Redemption on the Road to Nicaragua

Sunrise on the road from Monteverde

We started off today at 4.10 with the alarm for the 4,30 bus. By the time we had pulled our clothes on it was 4.17 so we made a bolt for the street corner nearly slipping on the dark as we left. There were other shadowy characters waiting and the bus pulled up within seconds of our arrival.

It was a large smooth bus riding an excessively steep, bumpy mountain road at seeds of around 15 kph, lurching all over the place as it went. At intervals people appeared out of the half dark and the bus stop for each one taking a tortuous amount of time to wind slowly down from the cloud forest.

The views were spectacular. It was almost impossible to photograph both because they were fleeting in the half-light between trees and embankments and because the bus continued to behave like a busking bronco, but here is a short photo journal of a few of the somewhat fuzzy impressionistic results ...

Houses in la Junta

The bus was nominally headed for la Junta, but ran on to the junction with the Pan American at la Irma bus stop. There we waited for our Transnica Nicaragua bus which we had paid $50 US for a reserved pair of seats on, to pick us up at 7, but at 6.45 a Transnica bus for Tegucigalpa (Honduras) which would also pass through Nicaragua came right past and refused to stop. We were left paralyzed in complete disbelief, trying to come to terms with having to take local buses and collectivos to the border and through, a slow messy business.

Just when our spirits were at their lowest ebb at around 7.10, along came another (Central Line) bus also heading for Managua which offered us a ride for $42 to Grenada, which we took like a shot, piled in and had a confortable air-conditioned ride in the front disabled seat with a toilet on hand at the back.

Pan American Costa Rica before the border

Before we knew it we had passed Liberia and suddenly we knew from the litter of stranded articulated trucks and large mobile homes that we were at the border. On the Costa Rican side there was a huge queue and a money tout kindly arranged for us to get right to the head as disabled preferential, but when we came out managed to scam us for half the value of the Costa Rican Colones we were trying to change into Nicaraguan Cordobas, making off with some $8 of our hard earned cash although their luck ran out when I knew the rate for $20 US.

Nicaraguan border control

Then when we got to the Nicaraguan side which was a bleak affair blowing with the dust of endless articulated lorries, the driver took all our passports and sent us to customs, where we faced a ragged confused inspection room, but a Customs man suddenly emerged and waved us through without a search.

Lake Nicaragua

Near Grenada

Then it was plain sailing to Rivas along Lago Nicaragua and then on to Granada, where we caught a taxi and drove to another hostel which was full before settling at the Oasis Hostel, a rambling warren with a small swimming pool and a genuine Oasis garden in the front courtyard.

Oasis Hostel Grenada Nicaragua

Panorama of the Oasis Oasis (click to enlarge)

The kitchen area

More about colourful Granada in the next blog,

Signs of Recovery in the Cloud Forest

Santa Elena and its surrounding forested hills

Some good news. We have spent a day in Santa Elena recuperating from the runs and our financial blowouts, and this morning successfully organizing our debilitating 4.30 am departure tomorrow to connect to the Pan American where we have two reserved seats on the through bus from San Jose to Managua Nicaragua. This area, besides being an eco-tourist hotspot, has one amazing trump card - it is at an almost perfect temperature - just a fraction too cool if you lie real still - magnificent for Christine.

Camino Verde looks unassuming from the front, but runs deep and has nice quiet rooms at the back.

Camino Verde Hostel looks both unassuming from the front and at night more like an illuminated bar than a hostel, but is a family run establishment that runs deep back from the road and has some good quiet rooms. The proprietor speaks excellent English and made a flurry of the fact that he and his family also cook in the communal kitchen, sometimes having shared banquets with the guests.

From the back of Camino you wouldn't know the town was there!

He then went into a detailed explanation why it is always raining late afternoon this time of the year, but at other times always rains in the morning and is fine in the afternoon. We are just on the Pacific side of the Continental Divide, which we crossed coming from la Fortuna. As the year goes by, there is endless competition between the tropical winds of the Pacific and Atlantic with their differing moistures and some times of the year one or other dominates, leading at the end of the day to the effects of the sun-driven sea breezes becoming concentrated.

The main street

He told us that in between these seasons there are times the winds are so strong they blow pieces off the rooves and tourists want to leave in panic thinking a hurricane is about to strike, but the school children and residents just know to keep walking even when it can be difficult because of the buffering gale, but to keep an eye out to duck out of the way of flying debris.

More kitch tourist architecture over the road!

Christine was still nauseous and wasted last night but doggedly made a meal of broccoli, carrots potatoes and tuna despite near retching by the time she was 3/4 through it just to make sure she was feeding some nutrients in the front end to try to undo the effects of the alkaloids we have used to stop everything coming out the other end mid journey.

Santa Elena from across the valley

We spent yesterday and this morning feeding ourselves bacteria we brought from the farmacia and other pro-biotic yoghurts from the supermecado calculated to flood our poisoned intestines with good bacteria that can hold down the yeasts or other pernicious organisms causing our distress, either from bad restaurant food in el Valle or the bacteriostatic effects of our doxycycline antimalarial. By this morning it was obvious I was recovering and Christine is now slowly following suit. A quiet accolade for live bacteria!

Looking back from Monteverde towards Santa Elena

Another whoop for joy! We had done a complex financial manoeuvre, firstly moving $10,000 NZ from the HSBC to the BNZ and then using it to pay off the VISA debt of hospital bills and the $1100 NZ COPA had charged us for a useless onward ticket out of Panama.

The cloud rolling into the lowlands mid-afternoon

But lo and behold, when we went to pay, COPA had already held to their promise and refunded this hideous charge (less $50 US service fee) so we have covered our debts and have no outstanding financial issues except waiting for the insurance claim to eventually refund the medical expenses.

The Quaker Meeting House and school (sign inset right)

This morning I wandered round the TICA (Costa Rican) town of Santa Elena and after struggling to make sure we were feeding ourselves towards full recovery, we set off in a local bus for Monteverde and the Cloud Forest Reserve, both of which sit a little higher up on the other side of the same valley.

The Cheese Factory

While Santa Elena has a town centre a supermercado and lots of budget accommodation, Monteverde is a strung out mix of expensive hotels, adventure tours, butterfly and frog farms and a couple of founding features, a quaker school and meeting house and an accompanying cheese factory and dairy farms, penetrated by a shingle road fully as rough as the four wheel drive track we came over from la Fortuna.

The terminus at the cloud forest reserve

The Quakers moved here in 1951 after protests against the Korean way led to some of them being arrested in the US and began dairy farming and then took a lead in conservation, eventually leading to the region becoming a tourist Mecca when National Geographic described it as the best place to view the fabled Quetzal.

A touch of the cloud forest

The old school bus eventually stopped at the entrance to the cloud forest park and we just had time to take a few pictures of the forest and the incredible numbers of humming birds drinking at the copious nectar feeders. On the way back, despite the bus lurching like a harpooned whale, I managed to take a few shots of the surrounding landscape.

Two varieties of humming bird at the feeder. The blue is the largest in Costa Rica

We are now settling in to cook a meal and pack for the trip to Nicaragua.

Rough Riding the Continental Divide

The green south-east side of Volcan Arenal

Today at 2.30 we set out on the afternoon 2.5-3 hour 'Jeep-Boat-Jeep' connection across the Continental divide between la Fortuna and Monteverde / Santa Elena. This has become a very popular trip between two key tourist destinations, particularly because the alternative bus trip by road is 8 hours of rocky roads.

The odd living fences and the low-lying plains of Fortuna

We had bought the trips for $18 each (instead of the Lonely Planet $30) from a couple of tourist touts before they took us to el Choza, which proved to be the actual agency (Eagle Tours) doing the overland connection, so we had a couple of finger biting moments while they confirmed that our receipts did correspond to a seat on the trip which had an absolutely packed consignment of 11 people on board.

The road passes through a conservation reserve

Jeep-Boat-Jeep is a bit of a misnomer because it starts out as a suave ride in air-conditioned comfort of a mini-bus from one's hostel along a sealed road around Volcan Arenal to Lago Arenal on the other side.

We both get the front seat view because of my crutches

Eventually the road crosses an earth dam and we stop at a precipitous little path down to the lake, where there is a small ferry boat waiting. We very slowly drove out across the lake, taking an hour and a half to cross to the connection point to the next land section.

The 'other side' of Volcan Arenal is all grey ash and scoria.

Two panoramas of Lago Arenal, including the volcano in the background (click to enlarge)

Looking to the other side

Another volcano on the far side of the lake

About 200 meters from the shore the boat pilot suddenly floors it to planing speed and we realize we have been left nearly adrift for an hour to save fuel.We all get off and transfer to gritty 4WD Toyota vans

Last view of Volcan Arenal

The next phase of the trip was truer to its name. We all piled into battered Toyota four-wheel-drive vans and took off up the incredibly steep road which was a mix of muddy potholes, coarse stones, one incredibly steep incline that had been rough patched with concrete, all at very steep grades requiring 4WD vehicles, particularly because it rains torrential virtually every day.

The road has to climb roughly 4000 feet in the space of some 25 kms to reach Monteverde from the low height of the lake, so the road simply wound up and up like a mountain goat trail.

There were increasingly altitudinous views as the road wound higher and higher above the lake surrounds


At each point where you thought you might have reached a plateau ....


the road simply wound around another turn and higher still ...


it then began to pass into the cloud forest layer ...


and there was torrential rain and some oceanic potholes ...


we wound in an out of the clouds through tiny farming hamlets with a little church and three or four houses ...


in and out of the cloud layers ...


passing through coffee plantations ... you can see the beans on this plant beside the road ...


till in the half dark we finally reached Santa Elena and crawled into the back of the Camino Verde Hostel to recuperate from a hideous case of the runs.

More on Santa Elena and Monteverde in the next posting!