After two crazy days, I´m in Nicaragua

July 1st-July 3rd, 2006
La Union, Usulutan El Salvador
Isla Mianguera, Golfo de Fonseca El Salvador
Leon, Leon Granada

Well it´s been two crazy days since I last updated my blog... made even crazier I think by the madness of midsummer heat that I´ve been battling on the Pacific coasts of El Salvador and Nicaragua. My guidebook (and the other´s I´ve seen) are all really scant on El Salvador, and lack any useful information on getting to Nicaragua. However, looking at the map I saw two options: The Gulf of Fonseca is shared on three sides by El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicarauga to the West, North, and East, respectively. So you can bus the trip through Honduras, crossing two borders... or you can try to get a ferry straight across the gulf, about a 3 hour ride- the reason why I was in La Union, the furthest city east in El Salvador. I dropped this map in here so that you can visualize it. Pay attention to the Gulf of Fonseca in the top left side. You can see La Union, El Salvador, and Potosi, Nicaragua, between which there is "supposed" to be some sort of boat service. My guide says ask the guys at the Immigration Office in La Union...

So I go to immigration and the guy knows nothing. It´s sweltering in La Union so I ask him if I can leave my big backpack there while I find a hotel. No prob he says, and I find a place without AC that´s very basic, yet still pretty expensive by my trip standards. When I ask around town people tell me that there´s no ferry straight to Nicaragua, but they claim it´s an easy trip if I first take a ferry to the island smack in the middle of the gulf, Isla Mianguera. I decide it might be fun, even if it costs me an extra day to get where I´m going, what could be wrong with laying over on a little island in the gulf? So I spend Saturday night in La Union, and I leave Sunday morning at 10am for Mianguera, which I arrive at around noon.

In Mianguera I´m still in El Salvador but I find out that I´m now closer to the Nicaraguan mainland than Salvadorean. Good news. I ask around and find out that there´s only one dude in town who goes to Nica, Sr. Tomás Gonzales. I pay a kid a quarter to take me to him, and Sr. Gonzales tells me that he goes to Nica whenever he has a boatful, and that he´s not planning on going until Friday, a full 5 days wait. He tells me I can go express, but I have to pay him $150 US... totally out of the question. I should be able to buy a house on Mianguera for that kind of money... and that´s not too much of an exaggeration. So now I´m screwed. I take a room for the night, because it´s the only thing I can do, and decide to think a bit about what I want to do.

If it was hot in La Union, you wouldn´t think so once you had been to Mianguera. MAN it was hot... like 95 degrees, 200% humidity... at night! I couldn´t even take the heat in my room, as I tried to catch a nap with the fan blowing furiously on my almost naked body. So I got out, walked around, bought some water and started chatting with the people. I found out there´s an american guy who owns a different hotel on the island... strange because I heard there is only one hotel but I investigated and I found the man and his place. I knew if anyone could help me, he could... so I put on my "poor sorry med student" face and decided to go see if he had a yacht or anything. His hotel isn´t even finished being built yet, but it´s SICK... like the kind of place built right out on the point of the harbor where rich sailboaters come to dock and stock up supplies and chill on land for a bit. A very cool guy, he offered me some advice on another boat captain on the island and some other things to do- fish, beaches, etc... but it didn´t work out and I decided to get up this morning (Monday), head BACK to La Union, and make the trip by land. The most extraordinary and yet frustrating thing about the whole experience was that I could SEE Nicaragua from where I was standing on the island. In fact, I could swim to Honduras, and see both Nica and El Salvador. If you look at the map again Mianguerra is the fat island right in the middle of the gulf. It was so annoying to watch the sun come up over Nicaragua this morning, while I headed in the opposite direction and then all the way around on land!

Today was a harrowing day. I got on the ferry at 5am, having barely slept last night because of the intense heat. I think the heat may have even liquified my insides because seriously, my GI troubles came back the last couple of days. Who knows though if its the ice, or fruit, or strange food, or traveling... there´s so many variables I can´t even hazard a guess. So I took a boat and three busses to get to the honduran border (should have been two but one broke down), then I hired a bike taxi to get me and my bags through immigration and to Honduras. The best call of the day was paying five bucks for a direct microbus (with 13 other people on it) to Nicaragua. Again I hired a bike taxi to get me through immigration and into Nicaragua. I then needed two more busses to get here to Leon. In its entirety the trip took 12 hours. The worst part was Nica because the roads here are truly piss poor and the trip took FOREVER... and I don´t mean forever by American standards, because that´s every bus trip here... I mean forever by central american standards because look on the map, it shouldn´t have taken me 4.5 hours to get from the border to Leon.

But enough of the whining! Leon is great. I decided to take a nicer room here with AC (for the first night), because honestly, I haven´t felt AC in 6.5 weeks now and it´s truly getting to me... I need just one night´s reprieve of a warm shower, sink to shave my face in, and AC, I really do. The city here is beautiful- a lot like Antigua with colonial architecture and amazing churches. I have two daytrips on my agenda here which I think should be really cool. The first is a 4 hour trip to go "volcanoboarding" which is basically like snowboarding, except you do it down the slope of an active volcano. I hear it´s amazing, we´ll see. The second is to go tour the Flor de Caña factory. I can´t remember if I´ve raved yet about FdC, but it´s the best rum I´ve ever drank... hands down... period. It is SO good and they make it about 20km from Leon here in Nicaragua. I hope to pick up a Gallon jug of 21 year aged rum, if it´s not too expensive. I understand you can get it aged up to 100 years. It truly is the pride of Nicaragua.

So the plan is to be here a couple of days before bypassing Managua and headed southeast to Granada. I´m going to snap some photos tomorrow and try to post back here soon.

Much love from Nicaragua,

Ben