Nicaragua- 2008
We were invited to a relative’s wedding in Mal Pais, Costa Rica in February, 2008 and decided this would be a good opportunity to visit Nicaragua, a country we were curious about but not enough to warrant a separate trip.
We flew Continental Airlines via Houston to Managua, rented a Toyota Landcruiser and proceeded to explore the country. Managua is not exactly a paradise and has never quite recovered from the last big earthquake in 1972. We only spent one night there and using Lonely Planet as our guide drove on to Leon the old capital which has been proclaimed a World Heritage Site and is worth seeing.
We went on to Matagalpa, known as the land of eternal spring because its altitude above 2000 feet gives it a much cooler climate than the rest of the often sweltering country. The mountdain area is renowned for coffee growing.
Our favorite city in Nicaragua was Granada, situated on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. We lucked out and got a room with a balcony in the grand old hotel Colon, facing the Parque Central and at a ridiculously low price. Granada, with its Moorish architecture and founded in 1524, is considered the oldest city in the new world. On our second day in Granada we took a one hour ferry to Isla de Ometepe and were lucky to catch the overbooked ferry back that same day since we didn’t have a place to stay on the island and it was all fully booked.
Our last two days in Nicaragua were spent in San Juan del Sur, the country’s main beach resort. We found a nice small hotel at a very reasonable cost (Nicaragua then was very inexpensive), feasted on lobster and got in a bit of beach time. We left the next day for our adventure to cross the border into Costa Rica and go to the wedding.
Art Faibisch
