Next to Nicaragua

Five months after originally planning to arrive there, we were eventually on our way to Nicaragua. It was our initial first stop but due to Visa issues and costs, for a changeover in America, we decided to fly to Mexico instead. After spending a few more days in San Pedro La Laguna, we made the journey towards our next destination. We decided to take an 18hr minibus from Antigua, Guatemala to Leon, Nicaragua crossing two borders in the process. The minibus was picking us up at 2am from a hostel in town, driving through the night and we would arrive at Leon around 5-6pm. It would pass through El Salvador, dropping off and picking up new passengers at a popular surf spot, and then straight through Honduras and into Nicaragua.

What a horrifically long and painful journey that was. I was going to put the bags on the van, and Alex was going to grab us some seats so we could hopefully sit together and sleep on each other throughout the long journey. Another guy had cottoned on to this and made sure he got his bag on quick and grabbed the best seat, which happened to be next to Alex. I believe something was said to him, but he didn’t care. The joke was on him though as the seat he was in had no space and was fairly impossible to get a decent sleep. My seat was pretty bad too but Alex and I swapped seats because she had the leg room I wanted and I had the seat in front she wanted to rest her head on. I could see the annoying guy couldn’t sleep and he even offered to swap seats so “we could sit together”. I declined his offer as both Alex and I were comfortable and we could see he wasn’t. He also heard that the other people on that seat were getting off in El Salvador so he guessed he would have the seat to himself.

Even though we declined his generous offer, he rushed on the minibus again and took the seat anyway. We could be arsed with it and let him have the seat, but we enjoyed watching him, again, struggle to get comfortable. When the people got off in El Salvador, more people got on the minibus and it became even more crammed. Fortunately, crammed next to us was another couple who were very nice and interesting to talk to for the rest of the journey. We spent a night in Leon with this couple in a basic hostel and we both left the next day for separate destinations. We took the local bus that goes 20km to the nearest beach and surf location, Las Peñitas, they went towards the south pacific coast.

 

Not really knowing where we were going and what we were going to find, we got off the bus halfway down the road once it entered Las Peñitas. We had read that the more expensive lodgings were down the far end of town so we decided to get off before we had to walk back so far. Having asked a few places, we came across Rigo’s Guesthouse, a nice looking house on the beach. We walked in and as you walk through the house you walk into a garden and into a great view of the waves the other side of the back fence. We were instantly staying and we put our tent up almost straight away. Price wise, it was reasonably expensive compared to what we were used to, but very good for the area, and seeing as we could pitch a tent, it was much cheaper than the other options that were available.

Working at Rigo´s were a Antonio, a Nica guy who was managing the place for Rigo who had other places and business to attend to. Antonio had a Norwegian girlfriend, Synne, who helped with the running of the place. There was also another Nica guy, Melvin, who helped with stuff around the house and Nikolai, a cousin of Rigo’s Norwegian girlfriend, who’s only job was to surf, I mean get drinkable water for the house. He wasn’t very good at doing his only job, but it was funnier than it was annoying. I saw other people, including myself, go to get water more times than Niko.

Having been there for a few days, enjoying the extreme sunshine and beautiful sea on our doorstep, we bumped into Rigo on the beach. We spoke to him for a bit and stuff led to stuff and before we knew it, we were staying at his place for free. In exchange Alex would do some painting and myself, I had scraps of rotting wood to make something out of. I knew from the start that the painting aspect was the main selling point and he was just finding things for me to do, but I didn’t mind if he was willing to let me stay as well. The beach was beautiful, as was the sunsets, and the place was perfect for chilling throughout the day. The temperature was constantly in the 30’s and there wasn’t any rain for the month and a half I was there. The thought of doing any work during the day brought you out in a sweat and the local culture and lifestyle adapted to this.

Rigo is a very generous man and we were lucky to be able to stay at his house for so long. Among other things, he ran an exchange program with Norwegian students and was kept busy with all their problems and antics. The students were studying about the preservation and the effect we have on the environment and seeing how different cultures approach it and deal with it. Or that’s the impression I got from speaking to them. Rigo had connections with the local nature reserve, a 30 minute walk along the beach from his house, and was helping with the reforestation of the mangroves within it. I went with the students on a boat trip into the Juan Venado nature reserve, to help plant more mangroves and learn about the wildlife with a local ex fisherman turned conservationist and his family. I managed to witness crocodiles, racoons and variety of birds and crabs and then kayak my way back along the river through the nature reserve.

Rigo also took us to his house at the other end of the 20km long nature reserve where students could stay and study. It was a very remote place with exception to the massive salt fields that you passed through on the way in. We were meant to come here for a few weeks and build a fence, but it never materialised in the end. It was a shame as it would have been so relaxing being the only people there at that time.

During my stay at Rigo’s, my daily routine was fairly regular and it went a little something like this. Wake up and make a coffee whilst thinking about breakfast. Maybe after a bit I would make some breakfast or go to the shop and buy some stuff for breakfast. Then I would go into the sea for an attempt at a surf for at least an hour. After that I would do a bit of work, then chill for a bit and think about a bit of lunch. If I was lucky enough to have some food, I would make lunch, otherwise I would go to the shop or not have lunch. Then I would chill for a bit, maybe do a bit more work, play some chess or go for another surf, chill some more, play some volleyball, watch the sunset and think about dinner. After that I would try to make some dinner which was normally a garlicy form of pasta or some creamy rice. After that I chill a bit more, maybe played more chess and think about going to bed. Sometimes you would go out in the village or there would be a little party there, but that would depend on who the guests were. Quite often a fire was built on the beach to see the night away. Then I would sleep, wake up and repeat.

Thankfully, we had left the tent behind and were able to sleep in the rooms when they weren’t occupied by guests. The tent would be like an oven from 7am and completely unbearable by 8am. All three of the tent poles broke on the same windy day, and although the repair job left it standing, the damage was too much to keep taking it down and putting it up again. Fortunately for us, there was always a spare bed even though here was a constant flow of people passing through. Some people would stay for a few days, some a week and some even longer. I was lucky to meet some fun people throughout the time there and not even just the guests, the local guys from Las Peñitas were a laugh to.

The waves are pretty good right outside of Rigo’s, if you are a competent surfer. They were fairly large and came with a great amount of force, which made it hard and tiring to actually get out to where the waves were breaking. But if I got out there and picked out the smaller waves, then I managed to achieve some success. A lot of the time, I picked the wrong waves and I would spend large amounts of time in the foetal position covering up for my life. Even if my day wasn’t successful, I still saw it as a lot of fun and a good physical work out for the upper body. I feel much stronger and fitter now and can fight the waves for much longer than when I originally started. I have also done an incredible amount of sawing which I feel helped my arms out a little bit with the padling. Out of the scrap wood, I managed to build a bamboo reclining beach chair and a post box, made out of bamboo too. With the materials that were available, I feel quite chuffed with what I produced even if they end up on the fire, with the rest of the rotten wood, once I have gone.

There was a surf competition as part of a festival in memorial of someone who had died recently. Other activities were a football tournament and a volleyball completion too. Both of these were played half in the sand and half in the sea, as the tide was on its way in and it didn’t care what was happening. After all this, there was a concert and a party to end the night. For me it was a waste of time entering the surf competition as the local surfers are really good (and I’m useless), but the volleyball would be fun to enter. Unfortunately, come the time of our first match, four out of the six people in our team had disappeared or gone home. So no volleyball then. I was only really interested in making a video of the surf comp for the owner of the bar. I thought that I might be able to make some money off it and maybe use that as an income to allow me to travel further. Once I spoke to him and found out he already had a professional team filming it, I wasn’t going to make any money off it but still wanted to do it for the experience.

(You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL2HyomA-dA&t=37s)

After the festival and surf comp, I left Las Peñitas and spent a few nights in Leon to recover and to get rid of all the sand that had accumulated inside different parts of my body. After that, Niko came to pick me up with a few other guys, and we went on a little road trip down the coast to another surf spot called El Transito. Niko had bought a van off some guests that had stayed at Rigo’s and luckily he was willing to use it for little trips elsewhere. El Transito was similar to Las Peñitas but was completely different at the same time. It had its own little charms and a different atmosphere. The first night I got there, I had a chat with the captain of the fishing boat outside where we were staying, and managed to get a good price on him taking me 20km down the coast to my next location. The reason it was a good price was because there was two Swiss guys who wanted to go out fishing and we could combine the costs. With the deal sorted, we arranged to meet by his boat at 10am and he would take us out and me to my next location.

As much as a paradise as Las Peñitas and Rigo’s place was, the time was to move on. And here’s where it gets a little sad. I was going to be moving on by myself, due to Alex and I going our separate ways. We had originally set a goal of travelling together for at least 6 months and we had reached that goal, although with a different outcome than desired. Now our journeys will head off in different directions and maybe we will cross paths again in the future, maybe not. Only time will tell.