Another Nicaraguan Vacation

January 21, 2009:

My nephew Matt and myself headed out of our hometown for the 2 hour drive to the airport and a border crossing into the United States. Along the way we stopped in Detroit for a night at the Holiday Inn Express. After settling into the hotel we stopped by a bank to get $1, $5, $10, and $20's being fully aware the need for small denomination currency. After making sure again, it was OK to leave my car at the hotel while we went to Nicaragua for three weeks, we boarded the airport shuttle.

January 22, 2009, 2:45 am:

Started the day early and anxious, but looking forward to the trip. I hopped in the car and drove to a local store for some coffee and snacks. When I returned Matt was up ready to go and thankful for the coffee and snacks.

We checked over our luggage again Went to the front desk to check out and boarded the shuttle for the airport. We were both tired and excited about this trip, His first time to Nicaragua and my second.

We had no issues with our flight to Houston and the transfer was only a half hour long. Yet again an uneventful flight and ahead of schedule by twenty minutes.

We have arrived!

After getting through the airport I simply ignored everything seasoned travelers to Nicaragua told me. I talked to a few Taxi drivers looking to secure a ride to San Carlos, The normal route to this remote place is by plane, which would take forty-five minutes. I wanted to see the country and enjoy a long drive to San Carlos. After many discussions in English we agreed on a price of $150.00 and headed off.

We didn't travel long, as our driver lived close by and he needed his brother for the trip. We switched cars, picked up his brother we were off. Or so I thought, but no, we had to stop at a garage while the car was raised 2 inches and all new tires, I asked what was going on and our driver stated that the road was very rough and he needed to make sure we could get there and back.

While we waited, we had some fresh picked oranges from the side of the road near the garage, The oranges were green, but sweet.

Finally after a two hour delay we piled in the car and headed off.

An hour into the drive, approximately thirty Kilometers we got a flat tire. This delayed us another forty-five minutes. We finally stopped for some diner in a town called Juigalpa, Nicaragua. Matt and I discussed going back to the airport over diner and the driver promised us, We will be in San Carlos by 10:00 pm. At this point in time, we were unaware of the drivers lack of knowledge of his own country, later I will find out that this is the normal, as people do not have the money to travel as freely as we do in Canada.

We continue on and as day turned to night I saw just how dark it is in the back country of Nicaragua. The road we traveled was as bad as you can imagine, our average speed was only 15 km/hour and this made for a very long drive.

January 23, 2009, 2:00 am:

We got to a point in the road were the taxi, could not make it any further, fatigue from driving so long has left the driver to a point he could not continue on such a bad road. He would have made an error that could have ended badly for us all. Instead he waved down a dump truck heading to San Carlos and made arrangements for us to climb aboard.

We continued down to San Carlos and the road just got worse. We had to cross a homemade bridge, yes a home made bridge, just some planks of wood across the creek. The driver took it very slow and as we crossed the planks creaked under the weight of the loaded dump truck.

Finally about 4:30 am we arrived in San Carlos, way to early for the water taxi, so we found a hostel and crashed for a few hours.