Nicaragua or bust

Friday, 13 April

Hello all- we are back here in Monteverde after Semana Santa in Nicaragua. Quite a trip! Tops all our border crossing stories to date ;-) …but then I’m getting a bit ahead of myself- I’ll get to that eventually. Lots has been happening here and for a while it is just Niall and I, as Norma is actually back in New York for a job interview. Our return to a more “normal” life in the states is beginning to loom larger and gather a bit more tangible sense of approaching reality. One tends to live pretty much day to day here (as the Ticos say, pura vida – es muy tranquilo!), but picking up to come back home to Cazenovia and our alternate lives there requires more than a little planning!

As Norma’s job at the Syracuse Housing Authority has looked less and less certain over the past 6 months or so (the cuts in federal HUD funding are going right to the bone and then some), she’s been starting to look into other opportunities. As luck would happen, she got a plane ticket back to interview for one of the positions she applied for. She also dragged a BUNCH of stuff home that we won’t now need to drag with us later in our grand foray across the US (more on that later too). Both Niall and I will look forward to having her back soon!

Norma left for the US when we dropped her at the airport in Liberia on our way home from Nicaragua, so that’s where we’ll begin with our description of the trip. Ordinarily, we would NOT chose to cross an international border in Latin America during the run up to Semana Santa. That’s sort of like deciding to drive across Los Angeles at rush hour, just for kicks. But we needed to go because our 90 day visas were about to run out, and we had to spend at least 3 nights outside Costa Rica to reset our visas, and we needed to coordinate that with Niall’s school schedule. The end result was needing to cross the boarder on the weekend before the big Easter holiday week – Semana Santa.

Semana Santa’s significance here in Latin America far transcends it’s religious roots, and really has become something more akin to combining Easter (big religious holiday), with Thanksgiving (it is traditional to spend the week with family), and Labor Day (it’s near the end of the local “summer,” so everyone heads to the beach or wherever to party). The other complicating factor is, similar to the US and Mexico, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans live quasi legally in Costa Rica for higher paying jobs (typically lots of agricultural and construction labor). So on the weekend before Semana Santa, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans try to return home to spend the holiday with their families. And that is what we found at the border…!!

We knew it was going to be difficult, but we had no idea just how crazy things could be. We’ve waited for hours on occasion at the Canadian border after visiting Ottawa or Niagara Falls, but that’s still pretty orderly. The Costa Rica-Nicaragua border is chaotic even in the best of times, but… geeeez! When we arrived at the border at about 9:00am, we expected we would beat much of the traffic. What we found was traffic, mostly buses and trucks, backed up about ½ mile from the actual frontier, will thousands of pedestrians walking toward the customs building. If we had any choice, we would have just turned around at this point, but we were pretty much committed due to our visa staus. So I got out and started jogging toward the border while Norma waited and tried to creep the car forward. Upon arriving at the customs building, I found a line that would have put Disneyland on the 4^th of July to shame. There were at least 1500 people winding out the door of the building and then snaking back and forth all around the parking area. Which might have seemed almost orderly if the parking area had not been filled with cars, trucks, and buses, all parked at odd angles so that even the main road was at virtual grid lock. Unbelievable! I decided this might be a good time to use one of the expeditors or “gavillanos,” who for a small fee (usually about $20), will guide you to the front of the line by paying the various guards to look the other way. Sort an un-official Easy-Pass. After inquiring around, I was taken to the exit side of the building and given instructions on how to go “in the out door” and in about 20 minutes, I actually had our passports stamped and ready to go. Another 20 minutes, and I got the car’s paperwork all sorted out too! This was looking easier and easier… if a little pricey. But then I needed to find Norma and the car, and get them to the Nicaraguan customs. As luck would have it, Norma had managed to get within about 100 meters of the customs building and we just had to weave through the maze of parked trucks and buses. As we passed though the final check point to the Nicaraguan side, one of the immigration police commented to me, “In Europe they have been doing this for 1500 years, here in Costa Rica-- barely 500; in another 1000 years, we will have figured out how to do this as well as the Europeans and then it will be easy!”

After another hour, we managed to get through the Nicaraguan customs too. Fortunately the Nicaraguans have separate lines for those with cars (almost no one), from those in trucks, buses, and pedestrians (a zillion). Otherwise we would have been out at least another $20! All I could think of was how long would it take all those poor folks standing in line to finally get through, particularly as most had less than $20 in their pockets, with none to spare for convenience sake? Who knows!

After the border we were off to parts unknown. I’ve been to Nicaragua twice now, but I still haven’t gotten to see all that much of the country, and we decided to try a place at the beach. We were hoping to find something no too expensive, but still nice, but it being Semana Santa, we we’re boosted up into the what can we find that is left that is nice, which translated as pretty expensive by local standards. We ended up at a small beachfront hotel called the VistaMar in Pochomil. The beach was fairly nice, with good waves and pretty good sand. The place had a great pool with a restaurant overlooking it, and our room was a few steps away—it fit Norma’s beachfront trifecta (room, pool, restaurant, beach all within 50 meters), so everyone was happy! We spent 3 nights at the beach, rotating from lounging by the pool, to taking a dip, to walking on the sand, to getting a cold drink, and then starting over again. Kinda nice after all…

We then spent a morning driving to our favorite Latin American city, Granada. On the way we passed through village after village filled with different handy-craft stores; one selling bamboo furniture, the next hammocks, the next filled with plant nurseries, etc. Along with many facinating sights, the drive along small highways can also be sort of disconcerting. Nicaragua, is of course, a developing country, but it also has some wonderful architecture and very livable cities, like Grandada. That said, along some of the rual roads, the degree of poverty can be startling, as housing ranges from adequate to barely qualifiable as shelter. It definitely makes you feel thankful for being as lucky as to be born in the US in the circumstances that we have been.

After driving for several hours, we stopped for lunch and some shopping in the colonial city of Masaya, which is renowned for its central crafts marketplace. The market is situated in an old restored fortress in the center of town, and there are several hundred. Niall was rewarded for his patience with his first pocket knife, as Norma shopped ‘til she dropped looking for stuff to take to friends in New York. Eventually we loaded up and settled into our old favorite hotel in Granada, the Patio del Malinche. The hotel is located about two blocks off the main square and is absolutely wonderful- beautiful Spanish colonial architecture, nice rooms, nice staff, a pool for Niall, and close to everything.

After 3 nights in Granada wandering around and feeling urban again, we headed back for Costa Rica, resigned to braving chaos at the border again. As we we’re traveling on Good Friday, my hope was that everyone would stay home with their family until at lest Sunday afternoon before flooding the road back to border. Someone was watching over us that day, as that is exactly what happened. There wasn’t a sole at either border crossing point, and we breezed through in 15 minutes combined for both customs checks. Go figure! We spent the night just outside Liberia at another of our favorite hotels, El Posada el Encuentro at the foot of Rincon de la Vieja volcano. After Norma frantically stuffed all the goodies into her three bags, we relaxed the rest of the afternoon looking over a canyon with the sun setting in the distance. As we were only 20 minutes from the airport, getting Norma there for her 8:00am flight the next day went smoothly, and Niall and I have been batching it here in Monteverde during the week since.

Highlights this week included the return of the wet season, with three days of scattered afternoon showers (yes, real, measurable vertical rain), the first here since early December. The other big news is the Ministry of Public works and Transportation is almost finished paving the main street in Monteverde. We have real asphalt surface for about 2 miles of road, and it is amazingly smooth. And on the home front, I made my first ever pizza in a toaster oven—from scratch mind you—made my own dough & everything! Niall pronounced it the best, so it couldn’t have been too bad. It’s amazing what you can cook in a toaster over when inspiration strikes.

That’s about it then for now from the cloud forest. Norma will be back next week, and I’ll be in the field staking walks & foundations for the park I designed last fall, so it will be pretty much back to normal by midweek. Hasta Luego!