(30) Granada, Nicaragua to Puntarenas, Costa Rica
We’re slowly moving along again. We’ve made it into Costa Rica after 11 days total in Nicaragua. We enjoyed out 3 nights and 2 days in Granada. We stayed at a nice hotel on the main town square. So we were able to watch all the goings on in town. Unfortunately, we are still kind of in and out of the rain still. November is supposed to be the end of the rainy season in this part of Central America but things seem to be running late this year.
Granada is on the northern shore of Lake Nicaragua. Unfortunately due to the clouds and intermittent rain the views were really not all that spectacular. So most of the time was spent wandering around town. Our only excursion was a day trip out to Mombacho volcano. There are lots of pictures in and around Granada with the volcano in the background. Unfortunately the day we went up the summit was totally covered in clouds. It wasn’t raining but there was a dense fog and mist at the top.
There is a road up to very near the summit and we considered trying to ride all the way up. In the end it was a good decision not to try. The road up from the park entrance to the volcano is paved for the most part but is VERY steep and with the mist at the top very slippery. We took the four wheel drive truck provided by the park up. It’s an approximately half hour ride up from the park entrance. According to Google about a 2.5 hour hike up. Glad we didn’t do that either!
We still took a hike through the forest at the top which was fun although we were unable to see down to the city and the lake. We tried to walk down figuring that would still give us a good hike for the day. I’d guess we got a few hundred yards down the road before turning around and walking back up to the top to catch the truck down. The “pavement” consisted of patio paver bricks. There was moss growing up between the pavers and with the mist and the steepness of the road we couldn’t stand up to walk down! We figured catching the truck was preferable to possibly falling and getting hurt. That could have put a real damper on the trip.
Neil, Evan and Terrie had been to Nicaragua before a couple times and Neil wanted to go back to one of the places he had been before. That was Ometepe Island. The place to catch the ferry out to the island is only a couple hours from Granada so it was an easy day there where we spent another 3 nights. Unfortunately the rain caught up with us again. There is a road all the way around the island but major portions of it are unpaved. With all the rain we didn’t want to go slogging through the mud to go around the island. So we constrained ourselves to hanging out relaxing and riding around the paved sections of the island.
From Ometepe it was off to a house we rented at a beach resort called Rancho Santana. This is another place that Neil had been before and referred to as The Gringo Ranch. We had a pool with a nice view of the pacific ocean. Still daily thunder showers here, but most mornings were sunny and nice. We spent one of our mornings at the beach playing in the waves, but mainly just hanging out by the pool. Our only issue at the house was the day we had a bit of an ant invasion. I got up one morning and made coffee and nothing was amiss in the kitchen. I went back in a while later and there were ants all over in the kitchen. We hadn’t even gone to the store yet so there was no food in the house at all. I’m not sure what there was that attracted them. Thankfully there was a can of bug spray and we were able to get them under control pretty fast.
Or so we thought. I took care to spray in front of all the doors on that side of the house thinking that would be enough. Unfortunately later that afternoon Neil went around to his bedroom to find they had gone all the way around the house and were invading his room. So more bug spray and that finally seemed to get rid of them. No more issues for the rest of the stay. At least with ants.
The first night in the house I went into my room and noticed a pretty good sized spider hanging out on the ceiling of my room. I couldn’t sleep knowing it was up there and finally had to go get a broom and knock it down. Managed to whack it with the broom on the floor and flip it outside. Thankfully those were all our bug issues LOL.
We spent 4 nights at Rancho Santana. One reason for that was that our last full day there was Thanksgiving, and this year, my birthday too. The house owner lives in the town down the beach. He invited Neil and I over for Thanksgiving dinner with he and his girlfriend. So we had a nice dinner with them on the beach at his place. He knew it was my birthday and ended the meal with cake even. The road to “town” is not paved and has one major stream crossing. So we couldn’t ride the bikes to his place. It was pretty muddy from the day’s rains and neither of us wanted to try crossing the stream coming home in the dark. So he was nice enough to come pick us up and drop us back off at the house.
However, after 11 days in Nicaragua it was time to be on the move again. Given that we had to cross a border we decided to make a short day of it and we were only heading to Liberia, Costa Rica as we left Rancho Santana. It’s only a bit over 100km to Liberia, but as it turned out it was good we didn’t try to go any farther. The Nicaragua side of the border, to get out of the country, took almost 3 hours to navigate. Thankfully only about 45 minutes to get into Costa Rica.
After the long day at the border it was only another 50km or so into Liberia. It’s the largest town in the north of the country and has an international airport that serves all the tourist areas of the Arenal Volcano areas and the Nicoya Peninsula where we were headed next. We ran into an American guy on a Harley while crossing the border, but we parted ways once we got into Costa Rica. About a half an hour from our hotel in Liberia the skies absolutely opened up and started to pour rain. We rode through it for a while but both of us were having issues with our helmet visors fogging up. Between that and how hard it was raining we decided we had to pull off the road and try to wait the storm out. About that time we looked up and saw the Harley from the border parked on the side of the road and the guy standing under the awning of a bus stop. We pulled off and parked behind him and joined him in the bus stop. At least Neil and I had rain gear on. The Harley guy only had a little half helmet on with no visor, not wearing any glasses or goggles in a T shirt and jeans. He was soaked through and through.
After waiting about 20 minutes we thought the rain was letting up a bit. We looked at our phones and realized we were only two and a half miles from our hotel. The Harley guy, we never did get his name, was supposed to go all the way out to the coast another hour away. He followed us in part of the way but then disappeared from my rear view. By this time the rain had let up significantly so we assume he headed off to the coast. Thankfully finding our hotel in Liberia was easy. It was run by a very nice lady who got us checked in and set up in our room before the next big rain shower hit. As luck would have it there was a pizza place almost right across the street that we could run over to without getting too wet.
After our pizza dinner we came back and sat outside our room for a while. A German couple was staying in the room next to us and he came over asking about the bikes and the trip. He was a real nice guy and we chatted with he and his wife the next morning during breakfast at the hotel before packing up for the next leg of the trip out onto the Nicoya Peninsula at Tamerindo.
Tamarindo was definitely a bigger and definitely more touristy place than I had envisioned. The ride out was a short two hours and we arrived in the mid afternoon. The ride was uneventful until we got to the outskirts of down anyway. We were following the Garmin GPS and suddenly it had us turning off the main road onto a dirt road. We didn’t think too much of it as that happens sometimes. However, the farther we went the worse the road got and we started to get the “what the hell are they doing here” looks from the locals as we rode by. After a particularly bad mud hole section we finally decided to ignore the GPS, turn around and follow the main road into town. Sure enough we rode on nice paved roads right into the main roundabout in the center of the town. Where we chose to follow the GPS on another bit of a goose chase. We went over two pretty good drainage ditches coming out of the roundabout and started down a dirt path. Again, after a while we decided this is not where we should be riding, turned around and followed the route that Google suggested on our phones directly to the hotel. At least between the GPS and Google Maps on our phones we can generally navigate pretty well.
Given the continued rain we mostly wandered around town. We did manage to find a very good sushi restaurant and had a great dinner there our second night, LOL Our only excursion in Tamarindo was to take a kayak tour up the river estuary on the edge of town. However, as luck would have it we hit another hard rain storm just as the tour started. So I never even took a picture because we were too wet. That and my glasses were so wet I had to look over them to see, which meant I wasn’t looking through them and couldn’t see anyway. It was still cool to paddle through the mangroves. We managed to see, yes even me, egrets, a couple species of herons and couple osprey. On the way back we also saw a crocodile basking on the river bank. So it was not an entirely wasted few hours.
From Tamarindo it was another short day to Samara. Like Tamarindo, Samara is a surf town. Unlike Tamarindo it’s smaller, quieter and not as completely overrun by tourists. Given our time in both places we much preferred Samara. After seeing the two towns I understand why some of the blogs I was reading about Tamarindo refer to it as Tamagringo. No Spanish needed there at all.
We stayed at a beach front hotel in Samara and swam all afternoon the day we arrived. We tried to book for a second night but our hotel was full as were most of the other affordable alternatives. So, we made reservations for a ferry ride from the peninsula at Playa Naranjo to the mainland at Puntarenas for today. It was a two hour ride to Playa Naranjo and a hour and a half ferry ride and here we are for the night in Puntarenas.
We are starting to zero in on finishing out the first half of our trip. I believe we will arrive in Panama City on either December 4th or 5th. I’ll post the wrap up for the North American part of the journey there. Neil will be meeting his girlfriend Paxson in Panama City on December 7th. I’ve made reservations for us to take a 5 day sail boat trip from Colon, Panama to Cartagena, Columbia via the San Blas Islands from the 13th to the 18th. Our bikes will be air freighted from Panama City to Bogota and we will meet them there after the boat trip. That will all get included in my first South America post.
That’s it for now.
