Nicaragua – Finca Time

December 23-31, 2017

Managua

I spent the day getting a few groceries – was quite strange to be in a huge supermarket for the first time in a while – as the place we were going, Ometepe, was an island without much in the way of reasonably priced snacks. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in our private room (gasp!) at the Managua Backpackers Inn, while I waited for Sarah to arrive that night. I ventured out for dinner to a ceviche restaurant, which is a Nicaraguan specialty, and was not disappointed! It was super tasty and relatively cheap, and I got to use a credit card for the first time in ages.

The next few weeks would be a bit of a whirlwind. Sarah would be visiting for 3 weeks, and then I’d be spending an additional week in Chile with Sarah’s sister Adina, and our friend Darcy. Contrary to my previous couple months of travel, this was already entirely planned out including hostels, bus and flight tickets, and a solid idea of what we were doing in each place. We planned this mostly while I was at Hridaya, which was a bit stressful, but now that it was here, I was excited to not have to think about where we’d be staying each night for the next month. Plus, our itinerary included some of the most incredible / beautiful places on the planet, so I was pretty stoked!

Sarah finally arrived around 2am and it was surreal and at the same time so normal to see her. I was overjoyed, but also felt still that we had maintained our connection and strength, and that there wasn’t a whole lot to “catch up on”. She gave me the many “gifts” I had asked her to get for me from Amazon – hiking poles, travel padlock, wax earplugs (a total game-changer), my SCUBA diving watch, and a new pair of sunglasses. Extra special was the surprise Oreos that she brought for me – the ones outside of the U.S. just don’t taste the same.

Granada

We decided to spend a day in Granada before making the trip to the twin-volcano island of Ometepe. Granada is the main colonial city of Nicaragua, and felt pretty similar to what I’d seen in other places, to be quite honest. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful and charming, though. We got ourselves on a colectivo around lunchtime after a lazy morning and arrived about an hour later in the center of Granada. We made our way to our accommodation, Hostal El Momento, and got situated walking around the town. We stopped in a definitely-bougie cafe with lots of tourists and treated ourselves to a really tasty mediterranean sandwich lunch. I had to start getting used to treating myself a bit, and spending a bit more while I’m with Sarah (aka $7 for lunch instead of $3). Not difficult to do, but a change in mindset for sure.

We walked around the town center a bit as the sun was setting and all the families were out buying last-minute items for Christmas. There was at least one Santa sighting, and a couple of parties going on that we peeked into. Overall, a very festive atmosphere and we enjoyed some of our favorite snack (salted plantain chips) while making our way to the park in the city center. We sat down at a stall for some quesillo, a typical Nicaraguan street food, which is basically like a quesadilla without any veggies, and with copious (optional) sour cream. Then, Sarah watched me have some ice cream, and we called it a night and watched a movie at the hostel.

Road To Ometepe

Ometepe is a large, hourglass-shaped island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the country’s largest lake. It is formed by two volcanoes, Maderas and Concepcion, and connected by an isthmus in the middle. I had heard about it from a handful of friends and travelers along the way as a really fun, relaxed, and beautiful place to stay. The other and more beach-y tourist destination is on the western (Pacific) coast called San Juan del Sur, and is known mostly as a party and surf town. More on that later.

We only had a week in Nicaragua in total before flying to Chile, so we decided to try to stay put longer in one place, rather than try to rush around to see a lot and end up spending a good deal of time in transit. That said, the journey from Granada to our hostel in Ometepe would be long, if not complex. Supposedly we’d bus from Granada to Rivas (another main town), then walk or take a taxi to San Jorge to then catch a ferry to Ometepe, and finally a bus or taxi to the hostel.

We started by trying to find the place where the buses to Rivas would be leaving from. Of course, since it was Christmas, all of the “normal” bus schedules were out the window. We got to the area where the yellow school buses were lined up and found one that would be leaving soon that would get us somewhere close-ish to Rivas. It was already about 11, and we knew that we needed to get the last boat to Ometepe around 3. We stowed our bags on the roof and were the only ones along with a large Indian / Indian-American family on vacation. I couldn’t help but be amazed that they were willing to take their young kids with them on the school bus for this convoluted trip to the island.

We left without ceremony and about an hour later were informed that it was the right place for us to get off the bus and to wait for another going in the direction of Rivas that would be coming from Managua. We got off and waited in the heat for a little while, with the occasional taxi pulling up telling us that all the buses were canceled and we’d have to take a taxi – a classic sales tactic. We decided to team up with the Indian family and split in two taxis to take us directly to San Jorge, where the ferries would leave for Ometepe, instead of waiting for the bus to Rivas and then another to San Jorge. It cost us 400 C ($13) to fill the taxi with us, one of the Indian adults and one of the kids who ended up napping most of the time. We chatted a lot with him and the driver for the hour or so to San Jorge. When I asked the driver his plans for Christmas, he said he’d be seeing his mom soon, and his family later. What he meant though, and later asked permission explicitly, was that he’d be pulling off to the side of the highway quickly where his mom would deliver his Christmas Eve lunch leftovers boxed up and ready to eat. A very cute and hilarious moment.

We got our tickets for the ferry and had a few minutes to chow down a quesillo “lunch” before boarding. We sat on the top level, outdoors, to enjoy the afternoon sun and some warmth for the next hour after a cloudy few days in Managua and Granada. The fun part on this trip was the people watching. Lots of backpackers were on top with us, and we caught a glimpse of the remnants of the San Juan del Sur contingent coming off major hangovers from the “Sunday Funday” hostel pub crawl ritual that goes on there every week. No doubt that the Christmas Eve version was lit. We marveled at the sad state of people eating crackers with peanut butter (sans spoon), chain-smoking cigarettes, and generally looking pretty bad.

Getting to our hostel / finca was a fun version of negotiating for a taxi to take us the hour around the island. We ended up with another American guy who didn’t know Spanish and got charged more than us. The driver kindly asked us to not share the price we had gotten ($10 / person, vs. the $20 he was paying). It was a fun moment, and many more like it, where Sarah (and me to a point) could understand and converse seamlessly with people to get less touristic rates and generally more helpful information.

From the port, and in most of the north part of the island (above the isthmus), the roads are in decent shape and we really moved at a decent clip. Then, the roads started to deteriorate into dirt paths with massive potholes. We were in a 20+ year-old sedan, and I was amazed at how well it ran considering that it bottomed out every couple of minutes in a hole. We did manage to see the sunset as we were ringing the outside of the island and it was magnificent. The driver even pulled over to remark at how good it was.

Finca Mystica

By 6:30 we made it to Finca Mystica, a beautiful property of clay / adobe yurts and permaculture run by two Americans who had just returned from Managua that day with their newborn baby. We stayed in a 6-bed shared yurt ($21 per bed), but all of the beds were matrimonial sized (slightly larger than a double). Thankfully, there was only one other guy staying there that night, who we happened to befriend at dinner.

Javier was a Spanish guy about our age who had been teaching English in Dallas public schools for the past two years on a government program from Spain. We enjoyed the veggie lasagna and delicious homemade herbed bread. We’d had a long day, so we decided to treat ourselves to a Christmas dessert of warm chocolate chip cookies with chocolate ice cream. We were pretty happy about that.

The next day we had a full day of relaxation on the property full of reading, yoga in the gazebo where they were drying jamaica (hibiscus) leaves for their juice, hammock time, lunch, and a leisurely walk down out of the property along the “beach”. The finca was situated about a kilometer back from the main road, so even getting down was a bit of effort, so we only made it down in the afternoon. The beach wasn’t what we had hoped for, but it was still stunning to see and to take a walk alongside before heading back for dinner.

That day, Javier and many others staying at the Finca took a day hike up to the top of Volcan Maderas. They left around 8, and when they got back around 6, everyone was completely soaked and muddy. The weather up the volcanos is pretty wet, and after hiking a volcano the prior week, I knew how even when it’s dry it can be treacherous. We were glad we skipped that one, as they said it was even too cloudy to see much from the top.

We wanted to do some hiking at least, so the following day we went with Javier for a 3-4 hour hike up to the Cascada San Ramon (waterfall) in a nature reserve nearby. The hike was not too difficult, except as we got closer to the waterfall and things got slippery. Otherwise, it was on a road that a lot of people on ATVs and horses would pass us on. We had some great conversation with Javier, and enjoyed a swim in the freezing waterfall (too big for us to go under directly) with a bunch of other people.

Javier had to get back for his ferry, so we let him go ahead and just took our time getting back. The mosquitos were pretty gnarly on the island, which always ravage Sarah, so we made it back quickly to get showered and covered up before they descended after sunset.

Our last day at Finca Mystica we spent lounging in the morning and then took a walk to a hotel that rented kayaks and had an awesome time out on the lake, nobody else in sight, basking in the sun. A cool thing we saw at the hotel was lots of large plastic water / soda bottles that had more plastic wrapping stuffed inside. Apparently these are “eco-bricks” and are being used all over the world to help recycle and also provide strong building materials. This hotel is also a school, which hires a mixture of locals and foreigners to teach.

That afternoon, we waited out some rain and then took a taxi to the other side of the southern part of the island to go to Finca Magdalena, as Mystica didn’t have space for our whole stay. Frustratingly, when we arrived, it was nearly dark again, and the driver told us that he couldn’t take his big 10-person van up the dirt road to drop us directly at the entrance, still another mile or so uphill. We tried to argue it a bit, but he was persistent, so we relented and got out.

We decided we weren’t really psyched about this location and so went to a veggie-friendly cafe for a little snack + wifi to research some other options. The waiter mentioned that they had a friend who might have a room, which we could see after, for about the same price. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and then got taken on this guy’s motorbike (actually, he just took our bags and we walked) to his house. The room was pretty dingy and didn’t have a restaurant on-premise nor wifi, so we decided we’d just suck it up and go to Magdalena.

We started to walk the uphill kilometer to the Finca, but thankfully, about 5 minutes in, a pickup truck passed by us and offered to take us up the rest of the way. We were SO grateful for that because not only was it dark, but the road was very muddy and we had a lot of stuff to be walking that long in the mosquito-filled heat.

Finca Magdalena

This finca was much larger, having its own coffee / cacao plantation and lots of walking trails behind it, as well as a direct trail to the volcano. We again saw a bunch of people who had just arrived back from this hike, full of mud and fatigue. The hostel portion was also much bigger, probably fitting 50 people vs. 20 at Mystica. The rooms were very basic, and everything was a bit dark. There was a family reunion / birthday party happening, which had a lot of music and laughing going on. Sarah joined in for a bit of that while I took some time to read. The food wasn’t nearly as tasty as at Mystica, but they were willing to boil a few eggs for us the night before our return trip to Managua.

The one day we had there we spent mostly lounging as it was quite cloudy, but we did take a walk into the forest behind the finca. A funny moment here was that when we asked the hostel staff how to get back to that trail, and though they gave us this information, they didn’t mention that there’d be a park ranger-esque guy patrolling the entrance. We told him we were staying at Magdalena, but he insisted that we needed a note stating the same. We both laughed when he said this, but we ended up walking the 10 minutes back to the finca, explaining the situation, and getting our proverbial handwritten “hall pass” to go for a little walk. Afterwards, we headed into the nearby town and hung out at the cafe that we’d been to the day prior and enjoyed a really delicious lunch, smoothie and dessert and did some reading / wifi time.

As it was getting dark, we decided to head back to the finca (this time without a pickup to help us) and settled in for the night before our 7:30am ferry back to the mainland. We had a little dinner and finalized some of our plans with Darcy and Adina for our Chile portion and hit the sack.

The journey back to Managua was much simpler, as we were able to pick up a chicken bus directly from the port and back to Managua for only 95 C ($3) and without any stops. This time the bus was incredibly full, and I ended up standing with my head touching the roof for most of the journey, being squished as people got on and off, the ayudante coming through to collect fares, and even a snack vendor.

After we arrived in the bustle of central Managua, we walked along the main road but had trouble finding a place to eat, so decided to go to a nearby nice (air conditioned) movie theater and see Star Wars. Sadly, the afternoon show was sold out, so we stored our bags behind the counter next to the popcorn machine and bought tickets for the evening show. We then did some grocery shopping for snacks / dinner / breakfast and relaxed at a nice cafe nearby the local PwC Accounting building. We both loved the movie, and then hailed a taxi to our hostel right next to the airport. The key benefit for this hostel was that it included an airport transfer (5 minutes away) and had a decent kitchen and private rooms.

Our flight would leave at 7:30 to connect in Panama, so we had to arrive quite early in the morning. Unfortunately, Managua didn’t have any airport lounges we could use (I’m looking at you, Priority Pass!), so hard-boiled eggs were in hand and at the ready. We were taking business class though (my first business class redemption and Sarah’s first time), so things were looking up! It would be a perfect way to end 2017 and begin the next part of my journey in South America!

Photos