The Beach

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It was time to leave Nicaragua, I had seen the country, the trash, the idigs, the schools and the life. My life for the last two weeks was focused on hundreds of flash cards and Spanish words. Day after day sitting in the central park forcing a slowly increasing Spanish vocabulary on myself.

I packed up and hit the road, the city of Penas Blancas and the Costa Rican border was a 2 hour drive south of Granada. I knew I had approached the border when the guides started descending on me from all around. I decided to take a different tack with the guides this round; I would refuse to hand over my paperwork to any of them and refuse to agree to their services. The crowd would follow me around, run ahead to the station that I needed to be at constantly reducing their price as we moved along.

The bureaucratic nightmare which is the Nicaraguan border takes about 6 steps to successfully check out of the country. Each checkpoint that my entourage of guides would come to, I would hand over paperwork get a stamp or a signature and loose a few guides. By step 4 the guides price had dropped from $10 to $5 and I knew I was headed in the right direction. A couple customs checks later I was reduced to one faithful, non English speaking guide that had the breath of a dragon. If he was within a 6 foot radius the compost pile which was his mouth would almost asphyxiate you. I tossed him a couple cordobas for some Chiclets and he returned to duty as fresh as a daisy. We finished up checking out after about an hour and I ended up only paying $2 in guide duties.

Next stop was Costa Rica. Entrance to CR is simple. Just get a stamp for free, head to the Audana for an inspection get a little insurance for $15 fill out a form and off you go to the next station. Wait in an air conditioned lounge for the next available official, step into the office get a vehicle permit typed up and you are officially in CR for 3 weeks no problem.

I hit the road headed for Which’s rock, I talked to some Canadians at the border who explained how it was the baddest camping spot in the country and I had to see it to be sure. I stopped in La Cruz for some groceries and was shocked at the prices of the precious tuna fish. I managed to get 5 cans in order to sustain life for 2 days comfortably along with all the necessary fluids. I was a little surprised to see the inflation on the money in the CR, these colones are worth next to nothing.

At the ranger station on the road to Which’s Rock the kind and generous rangers all took a good look over the Subarooooo and debated weather or not the car could handle the road to the beach.. I gave a quick demonstration on the agility of the strong little car and its ability to jump and land perfectly with it’s under armor. They weren’t buying it and I was given a unanimous “wont make it” decision. They explained that there is another beach park right up the highway that has a good road right down to the beach.

I headed back another 20km and found the beach park at Cuajiniquil. As I descended the hill I was blown away by the environment. It was wild and clean with a beach sprawling for miles around a large bay with a couple large islands in it. It was $2 to camp there and the ranger and I were the only inhabitants. The sunset was amazing and watching the bats come out at dawn to eat all the bugs is really quite entertaining.

I dove into my final half of the giant saga called “Shantaram”. After 933 diligent pages I finally put the adventures of Gregory David Roberts a fugitive on the run living in Bombay to sleep.

The Iguanas around this campsite were a little sneaky, they would just kind of turn up out of nowhere, some times they would sneak into the shade of my chair and give me a mild heart attack when I stood up. Later while making a couple tuna sandwiches for breakfast I noticed that they would gather around like little dogs waiting for a handout. I was surprised to learn about their love for bread. They would even do little tricks for you if you had the right brand.

Fishing at this pristine beach was a little challenging, there were these yellow tailed saltwater fish that would chaise lures but never get hooked. I had to modify a lot of tackle and use some unconventional means to actually surf fish for these critters. The dime bag weight system really got the minnows going and got some good hits from the larger ones but they wouldn’t stick, even when I tried to put hooks on the dime bag lure. Later while snorkeling I discovered that they all had tiny mouths like reef eaters and my smallest hooks were 3’s.

With the tuna rations dwindling on day 2, I decided to head to a more popular location called Tamarindo. It was maybe 50 miles down the road with a promise of an overdeveloped city and American prices.

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