Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

We arrived in Granada with our friend Cy and spent two nights there. Granada is probably the most beautiful town in Nicaragua. It is an old colonial town with buildings painted in bright colors. There was a lively market and we took a boat ride out to an island and saw monkeys. This was a big hit with William and Julian. Granada is next to Lake Nicaragua and there a lot of small islands close to the shore. A lot of these islands have been bought by wealthy Nicaraguans and they build houses on them. One of the owners decided to put monkeys on his island. When he got tired of them he put them on a neighboring island and one of the big tourist attractions is to take a boat out and see the monkeys. William was hoping that we could go onto the island because he wanted to run with the monkeys. Unfortunately you can only float by. It’s a monkeys-only island.

Our next stop was Isla de Ometepe which is farther south on Lake Nicaragua. The island consisted of two volcanoes connected in the middle. Cy was interested in climbing the active volcano and Matthias decided to join him. They left at 4:45 AM and it took them 10 hours to climb up and down the volcano, but the experience and stories they have been telling sure seem worth it. (Although Matthias is still not sure what is easier – 10 hours without the children or 10 hours of sheer agony of climbing a 5000+ foot volcano.) They had a great guide who told them a lot about the animals and ecosystem of the place they were climbing. They even saw about a dozen howler monkeys and a coral snake.

The boat ride off the island was a real trip. It was the ricketiest boat I’ve ever been on. There were some pretty strong waves that day and the boat creaked with every wave. After about 10 minutes the engine died. No one seemed alarmed, so we guessed it was just a normal occurrence. Judging by the shape of the boat it seemed likely that this wasn’t the first time to boat broke down on the water. It took about 15 minutes before they were able to get the boat running again and we made it safe and sound, just a little off schedule. Once back on the mainland we spent one more night in Nicaragua on the coast and the next day we continued on to the Costa Rican border. Things went fairly smoothly there except for the fact that they wanted the original title to our car (we only brought a copy). We had to wait an hour and a half for the boss to come back from lunch before they accepted our documentation. I should note that this is the first border crossing in a while where we did not see any of the officials playing Solitaire on their computer. Once we got through the border we headed back to the coast on the Nicoya Peninsula. The next morning (Thanksgiving) we spent some time on the beach. Matthias and I were on the beach with the kids digging in the sand and swimming in the waves. Cy took a walk on the beach and checked out tidal pools. Later we headed down the peninsula and took a ferry back to the mainland. The ferry left at 5:00PM, which was perfect time to catch the sunset over the water.

Costa Rica has such a different feel from the other Central American countries we’ve been to. In the first larger town we drove through we were confronted by a Burger King, Pizza Hut and other typical American fast food restaurants. One nice thing is that it seems much cleaner. Garbage piles on the side of the road were not uncommon in Mexico and most of the other Central American countries we’ve been to so far. But we haven’t seen any of that in Costa Rica. In some senses it also seems a bit more modern. For example, in Nicaragua on Isla de Ometepe our taxi was stopped 3 times by livestock crossing the road. Cows, pigs and horses are often times left to roam at will. We haven’t seen that at all in Costa Rica either. Also, in contrast to other Central American countries, tourism is a huge industry in Costa Rica. Since we’ve been here we have seen one small tour bus after another shuttling around Americans in white tennis shoes, khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

Costa Rica doesn’t appear to have the roughness that all the other Central American countries have, but I totally understand why it is such a popular tourist destination. It is clean and beautiful and so far the people we’ve meet have been so friendly and helpful. Costa Rica has also set aside ~25% of its land for national parks and reserves. They understand that preserving their environment is key to preserving their higher standard of living.

Now we are in Alajuela, which is close to the airport and San Jose. Cy left this morning and it has been anything but dull since he left. At breakfast William was sitting eating his toast when he fell off his chair and split his chin open. A paramedic from Seattle happened to be staying in the room next to us and suggested we go to the hospital after ruling out any serious injury. William ended up getting 6 stitches in his chin. One interesting thing was that the Costa Rican government pays for the healthcare of all children in the country, so we didn’t end up paying anything. We would have been happy to pay for it, but they refused. The bill was less than 40 dollars, which for an emergency room visit in the states would be unheard of. Later that day we came back to the hotel and Julian was about to take his afternoon nap when he threw up all over the bed. So today we just decided to lay low in the hotel and get a lot of rest.

Tomorrow we are headed back up north to look for an apartment. In mid-December my parents are going to visit us for nearly 4 weeks. We want to rent an apartment for a month or two where we can all stay and then take day trips. Matthias has been really great. He’s asked everyone we’ve meet so far if they know of an apartment we could rent. He’s asked at restaurants, hotels, cabs and even at the hospital. We have a couple of leads so far, and I think it’ll just be a matter of time before we find a place.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Costa Rica, Honduras Nicaragua, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.