Aqui en la playa
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
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222
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Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
San Juan del Sur,
Nicaragua
Monday, June 16, 2008
Panama City, Panama
Our plan is to leave Panama City and go to San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua on the Pacific coast. We have heard that the beaches there are very nice. We leave the Panama bus station at 11:40 AM. We reach the Costa Rica border at 6 PM. The strange thing at the border is that Panama goes through a time consuming search of our luggage including a drug sniffing dog. At least we thought the cute little cocker spaniel was sniffing for drugs. But why would Panama care if we were taking their drugs out of the country? When we entered Panama by sea no one checked our bags. We could understand if they wanted to stop us from taking antiquities or national treasures from their country. But Panama doesn't have any national treasures. Shouldn't this search be taking place on the Costa Rica side of the border? And sure enough when we carried our bags over to Costa Rica they did again search our bags
15-01
. As a result of all this line standing and bag searching it took 90 minutes before our bus was underway again. Costa Rica time is 1 hour behind Panama time. We are surprised to learn that the Panama Canal is east of Florida. June 16, 2008
San Jose, Costa Rica
We arrive in San Jose at 1:30 AM Central American time.
Tica Bus basically goes from capital to capital in Central America. They will let you off in various cities but you can only get on the bus in a capital. Our first bus takes us to San Jose, Costa Rica. We want to go to Rivas just across the border in Nicaragua; from there we will take a local bus to San Juan del Sur. At the Tica Bus station in San Jose we learn that we can't count on automatically getting as seat on the next bus. You should make reservations. The next bus leaving for Rivas has only one seat. But before the bus leaves at 6 AM someone cancels, so both of us get seats on the bus.
We reach the Nicaragua border at 11 AM and clear the border at 1:10 PM. The bus stops in Rivas at 1:50 PM and we are the only passengers getting off. Rather than taking the local bus we decide to take a taxi to San Juan del Sur for $20.
June 17, 2008
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
Exchange rate: 19 córdobas = $1
6 pack of Barera Beer, cheapest beer in grocery store = $4.60
We are staying at the Casa 28 in a room with private bath for $25 per night
15-02
. For $10 more we could turn on the air con, but the fan is all we need. San Juan has a nice horse shoe shaped bay, something like Puerto Escondido's in Mexico. But the town is much less developed, maybe P. Escondido was like this 25 years ago. The beach on the bay has some nice stretches but we understand there are better beaches outside of town. The ambiance here is very laid back. There are lots of gringo expats and tourists here but it doesn't seem crowded. And San Juan del Sur has been a gringo haunt since gold was discovered in California in 1848. For easterners to get to the gold fields they had three choices: across the plains, go around the horn, or over the Isthmus. The Panama Railroad Company cashed in by building a railroad across Panama. The competing Isthmus route was through Nicaragua. The Nicaragua system was created by Cornelius Vanderbilt. His route was a cheaper and faster way to get from New York to San Francisco than the Panama route because Nicaragua was much closer to the states than Panama. Tickets sold by Vanderbilt included a river boat trip on the San Juan from the Atlantic side to Lake Nicaragua which was crossed in a large lake steamer, from the lake the passengers rode in stage coaches, painted sky-blue, to San Juan del Sur. Here, on the bay, ocean going passenger ships took them on to San Francisco. The gold rushers had a chance to see this beautiful spot and tell folks back home. The best thing about San Juan del Sur is that, even though it has been known by gringos since 1848, there hasn't been that much development; no big high rise hotels and the only franchise we see is a Subway restaurant. We are going to just chill out on the beach until Saturday morning when we'll take a local bus to Managua and there will get back on the Tica Bus and go to San Salvador.
