises, Claudia and Mélissa, who were also traveling to San Juan del Sur, so we were able to wait for the bus with them and practice a little bit of French. We eventually caught the bus and had a smooth ride in to Peñas Blancas, where the border is.
The border was very confusing and time consuming. We first had to get a ticket to leave Costa Rica. We went in a little hut and gave a man our passports and the $10 fee for the ticket. He spent five minutes saying things to us in Spanish about $7 and Liberia, another Costa Rican city which we hadn't visited and had no plans of visiting. We were both very confused and worried he was trying to sell us tickets to Liberia which was in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. We eventually realized that all he was trying to tell us was that we could also get this ticket in Liberia for $7, which was a pretty useless piece of trivia considering it would have cost more than $3 to travel to Liberia for this insignificant discount. After finally understanding what the man was trying to tell us, he told us to leave and said "not yet" when we asked for our passports back. We waited just outside the ticket booth, not sure what was happening and feeling very uneasy about the thought that a man we didn't know had our passports and we didn't know what he was doing with them. A few minutes later, they returned or passports with the border tickets in them, alleviating our worries.
Outside of the ticket booth, there were no signs or instructions telling is where to go next. We waited for some other backpackers as we'd rather get lost in a group than get lost with just the two of us. Now a group of six, we walked in what we believed to be the direction of Nicaragua and eventually came across a customs building with a long line of people outside. Here, we filled out a form stating where we were going and why and then waited an hour before finally getting approved. Once again, we had a long walk and didn't quite know what we were looking for. This stretch was the region of no-man's-land between the two countries. Once in Nicaragua, we were greeted by a friendly danger sign. I would have much preferred to have seen a "Bienvenidos a Nicaragua" sign! We walked around the dangerous region and eventually found the customs office. Here they made us pay $1 for a form, another $1 for another small piece of paper that mostly just confused me, and then $12 to enter the country. This whole process took another hour and was very poorly organized. Overall we payed $24 and spent close to 3 hours to get across the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. It would have been nice to have had to pay all the money at once and have had a shorter break.
There was a very drastic change between the wealth and infrastructure of the two neighboring countries. Nicaragua was significantly poorer. Buildings and roads were not well maintained. Several border guards had tents to work in instead of real buildings. The buses were converted school buses, called chicken buses, instead of old coach buses.
We originally planned to split a cab to San Juan del Sur with four other backpackers we had met on the bus, but all of the cabs only had space for four so Hugh and I said the others could go and we would look for two other people to split a second cab with. Before we could find anyone else headed in the same direction as us, we were approached by a local man. He advised us to take the bus which would only cost $2 instead of at least $10 each for the cab. He even shower us a map to show us where we could transfer and didn't ask for money.
We found the bus and got inside. I paid $1 to board. Hugh only had a $20 bill and they didn't have changed so they just shoved him on before he even had a chance to pay! We got on the bus - an old school bus which has been repainted red and green - and it was packed with people. There didn't appear to be seats available so we stood. Once the ride started, the man who had let us on to the bus came around and got people to move over on their seats to make room. I was sitting next to a local Nicaraguan woman. When I sat down, she tapped me on the shoulder, pointed at me, pointed at herself, and then made a kissing gesture. I was shocked at how forward she was! I hadn't even said "¡Hola!" to her! I was not interested on kissing some creepy Nicaraguan woman I knew nothing about so I shook my head. She persisted. She made the same sequence of gestures probably 10 more times seemingly unaware that I was very uncomfortable with the whole situation. She eventually gave up and decided to "sleep". As she pretended to sleep, she nudged towards me and tried to snuggle up against me. I shuffled over away from her. She followed. I kept moving and she kept following until I had only an inch of seat left. I finally decided that I would rather stand than deal with this woman, so I grabbed my bag and stood up. The local guys in the seats in front of and behind me were laughing hysterically at me but one of them moved over too make from me. Thankfully he didn't ask to kiss me!
The creepy woman was not the only strange event I witnessed on that bus. For the majority of the ride, a well-dressed, extremely loud Nicaraguan man was shooting at the front of the bus. It was as if he were an announcer in some TV commercially. Except this TV commercial was performed live on a bus and lasted 20 minutes. 20 minutes later he pulled out a box of pills and started selling them. To my surprise, almost everybody on the bus bought some of these pills! After the ride, Hugh, who is much better at understanding spoken Spanish than I am, explained to me what the man had been saying. He claimed to have been sent from god with these pills. He claimed these pills could cure anything from high blood pressure to pancreatitis. He even claimed that he had been shot in the knee and was completely healed after the taking the pills! The pills definitely weren't from god though - the box just said "garlic pills".
The border was very confusing and time consuming. We first had to get a ticket to leave Costa Rica. We went in a little hut and gave a man our passports and the $10 fee for the ticket. He spent five minutes saying things to us in Spanish about $7 and Liberia, another Costa Rican city which we hadn't visited and had no plans of visiting. We were both very confused and worried he was trying to sell us tickets to Liberia which was in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. We eventually realized that all he was trying to tell us was that we could also get this ticket in Liberia for $7, which was a pretty useless piece of trivia considering it would have cost more than $3 to travel to Liberia for this insignificant discount. After finally understanding what the man was trying to tell us, he told us to leave and said "not yet" when we asked for our passports back. We waited just outside the ticket booth, not sure what was happening and feeling very uneasy about the thought that a man we didn't know had our passports and we didn't know what he was doing with them. A few minutes later, they returned or passports with the border tickets in them, alleviating our worries.
 |
| Welcome to Nicaragua! |
 |
| The best way to get around Nicaragua |
We originally planned to split a cab to San Juan del Sur with four other backpackers we had met on the bus, but all of the cabs only had space for four so Hugh and I said the others could go and we would look for two other people to split a second cab with. Before we could find anyone else headed in the same direction as us, we were approached by a local man. He advised us to take the bus which would only cost $2 instead of at least $10 each for the cab. He even shower us a map to show us where we could transfer and didn't ask for money.
We found the bus and got inside. I paid $1 to board. Hugh only had a $20 bill and they didn't have changed so they just shoved him on before he even had a chance to pay! We got on the bus - an old school bus which has been repainted red and green - and it was packed with people. There didn't appear to be seats available so we stood. Once the ride started, the man who had let us on to the bus came around and got people to move over on their seats to make room. I was sitting next to a local Nicaraguan woman. When I sat down, she tapped me on the shoulder, pointed at me, pointed at herself, and then made a kissing gesture. I was shocked at how forward she was! I hadn't even said "¡Hola!" to her! I was not interested on kissing some creepy Nicaraguan woman I knew nothing about so I shook my head. She persisted. She made the same sequence of gestures probably 10 more times seemingly unaware that I was very uncomfortable with the whole situation. She eventually gave up and decided to "sleep". As she pretended to sleep, she nudged towards me and tried to snuggle up against me. I shuffled over away from her. She followed. I kept moving and she kept following until I had only an inch of seat left. I finally decided that I would rather stand than deal with this woman, so I grabbed my bag and stood up. The local guys in the seats in front of and behind me were laughing hysterically at me but one of them moved over too make from me. Thankfully he didn't ask to kiss me!
The creepy woman was not the only strange event I witnessed on that bus. For the majority of the ride, a well-dressed, extremely loud Nicaraguan man was shooting at the front of the bus. It was as if he were an announcer in some TV commercially. Except this TV commercial was performed live on a bus and lasted 20 minutes. 20 minutes later he pulled out a box of pills and started selling them. To my surprise, almost everybody on the bus bought some of these pills! After the ride, Hugh, who is much better at understanding spoken Spanish than I am, explained to me what the man had been saying. He claimed to have been sent from god with these pills. He claimed these pills could cure anything from high blood pressure to pancreatitis. He even claimed that he had been shot in the knee and was completely healed after the taking the pills! The pills definitely weren't from god though - the box just said "garlic pills".
We are planning to do this trip on friday. At what time the bus eventually left El Tanque?
ReplyDelete