Nicaragua – Where the streets have no name

Learning of trip #147: the worst hangovers are cured with fried chicken. The long-day journey to León, Nicaragua, wasn’t looking that good after the great farewell party in Utila, just a couple of hours sleep and a ride on the ferry to La Ceiba; but the hearty breakfast worked marvels as we hit the roads of Honduras for 16hrs in a shuttle bus.

Nicaragua is the biggest but also poorest country in Central America. Apart from the capital, Managua, the country is also one of the safest to travel and we found their people really welcoming and honest.

Check out the man-shaped columns of the Insigne y Real Basílica Catedral de la Asunción de la Bienaventurada Virgen María! This is the biggest cathedral in Central America… and one with the longest names too!

Rubén Darío is their most relevant personality, a poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as Modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century. It was great to read fragments of his poems scattered across towns and their monuments. Sandino is another national hero, as he was the revolutionary leader against the US military occupancy.

Once in the beautiful colonial town of León, we realised that most of the streets in Nicaragua have no names (although U2 didn’t write their song because of this). Finding places proved tricky as addresses are just based on a landmark and then they tell you to go a number of blocks from there in a cardinal direction. Sounds simple… as long as you know where your North is!

Anyway, we couldn’t have picked a better day to get to León (15th August) as we were welcomed with La Gritería, which are the Fiestas de Asunción de María!

Marching band at the main square

The local people believe that the Virgin was able to stop a volcanic eruption by praying louder than the roars from the volcano. Since then, they take images and statues of the Virgin to their windows and doors, from where they give lollies and other goodies to kids… and not-so kids.

In order to get your sweets you have to respond to the question “¿Quién trae tanta alegría?” (who brings so much joy?) with the name of the Virgin “La Asunción de María!“. It’s a beautiful tradition, with fireworks, correfocs (people running with firework boxes on), dancing giants, capgrossos (people dancing with giant head masks), processions… everyone was in a good mood.

Definitely similar to the catalan correfocs, but on a small scale

We used León as a base for a couple of excursions. The first one to the close Pacific Coast, at the dark-sand Beach of Las Peñitas, a great spot for surfers.

Playa de las Peñitas on the Pacific Coast

The second excursion involved a long hike and camping overnight. We went to the Telica volcano with a group of 8 organised by Quetzaltrekkers, a not-for-profit organisation that donates their proceeds to improve the lives of disadvantaged kids. The hike started in San Jacinto, a little town with “hervidores” (boiling mud pits) that stunk of sulfur. Just out of the town we crossed some steam tubes connected to a local thermoelectric plant, 20% of Nicaragua’s electricity is powered by their volcanoes!

 

Then 4 hours, 2L of water and some live termite snacks later we were setting our tents on the secondary crater of Volcán Telica, a couple of hundred meters below the active crater.

Tasty termites

The view from our campsite

We checked out the active crater which sounded like a roaring 747 permanently coming in to land and then hiked a bit further to a batcave for sunset. Once in darkness we went back in search of some red hot lava…the smoke coming out of the cauldron made it quite difficult to see, although we did manage to catch a few glimpses (see the red dots in the pics?).

We returned before sunrise in the hope that some of the sulphur smoke would have subsided, but no luck, although the views at sunrise were quite amazing as we could trace the volcanic range all the way to El Salvador.

From León we headed to Granada, another pretty colonial town with lots of Spanish influence as you can tell from the names.

Men chatting and having a “Raspado” (syrup over a snow cone)

After ticking the boxes of more churches and nice streets we took a small bus to the Pueblos Blancos, a series of little towns well known for their artisans and their proximity to the stunning Laguna de Apoyo.

Interesting artisan crafts

Laguna de Apoyo from Catarina lookout

We completed the loop back to Granada after visiting and having lunch at the Masaya markets. We love eating at the local markets! Not only are they inexpensive (good meals for $50cts), but they cook traditional food with fresh ingredients and they let you try it first!

Awesome market food in Nicaragua!

However, we treat ourselves every now and then… later that night we ventured out to a TripAdvisor recommended restaurant for a Guapote dinner, much to Sal’s disappointment it was a big ugly fish to share between two. I enjoyed it a lot.

La Isla de Ometepe was our last stop in the country, the biggest island in the world in a fresh water lake, Lake Nicaragua.

The kind-of-floating ferry that took us to Ometepe

The island is also topped with 2 distinctive volcanoes (Concepción and Maderas), there’s plenty of life and jaw dropping scenery and, despite being a tourist destination, it remains relatively genuine.

Concepción on the left, Maderas on the right.

Our first stop was Santo Domingo, for the best of the island’s beaches. It lies right in the middle of the island where the land strip is narrow and you can see both volcanoes.

Santo Domingo beach and views of Maderas

From here we also visited the natural pools Ojo de Agua, which according to legend just one dip in its waters and rejuvenates 20 years.

Ojo de Agua

We spent the last 2 nights on the island in Mérida, a little town lost in the dirt road where we stayed in a Hacienda, witnessed great sunsets, tried the best Nacatamales and home-made coconut icecream and hiked to the waterfalls of San Ramón.

Nacatamal – it may not be the most appetising meal, but it tasted pretty amazing!

While the waterfalls were not really worth the 3hr walk, we spotted howler monkeys and exchanged some howls with them :)

It was precisely in the Hacienda in Mérida where we randomly picked a photography book of Costa Rica which made us change our plans. After seeing the pictures in the book, we decided to pack our stuff, skip San Juan del Sur, a busy surfer’s paradise, in order to arrive to Ostional (Costa Rica) right in time for the New Moon, the best time to witness the “arribadas” or Olive Ridley turtles arriving enmasse to lay their eggs.

Beautiful sunsets from Mérida

We’ll let you know how it went in our next post!

Hugs for everyone!

El Salvador I – Ruta de los Flores

El Salvador was another unexpected addition to our itinerary until we heard some glowing reports from other travellers and friends (thanks Janis & Florian! – www.blog.michellod.de). It’s the country home to the infamous gangs “Las Maras” and like in Guatemala, the first half of the newspaper seems to be full of reports about recent murders and gun fights etc which had us a little worried. However, true to what we heard from other travellers, it really is a beautiful place and more than anywhere we’ve been so far the people were welcoming, friendly and would go out of their way to help us.

Our first destination in El Salvador was La Ruta de Los Flores (the Flower Route) and in particular a little town called, Juayúa, which is famous for its weekend food fairs. The central square transforms every weekend with food and drinks stalls, a throng of people and entertainment in the form of a Latino singer.

Parque Central Juayúa

Snowcone machines Central American style!

We sampled a variety of interesting local cuisine including grilled frog, beef fajitas, nuegados (fried cassava in syrup), horchata that tasted like peanuts and chicha, a local alcoholic drink made of fermented rice and fruits.

Grilled frog anyone?? It was surprisingly good, and tasted kind of like rabbit.

Xavi made some local friends at a bar and after chatting with them for a while about local traditions, wanted to shout them a round of the local shot (chaparrón, made of fermented corn). The bar had run out and, imagine how nice they are, one of them went to his house in the rain just to get his bottle for us to try!

The following day we headed out to the local waterfalls for a sort of abseiling / swimming trip. As we walked trough coffee plantations, the guide, Carlos, explained details of work on the coffee fincas, $4/100Lb for collecting (2 sacks max per day) and $56 in 2-3 weeks for pruning the wind blocking trees – tough and dangerous work!! He also encouraged us to try guamita (or paterna) beans from the tree, a perfect snack for the road.

Learning about the coffee plantation work

Guamita pods

The best part was the waterfall at the end, Los Chorros de la Calera, where we had a swim and then also walked/swam through some tunnels that connected through the rocks to another waterfall. Inside it was pitch black, with little room to breath and a slight current in the water pushing us to the other side (you wouldn’t want to be claustrophobic!).

No waterfalls can be left unconquered!!

Here we were also introduced to the El Salvadorean specialty, pupusas, which are a corn tortilla pocket filled with all sorts of interesting fillings although the basic ones are usually pork crackling and cheese or beans. We made a point of trying as many places as possible and our final verdict for the tastiest went with Doña Cony’s! (el nom en català no sona tan recomanable!), Mrs Cony even allowed us to get our hands dirty and prepare a couple of pupusas ourselves.

The next stop on the Ruta de Los Flores was Concepción de Ataco, a quiet little town with very colourful wall murals. The murals all have a social content, promoting the values and culture of the town, children’s rights, environmental conservation, gender equity etc.

A sight we’ve seen in many small Central American towns…drunks passed out on the footpath in the middle of the day (usually pay day)…it’s a shame alcohol is so cheap

Our last stop on la Ruta de Los Flores was Tacuba to visit El Parque Nacional el Impossible (The Impossible National Park) named due to the treacherous nature of crossing it (many donkeys and villagers fell to their deaths in a gorge!). However luckily for us, the government made the impossible possible by building some roads to make it accessible.

We ventured into the national park on a tour to Las Siete Cascadas, starting at a point about 40mins by 4WD from Tacuba. To get to the river, we walked along very thin trails cut by machete, passing armadillo holes and trees with the guam seed pods (or guamita). Once at the first jump point, the guide tossed a rock into the water to show us where to jump and then the fun began. One was particularly scary because he told us to jump out and then bend the knees upon entering the water because it wasn’t so deep (loving the safety standards of Central America!!)! He then walked down the edge of the slope and didn’t jump…

We stopped for lunch in a beautiful spot at the top of the highest jump. Some farmers still have coffee and corn fields in the National Park, the government tried to buy it back to extend the park but some didn’t accept so they are allowed to stay on the condition they don’t cut back too many trees (or more than necessary) – still they look like big bare scars on the side of a beautiful green mountain! It’s a very steep & dangerous place to be sowing corn but apparently it delivers the best corn due to the fertility of the soil.

We continued our quest for the best pupusas here too and while they didn’t beat Doña Cony’s, we did get entertainment from next door, an evangelical church with loud karaoke style bad singing into microphones!! We also made an excellent discovery at the local bakery…Budin!! Essentially a bread and butter pudding – it was amazing!! So good, it got our return business the next day to stock up for the bus ride to Santa Ana!!

It’s been a week since the last volcano climb, so time for another one!

Hope all is well with everyone, sending big hugs your way!