El Castillo is in Nicaragua? (Sophie)

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  El Castillo, Río San Juan, Nicaragua
Saturday, August 15, 2009

Back tracking to catch any readers up, on the second day in Granada we were caught in the middle of a down pour, and I mean a soak you to the bone in a matter of seconds down pour, so a family waved us into their store/living room area to wait it out a bit.  We bought a bottle of Lizano Salsa, amazing stuff which we have used pretty much everyday since then.  That night I got a bad headache and stayed at the hostel while Evan went out to find his cousins friends bar, "Waynes Zoom Bar".  I threw up a little bit after he left and felt much better:)

The next day we left Granada and were off to Ometepe Island!  While we were searching for the bus station a young man ran after us and brought us to the bus leaving for Rivas, where we needed to go!  the bus MUST have been waiting for us since it was supposed to have left 2 hours earlier and left minutes after we boarded;)  We made a few friends on the bus, a dutch man and a wisconsonite.  Then a "rustic" boat ride to Ometepe and an extremely bumpy bus ride to Santa Cruz we off loaded and walked the 2.5 miles on mud "roads" to Finca Magdelena, the farm Evan thought his brother had stayed at, but no that was Finca Bona Fide, which was down the road.  As it was already dark I pleaded with my eyes to Evan that we please just sleep where we were for one night.  Turns out that was my mistake as I woke up to rats rummaging through my things to find my chocolate! 

Evan woke excited after having seen "french toast" on the menu for breakfast, his favorite!  I on the over hand was still a little disgruntled by the fact that I had woken him up, or at least I thought I had, and asked him to turn on the light to scare the rats away. He declined.  I even at one point grabbed his hand and pointed as I saw one rat run around the top of the room.  The real way to wake a sleeping Evan is to literally land on top of him.   After about an hour of listening to the rats scratch and naw at the plastic bag, two rats began to fight and banged into the door causing me to take flight a foot in the air and crash land on top of Evan.  He had been asleep the whole time until then!  Just to let you know, the french toast was amazing!

We hiked off to find the sign-lacking Farm Bona Fide and ended up going the "back way" through the fields.  Evan knew we had found the right farm when he recognized the "chop and drop" permaculture technique around the trees.  Martha, the volunteer coordinator, soon emerged from some bushes and explained the "staying" situation.  They had an extra tent, but we have no sleeping bags or pads and after the rat incident I literally started crying when thinking about staying there.  After some debate we decided the tent was a no go so Martha suggested a Hospedaje in Balgue, a 20 minute walk away.  So off we went, letting her know that we would be back at 7:00am the next day to work our butts off at the farm.  When we had found the Hospedaje (a hostel/homestay) apparently my face lit up. Marcos, the father, showed us a room that appeared rat free, had beds, walls, and a door!  We stayed:)

The next day I found myself literally hand in hand with the things I´m the most scared of - Spiders!  Our farm task was planting trees, which is all good and fine except when you are scooping up piles of dirt filled with an absurd amount of spiders with your bare hands and you have been dealing with a case of arachniphobia ever since you learnt what a spider was!  After another brief cry 5 hours into the work I found myself a tool.  It turns out I`m very skilled at digging the holes for the trees to be put in since I was armed with a tool to protect me from the spiders long legged reach:)

The next day was another 7:00am start, this time up the volcano Maderas, but Evan has written about that already so all I will say is, going down stairs is still a problem for my legs and my favorite quote was, "I like Marvin, he talks a lot" by Evan.

Yesterday due to sheer exhaustion from the volcano hike we had a lazy start.  We had also stayed up late after I started chatting with another girl, Molly, who is from the bay area.  (She is going to be staying on the island for 8 months to start a multi attempted and failed library for the town.) We waited outside for the 4:00pm bus into Altagracia to catch our 7:00pm boat to San Carlos.  Around 4:30pm we started to get a bit worried, but it chugged down the road around 4:45pm and picked us up only to stop 5 minutes later for a 15 minute break.  Evan asked how long it would take to get to Altagracia and the driver said 45 minutes, turns out that was just a tad optimistic.  We found ourselves on a street corner in Altagracia at 6:20pm, a 2 hour walk away from the port in the dark!  Our plan had been to hitckhike, but the lack of cars made that look difficult.  A man across the street must have taken pity on us since he walked across the street to see what we needed and managed to flag down the only taxi around.  What looked to be 12 year old driver and the man tried to explain that we would not get to the boat in time and that we should stay the night.  I guess the rule is that it goes once the cargo is loaded!  Through picking up on the tones of voices and a few recognized words I interrrupted and told Evan to ask if it was possible, they said yes, so off we went tearing down the boulder laden, cement lacking, crater filled road holding on for dear life since the back door did not close.  Maybe the driving age should be dropped to 12 because he was our best driver yet!  At the top of a hill we could see the boat, we ran to get tickets and were on the boat as they pulled the plank up behind us.

I immediately ran upstairs to the open-air top deck and pluncked my bag down on the open space of a white storage box long enough to stretch out on.  There were chairs you could rent, but there were none left for us.  We lay with our bags under our heads and layered everything we had in order to stay warm.  Evan even wrapped himself up in his pack rain cover!  A few hours of sleep on a ten hour boat ride, watching the stars and a distant lightening storm light up the sky we landed in San Carlos at 5:00am.

Bleary eyed we stumbled towards the only ticket booth we could see and it was crowded with people trying to buy tickets to El Castillo.  Our thought was to be in Costa Rica tonight, turns out El Castillo is in Nicaragua!  But the good news is that there is a cacao festival on tonight, yep that`s right - Chocolate! :)  We found a little room to stay in and we`re catching a boat back to San Carlos at 5:00am tomorrow morning, hopefully ending up in Costa Rica by tomorrow afternoon.  The rest of tonight will be filled with examaning maps of Costa Rica, especially since our choice restaurant is closed due to a lack of water!

p.s. today is Evan and I`s 8 month anniversary... aaawwwwww...

p.p.s Nicaraguan computers do not like my camera, they seem to think it`s a virus!  So for now just look at Evan`s pics and hopefully I will be able to find a computer who likes my camera as much as I do in countries to come:)

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