Day 6 - Alpharetta to College Park

Where Costa Rica is the Pearl of Central America, Nicaragua is the Pit of it. It took a van, a bus, a border crossing (more to follow), a hike, a taxi, a chicken-ferry, and another van to get us from Monteverde, Costa Rica, to Ometepe, Nicaragua. I'll spare you the horrid details of how hot it all was, but know that standing on a chicken bus for two hours can get quite warm (not to mention 110% humidity). The whole time, I was keeping an eye on two mosquito bites that seemed to be swelling in the heat. I was worried about developing a staph infection or even cellulitis (I have seen both at the dermatology office). I should note that I really didn't have any of the symptoms, but when you see so much skin disease working in dermatology, one gets a little hypochondriac. Luckily, it has now gone down and I am no longer worried about it.

On to border crossings. Well, it turns out that Costa Rica doesn't really like Nicaragua. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America (after Haiti). Costa Rica is an extremely rich nation when compared to most of central America. As such, Nicaraguans are flocking into Costa Rica. It was very easy to leave Costa Rica, and VERY time consuming to enter Nicaragua because that is their way to retaliate. Between the two borders, there is a nice 15 minute walk with all your baggage. Our tour leader, Gemma, tells us that we can use one of the little boys to carry our baggage on their little carts, but that would "take away form your experience." Plus, I don't want some little kid to show me up.

As a side note, as soon as we passed through what the locals call the "little door," we were bombarded from a million taxi drivers and money changers. They all yell at you as you tell them no and just don't stop shaking your head the whole time.

So, our saga continues of trying to get some money. While in Monteverde, all the ATM machines ran out of cash. So we walked a mile into the next town to use their ATM machine, only to find out that it was a VISA only ATM (ours is Mastercard). Yeah, did I mention that the walk was uphill the entire way??? So we knew there would be both a bank and ATM at the border. Well, again, it was VISA, and of course the bank would not do a cash advance on credit card. Ugghhh. So, we decide to try again when we get to our final destination for the day, Ometepe.

The very moment we crossed into Nicaragua, it was night and day difference. It is the poverty-stricken central America that we all think of, but much worse. After our hour taxi ride from the border, we arrive at the edge of lake Nicaragua, a gigantic lake with two mammoth volcanoes in the middle. As we wait for the ferry to cross the lake (our hotel, finca Santo Domingo, is in the middle of the two volcanoes), there is this old man haggling us, offering to let us take pictures of his chained up howler monkey. Even though I had my camera in my hand, I avoided taking a picture of the monkey right in front of me. Something about a sick, dying, chained up monkey didn't appeal to me, and I didn't want to encourage the old man.

Our ferry ride over to the other side was cool. The sky is a steel-blue color here and is incredibly clean (though it is also quite humid). The ferry was painted a baby blue and red color and I got some really good pictures. My favorite one from the trip so far is of a man hanging his feet over the edge of the ferry.

Driving from the ferry to the hotel was quite a humbling experience. Picture a slightly overcast day, temperature is in the mid-80's, and a 40-kilometer, and a hand laid brick road. Now picture the homes. Most are a room, no bigger than 16x16 feet. They are made up of wood slats for walls, and red Spanish tile roofs that were old and rotten. Their homes are smaller than the living room of the house I am moving into (they might even be smaller than my bedroom). As we drive along in our van, I have my arm hanging out the window, so I wave to the people who all stop what they are doing to watch you go by. As you wave, the people all seem so happy that you waved to them. Their faces light up, their kids wave their arms, and they all have huge smiles on their faces. The people are so kind and humble. They live incredibly simple lives, and they don't seem to mind that their homes are smaller than even the poorest of Americans.

The hotel we are staying at is a bit like dark chocolate; bitter-sweet. Yeah, it is the dirtiest so far, but it had AC. Yeah there are all types of bugs all over the place, and the geckos to eat them up, but it is located on the most incredible beach. Yeah, the showers are cold, but they take credit card, so all the food we eat, we can charge and not worry about the fact that there is not a single bank in the country of Nicaragua that works. Please see the pictures.