Nicaragua Day 1 - Trip across the border

(Costa Rica Day 55)

5:00 am.

Why to adventures always have to start so bloody early in the morning.

As it was Mari and I were lucky that the bus stopped in San Ramon on the way to Nicaragua, otherwise we would have had to get up 2 hours earlier and find our way to San Jose for a 6:00 am departure. Poor Hiro wasn’t as lucky, he lives in Cartago, on the other side of San Jose, and so had a much earlier start.

Our first leap of faith came when Mari and I realized that we had to put are larger backpacks in the compartment under the bus, I mean I had realized that would likely happen, but am for some reason always reluctant to do so, I always feel like I might not see it again.

Mari looked at me as if she was worried about the same. Our fears seemed unfounded though, since everything was handled professionally and we got stubs for our luggage.

The bus ride to the border went by fairly smoothly and despite being 4 hours long felt shorter. I spent the first couple hours watching a Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson movie, sort of ones journey through the dying process. It was actually a pretty good movie and not morbid the way these movies can often be, so it passed the time well. The sound was low but I could catch what I missed in the Spanish subtitles....had more trouble with the next movie which was in Spanish, with no subtitles and the sound not much higher than before.

We reached the border at about 11 am and discovered for the first time that Nicaragua was going to be a lot warmer than the Costa Rican mountains. And that we had a very long line to go through in order to get the little stamp in our passports that says we have officially left Costa Rica.

One thing I have learned in my time being here, is that I have a hard time blocking out conversations that others around me are having in English. Mari made fun of me for it this entire trip. In the line there was a group made up of a couple from the United States and another from somewhere in Europe (they had European Union passports, couldn’t quite sort out the country). It made me shake my head listening to them, because the conversation and opinions the two travellers from the U.S. were relating to the other couple was so stereotypical of what people outside the U.S. think of Americans. I was proud of myself though I managed not to lecture them on their views of homelessness, a good thing since, well, I was essentially eavesdropping.


Since we had a lot of time to kill at the border while we waited in the stifling heat to see if the bus people would really get out passport entry stamps or simply run away with our main travel documents we got to run our luggage through a check point to see if it would be searched. They actually have a very interesting system, where they check your ID and your customs card and they you are told to push a button, if it turns green you are good to go, if red, you have to take your luggage inside a room to be searched. It is amazing how heart stopping the 3 seconds it takes the light to decide can be. Poor Hiro got the red light.

Afterwards we sat down in front of the bus to wait for our passports to be processed, which was apparently the signal for all the child vendors in the area to begin their attack. Their tactics were cunning, and I am amazed that we got away with Hiro only buying a packet of gum. It is amazing how quickly they figured out who was the weakest link.

After 2 hours, me reluctantly relinquishing my passport to the bus people so they could get us through the Nicaragua entry side faster, and 20 people hassling us (Hiro mostly) to buy peanuts, gum or figures made of grass, we were through the boarder and cruising towards Granada.

We arrived at our hotel with no more delays and barely glanced around out beautiful temporary home on our way out the door again to withdraw money and eat. Other than a bag of chips, none of us had had anything since breakfast, and it was 4:30 pm.

For the record, apparently if you want to change money at the bank, bring along your passport, don’t leave it in the safe at the hotel. And also just because a bank has an atm does not mean it is functioning, or that you can take out money even if it says you can. In such situations as these, you go to the banks competition.

If ever in Nicaragua I recommend going to the bank BAC, it actually accepts all cards.

So we had money, but few options as to where to exchange it for food. We went around walked down the main street where the lady at the front desk of our hotel had told us there would be a place to eat, but most places were not open for dinner until 6:00 pm and it was only 5:20 at that point. Finally we found another hotel that had a restaurant as well and happily went in to eat.

The one plus side to our wandering around town was that we came across a woman’s organization in Granada, that is involved in a lot of community and education work.