Alex – ChrisGreenwood.co.uk

Exploring Santa Ana – Mayan ruins, thermal waterfalls, and volcanoes!

Santa Ana is a small city in El Salvador, a nice place to base ourselves for easy exploration of a few key tourist sites in the country. We booked three nights at a small hostel here and ended up extending by a night as we liked it so much and there was lots to do.

For a change from the last couple of posts, the journey there will not take up the majority of this blog post! There were regular buses to Santa Ana throughout the day, all running from a nice and well-organised bus terminal (Terminal de Occidente) in San Salvador, the nicest bus terminal we’ve been to since Panama. We got a fast hour-long bus from San Salvador, with air conditioning and a proper luggage storage space, and made it in good time to check-in and go out exploring the town before dark.

The on-site hostel manager Eddy was really friendly and showed us around. We got chatting to another guest called Will, a retired police officer from near Wolverhampton. We’d heard Eddy and some other guests discussing a big cycling thing in the centre and we decided to head in and see what it was about. It turned out to be the Tour El Salvador, a multi-stage international cycling race which was finishing that evening in the centre of Santa Ana. As we walked in we got to see some of the women cycling past us to the finish line. There was a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere in town, with people sitting on the street to watch the race and all smiling and greeting us. We assumed this was because of the big event and festivities around it, but over the next few days we realised people in Santa Ana are just really friendly and wanted to say hello.

A Bougie Weekend in San Salvador

The journey from Nicaragua to El Salvador was a little complicated. Have a look at a map of the region and you’ll see that El Salvador doesn’t actually border with Nicaragua at all. The logical route overland would be via Honduras. However, last year the UK introduced a visa for Hondurans, and they responded in kind. Several months before we left I reached out to the Honduran embassy in London about getting a visa, but was told they needed to know exactly when and where we would be visiting. This is pretty impossible to predict more than a few days in advance, let alone a few months! So we almost gave up on the idea of going overland the whole way up Central America. I did some research though and found mention in a blog about a boat that ran a few times a week from Nicaragua to El Salvador without going through Honduras. Chris was initially pretty sceptical about my less than official findings! We’d thought maybe we could fly straight to Guatemala instead. However, from the start of the trip we met people travelling south who had been on the infamous ‘Mario’s boat’ and told us that El Salvador was a must do as it is safe right now and the people are lovely. It definitely lived up to the recommendations.

Exploring León, Nicaragua: Art and History in the City

Looking less squished than we felt on our second bus ride

We stopped in León, Nicaragua, for two nights. Our journey there was by local buses to cross the country from Granada. Buses in Nicaragua don’t run to a strict timetable, but instead they leave when they are full, but we timed it well with both buses and were not waiting long at all. It was a hot and sweaty journey though, with open windows only letting in a blast of hot air. The second bus was a pretty cramped ride with one of our big bags balanced across our laps, and our small backpacks jammed between our legs. The ride was fairly smooth and fast though, as we managed to get two very new minibuses. After around three hours we were safely in León. We’d decided in advance that we could easily walk the 15 minutes to our hostel, even with bags. This turned out to be a sweaty trek across a busy market under the hot sun. Chris does much better in the heat then me so he did all our navigating as I blindly followed him.

We arrived at our hostel and checked in, we’d decided to go for this particular hostel as it was family run, plus it had a room with air conditioning, ensuite, a balcony, and even bedside tables with lamps. Luxury! Our hosts were a nice family who greeted us warmly and, I suspect on seeing how I was faring with the heat and humidity, went and turned on the air conditioning in our room whilst we checked in and were shown around.

Ometepe Island Adventures: Volcanoes, Kayaking, and a Motorbike

Ometepe is a very large island in the enormous Lake Nicaragua (the largest lake in Central America at 8,264 km²). It is dominated by two volcanoes, one active (called Concepcion) and one with a lake in the crater (called Maderas). To get here you have to get a ferry from the mainland that takes about an hour, the lake is huge!

We did well with our journey there, our host at Rancho Chilamate was going into town so she gave us a lift. There we found a yellow bus bound for Rivas. The bus dropped us at a petrol station and we met another backpacker going to Ometepe and agreed to share a ride. We were offered a taxi by a man charging $5 per person, whereas we’d all been told $5 per car. We took our bags away and met another driver, this time very nice and offering the price we expected. He helped us by explaining the correct taxes and ferry prices, and telling us where we needed to go. He asked if we needed transport on the Ometepe side, and then proceeded to call his friend and pass the phone to me to explain where we were going and to agree a price.

Once on the little car ferry, the water was surprisingly rough for a lake! Water was splashing up over the bow and through the door where we were sitting. We spent the journey chatting to Nina, the Belgian girl we’d met by the taxis. Chatting to people on public transport has been great, we’ve received lots of travel tips and it really helped pass the time on long journeys. The twin peaks of the volcanoes loomed closer and we were soon disembarking onto a sunny quay.

From Costa Rica to Nicaragua, a few days relaxing near San Juan del Sur

We had a lovely few days doing pretty much nothing when we arrived in Nicaragua. This is very unusual for us, but at this point we were about half way through our trip and needed a break from moving around.

Rancho Chilamate, a lovely place to relax

San Juan del Sur is on the backpacker trail, and is a bit of a party town on the Pacific coast. We decided we didn’t want more partying at this point, so we opted for a very nice Airbnb option at Rancho Chilamate, about 20 minutes drive on dirt roads by a small town called Escamequita. Rancho Chilamate is a horse ranch set in beautiful countryside. It was hot whilst we were there, low thirties most of the time, but with a strong breeze. We had a lovely room, with air conditioning and a nice ensuite with cold water shower (this is very common in Central America, and is perfectly OK in most places as it is so hot you really don’t want a warm shower). Our room opened onto a courtyard around a swimming pool, with a small yoga / gym area off to one side, it just perfect for a few days relaxing. The ranch is home to a few people helping out, and it was fun spending a some nights drinking and chatting with them and meeting their friends, neighbours, dogs, and cats.

Exploring the cloud forests in Monteverde

Monteverde was on our list of places to go from the beginning of the trip. It’s a small town in Costa Rica near to several national parks famed for their cloud forests (high altitude rainforest). Chris visited on his travels 21 years ago and was keen to return.

A boat is docked at a riverbank, with a wooden staircase leading down to the water; surrounding greenery is visible in the background. — Our boat transfer

We spent four nights in Monteverde Town, originally we’d planned three but we liked it so much we stayed an extra night! It was a good amount of time to see a lot and get a feel for the place.

To get there from La Fortuna we booked ourselves seats on the ‘jeep-boat-jeep’ transfer. This turns out to be ‘minibus-boat-minibus’ in reality as I suspect the roads have improved from when it was first offered! It was a really nice way to travel, going straight across Lake Arenal it cut down the journey time significantly compared to travelling by road. We ended up sat with Mark, who we’d had dinner with in La Fortuna, so that was nice to catch up again.

Do we know the way to San Jose?

We had a slow two days in Costa Rica’s capital between finishing our Spanish school and starting our ‘proper’ travelling together. We used the time to catch up on sleep and some admin.

The hostel (Costa Rica Backpackers) was nice, with a big communal area, and a fairly cheap restaurant and bar in house. It was the first place we booked for ourselves since starting this sabbatical, as the Spanish course took all the hard work out of travelling. The bedroom was an OK size, but the biggest plus was there was an actual bedside light, only one, but the first time we’ve had such a luxury since the first week in Panama!

Whitewater Rafting on the Pacuare River

The Travelling Spanish class included a two day rafting trip. We were both really excited for this, having been whitewater rafting a few times before but only for a few hours each time. We left on the Saturday morning from Turrialba, stayed overnight in a camp in the jungle, and continued down the river to Siquirres the next day.

On the first day we packed a small bag which was taken away to arrive by car at the camp that evening. For the day we could only take with us things that could get wet. We were dropped off outside of town and walked down to the river with our guide José-Luis. He was great, so enthusiastic and knowledgeable. He overheard me say I didn’t get to see red frogs in Bocas, two minutes later he found a couple for me by the side of the path!

We had two rafts for the ten of us, and two guides, plus a kayaker who went ahead at each rapid and took photos and videos for us. Our raft was me, Chris, Luisa, Berglin, and Mimi. Luisa and Berglin had never been before, but José-Luis was great and soon got everyone going.

We’ve arrived in Costa Rica! A week in Turrialba

We spent our fourth week of the Spanish school in Turrialba, Costa Rica. This is my first visit to Costa Rica. Chris visited before when he was 20, and has been keen to bring me here ever since. My first impressions in comparison to Panama are that we immediately saw more wealth here, with more solidly built houses with satellite dishes even in the countryside. However, everything here costs a lot more, we stopped at a supermarket and found toothpaste for $8 and even avocados more expensive than in the UK!

The school is nice, well set up with lots of space for classrooms and a good size kitchen. We had a nice room with a view onto the garden and shared bathrooms next door. Only our group of 10 are staying at the hostel plus another couple who are remote working from here for a month!

Boquete

Our second week in Panama was in a town called Boquete. It’s a more relaxed place than Panama City, located in the hills with much cooler weather. In my opinion the perfect climate as it was mid 20s and sunny most of the time!

Our journey there was our first taste of public transport in Panama. We’d expected a six hour bus ride to a city called David, and then a change in David to a local bus for 35 minutes. It was a Sunday and there was some kind of event near the main road about an hour in, we ended up in a traffic jam for two hours. Having left Panama City at 8:30am, we finally arrived at the hostel 11 hours later!! The nice thing was that the bus stopped for a 30 minute break for everyone to take lunch and go to the toilet, a welcome break and not something we’d seen on previous long distance bus trips in South America.

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