January 19-22: Rivas, Nicaragua
Trip Start
Jan 13, 2009
1
4
26
Trip End
Apr 09, 2009
Rivas,
Nicaragua
Monday, January 19, 2009
When we first got in, I went into the hostel Lonely Planet recommends (Hospedaje Internacional) and found it dirty and really overpriced ($20 for a double room!). I went to a new place called ¨La Cueva del Australiano¨ where the owner was very nice but the rooms were also kind of sketchy. They only cost $4 per person, but there lots of ants running up and down the walls. I started to worry that what we thought would be the promiseland was actually a wasteland. Then I went into a shabby looking place called Hospedaje Coco. The walls of the hallway were turquoise and dirty, but you always have to keep in mind here that the packaging doesn´t always reveal the contents. At $4.70 per person, the owner revealed beautiful new upstairs rooms with fans and tiled bathrooms. We´ll take it!
We went to dinner at a little stand by the cathedral but the food wasn´t as cheap as we had hoped. $2.50 for 1 taco with rice, beans and a soda. Not bad, but not Perú.
We met a guy named George who owns a libreria (office supply shop). He was very nice and spoke almost perfect English.
The next day we got up early and, as there are no laundry places in town, found that the girls who work in our hostel would do all our laundry for $4. Seemed worth it to us.
We got a good price on a taxi ($1.50 each, 30 minutes) to San Juan del Sur, where we spent the day lounging on the beach and watching pelicans dive for fish. Then we sat at a beachside restaurant and then had local beer called Victoria Frost. Refreshing and cold. Lunch, again, was more expensive than we´d hoped--$2.50 for tortitas de carne (meat cakes), rice, beans and juice. But we were, after all, in a tourist spot.
We caught the bus back to Rivas for only 15 cordobas each (.83 US), talked to our friend George at the librería and called it a day.
