Journal

Tuesday, 4 March, 2003

Binocular Island

Today we head for the island of Ometepe in lake Nicaragua.

We intended to catch a 6 o’clock bus that would take us all the way to the town of Rivas, Nicaragua, but we slept too late and ended up taking the 7 o’clock bus that just goes to the border.  Alaine gave me a scare when she got off the bus at the terminal to get something to eat.  7 o’clock came and she wasn’t back on the bus.  Then she appeared at my window and I said, “What are you doing?  Get on the bus!” She said they wouldn’t let her on yet because they were collecting the tickets of the people who had already boarded.

We reached the border a little before noon.  We wandered around aimlessly for a while and then asked some other touristy-looking people if they knew what to do.  We bought our paper stamps for ¢200 (about 50¢ U.S.) and got in line to get our exit rubber stamps.  When the guy saw that we had been in Costa Rica for more than 90 days, we showed him our other documents and he said we had do go and buy a visa because we are not considered tourists anymore.  It took us a while to figure out that you get them at the same place we bought our other stamps, but you need two stamps and they cost $35.  From there we headed for the actual border.  We had our passports checked twice while walking over.  A lot of trucks were going through and there is no place for pedestrians so we just had to walk alongside the trucks.  We found the line to get our passports stamped on the Nicaragua side.  I waited in line while Alaine went to the bank to change money; 14.7 córdobas equals 1 dollar.  We went to the duty free shop (There isn’t one on the Costa Rica side) and bought a bottle of Flor de Caña rum and also a bunch of little airplane size bottles of Flor de Caña in different flavors that were 60¢ each.  We asked about buses to Rivas and they said “outside.” This was the first I realized that we were inside of a walled compound.  We found the exit and got our passports checked once more as we went out.  It was getting really hot and not a tree in sight.  We wanted to have a cold beer but decided to find out the bus schedule first.  There was one leaving in five minutes, at 1:20.  We asked the conductor where we could get a beer and he walked us over to a little store by the bus stop.  We got two Toña beers for 12 córdobas each and I gave the guy 5 for walking us over there.  The beer wasn’t very cold but it was pretty good, a lot better than Panamanian beer!

We reached Rivas and from there took a taxi to San Jorge where boats leave for the island of Ometepe.  We went to the counter and bought tickets for the 4 o’clock ferry and then went and got a late lunch in a nearby restaurant.  This was our first experience with Nicaraguan food and I have to say that it is even blander than Tico food.  Alaine had chicken and I had “meat”, which normally means beef in Costa Rica but I think this was pork; both were chewy.  They were served with coleslaw, beans, plain white rice, and fried green plantain that was rock hard.  As we were getting ready to leave at 3 o’clock someone said the boat was leaving right then.  We thought it was at 4, but it didn’t say anything on our tickets so we went to check it out.  Sure enough there was a boat with a lot of people on it and it was going to Ometepe.  We got on and then waited until about 3:30 before it departed.  Once we were underway they turned on a TV and we got to watch really bad soap operas for the next hour.  As we neared the island someone was going around collecting money.  When he came around to us I gave him our tickets and he said that they don’t sell tickets for this boat.  We had tickets for the ferry which actually was, he said, at 4:30.  He said we could talk to the ferry company when we got to Ometepe and they would probably work something out.  We paid him 15 córdobas.

When we got there we talked to a woman at the ticket office and she said she couldn’t give us our money back but we could use our tickets for the return or we could get a refund back on the mainland.  We went into a little office that said “Free Tourist Information” that was near the dock.  no-one was there, just a table with brochures for hotels.  Then a man came in and he talked to us about hotel and showed us some of the brochures.  He left but there was a younger guy there too by then.  I asked him where is the nicest beach and he got out a map and showed us.  He recommended a hotel there called Finca Vanecia, about 40 minutes by bus and then a walk of 250 meters.  It sounded good to us, and he said the bus would leave at 5:30 so we of course used the intervening time to have a beer, Victoria brand this time.  While we were sipping our beer and looking out at the lake the young guy from the tourist information office, Johann, came up to us and started talking.  He told us about how great Somoza was and how bad Daniel Ortega was.  When Johann was a kid there were police everywhere and the people had to live on a ration of 1 1/2 pounds of rice per person per week, a little sugar and oil, all of them very poor quality.  They would draft kids for the army when they were young enough that they should still be in school.  I’m sure I missed a lot of the details because of my poor Spanish.  I need to read up on the history of Nicaragua.

The bus was hot.  We sat in front and my feet must have been right over the exhaust pipe.  There seems to be a custom in Nicaragua that all buses have to back up at some point near the beginning of a journey.  This happened to us on several buses.  We made our way very slowly through the narrow streets of Moyogalpa, the port town.  The map of the island is somewhat of an icon, and we saw it painted on the side of several buildings as we passed through.  It is made up of two volcanoes with a land bridge in between.  The shape is something like a pair of binoculars viewed from the front.

Once outside the town the roads changed from hexagonal bricks to grey volcanic sand that made a lot of dust, this being the dry season.  We passed through several towns and were able to identify some of them on the little map that Johann had given us.  We knew we were close and we reminded the conductor to let us know when we reached our stop.  We saw the sign for our hotel as the bus passed by, but he didn’t say anything, so we had to walk back a bit to the turnoff.  The walk seemed more like 400 meters than 250, but we finally dragged in there around 7.  The proprietress showed us a room for $10 and a little cabin for $15.  We chose the cabin.  We showered, ate another bland meal in then hit the sack.

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