I got the travel bug again... so I went to Nicaragua

So last week was Semana Santa or Holy Week. Like all the universities in the US we got the entire week off as our "Spring Break" and it was definitely a welcomed break. Classes have been getting me down lately, especially my Friday night Consecutive Interpreting class. By 7 pm I am ready to walk out of the class, walk out of the program, pack up my life and move back home to California. I don't like interpreting. I like translating. I can take my time to find the perfect work or the perfect way to say a sentence in the other language. My Saturday classes aren't that great either. Of my four classes this semester I DESPISE two and TOLERATE the other two. Its just a bad semester overall it seems. So come spring break and I was ready to forget about the university for as long as possible...so my roommate and I headed to Nicaragua.

I can't say I had ever been really interested in traveling to Nicaragua. It wasn't ever on my life of "places to see before I die" but, as I found out in 2007 I have to have a visa to travel to Panama and that visa takes way too much time to get and costs way to much money. Nicaragua, on the other hand, is open to pretty much anyone and me with my South African passport could basically walk right in for 8 US dollars...which ironically turned out to be about the most expensive part of the trip. Of course no one had to tie me up and throw me in the back of the bus either to make me visit Nicaragua. Traveling is in my bones and after about a year of being no where but familiar places, I was dying to experience "new" again, unfamiliar places, unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar cultures. So Tuesday night I was packed and headed out the door with Kristina at around 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning. We got to Nicaragua about 11 hours later with no problems at the border (except maybe the ridiculous amount of people). The trip by bus was long and tiring, but just finally being in a new place gave me energy. We stayed the first night in Managua, the capital, and the next day we took a tour of the "sites-to-see" which didn't turn out to be much. There are basically two parts to Managua: old Managua and new Managua. Old Managua was pretty much destroyed by an earthquake 30 years ago and hasn't ever been rebuilt. New Managua is, well, new and totally Americanized.

As we were site-seeing I was immediately struck by the amount of begging children on the streets: offering to watch parked cars for a small fee, selling flowers and hearts made out of some kind of leaf, or just simply begging for a dollar or even a single córdoba (around 5 cents). To them there was no shame in doing it, and being children I would even venture to say they make a good living out of it, especially when targeting the gringos (Americans).

After Managua, our tour guide took us to Masaya, location of the Masaya Volcano. I guess the glamour of seeing a Volcano dies after the first experience because it really wasn't that exciting and being around the smell of sulfur for even 5 minutes was about enough to kill me. They say the volcano is active though, although it doesn't spew out fire and lava, rather just sulfur smelling steam. After the volcano we drove to a small tranquil town that overlooked the Laguna de Apoyo. Besides having crystal clear blue water, there wasn't much to see, except the beauty of the landscape from up high looking down. Its obviously a spot couples go visit and there were scores of local music groups offering to play a few pieces of Nicaraguan music in exchange for a "donation." We then had lunch at a local restaurant and then made our way to Granada by public transportation, which, as always, was a journey in itself. Our tour guide dropped us off at the "correct" bus stop but after a while of waiting we grew a little uncertain and asked a woman at the stop if we had the right one. Of course, we didn't and she sent us across the round-about to another stop. Right away I asked another lady there if this was the right one, which it was, but as [my] luck would have it, that day there weren't any buses passing through that stop to Granada. She said we would have to take a bus back to Masaya (right were we were to begin with) and from there catch another bus to Granada. Again, she sent us across the round-about. There we waited a good 20 minutes before a bus pulled up, only to be told that although that bus went in the right direction, it detoured off before getting where we needed to be. I could only laugh, really. Not wanting to wait any longer we got on the bus and walked the extra half a kilometer to get where we needed to be. Fortunately, as soon as we arrived the bus for Granada pulled up and 30 minutes later we were in Granada ready to begin our search for a place to stay (every place I had called before going either didn't take reservations or were booked because of Semana Santa). On our third try we got a room. I'm not the hostal type, but when faced with the possibility of not actually finding a place, I sort of sucked it up for two nights and stayed in a private room at the hostel.

I was immediately taken aback by the beauty of Granada, a colonial town. In the main square all the buildings have been recently painted, all in different, bright colours. The main street was paved in coblestone and alive with restaurants, coffee shops, bars, music, and street vendors selling jewelry, ceramics, paintings etc. On Friday we rented bikes and rode down to Lake Nicaragua (so big its practically a sea). Afterwards we walked around the city, got massages, ate local foods, enjoyed the music and street performers throwing fire or breakdancing. I fell in love wiht Granada, there is simply no other way to say it. Being there made me wonder if I've been wasting my time here in Costa Rica, and my money, when I could be using it to travel around central and south America, meeting new people and learning new cultures. There is always so much more to see than the small world that we surround ourselves by.

I was honestly sad to have to leave Nicaragua. I would have loved to stay an extra day to two, gone to the beach and taken a boat tour around the islands in the lake. Fortunately, as cheap as it is, there is always the possibility of going back for even less than it would cost to take a weekend trip to the beach in Costa Rica. A typical meal cost us only $4, and it wasn't a hamburger and fries, but meat, plantains, rice and salad. Hotel rooms cost as little as $20 a person, a frozen cappuccino $1.50 and a back and shoulders masage only $10. Hopefully before I leave here I will be able to make the trip back for another weekend. I now know some Nicaraguans who are already insisting I go back and they'll show me the "real" Nicaragua.

Of course, as the saying goes, all good things have to come to an end, and classes started up again with full force. I had two midterms and two presentations the weekend I got back, with no end in sight really...until the end of June.