San Jose Costa Rica to Granada Nicaragua

When the boat stopped, I wrongly presumed that crossing the border would be the worst part of my journey. Waking up, gummy eyed and dehydrated, I could see the narrow cargo launch had been pulled over and that camouflaged men were waiting to come aboard. Around us the jungle seemed to simmer in the midday heat, the pea soupish river sliding slowly past, carrying its collection of black plastic bags and tour boats I knew not where.

I don’t know why I came back to Nicaragua. It wasn’t to “bag” another country; I’d already visited the state and seen its three biggest cities. It wasn’t to show off, Peru would have been the one for that and, as I was alone it wasn’t for the company. Two days after I had originally planned to leave I was woken at four by Andreas, my body angrily protesting both at the time and the presence of the four-dollar gin in my system. Hopping around in the gloom I was saved the bother of changing by the grubby jeans and tee shirt I had slept in for the past two days and was soon sneaking noisily from the room. An hour and a half later I stood in an empty bus concourse among a dozen shifty eyed Nicaraguans who were to be my companions to Los Chiles, the last town on the Costa Rican border.

I had chosen the Southern road to Nicaragua because most tourists pale from taking a river boat past rickety military checkpoints and as usual I wanted to be different. Unfortunately, I had planned out my trip the way I feel British generals must have planned out the battle of the Somme. I stood at a tiny wall map, moving my hand up massive expanses of green jungle and brown mountains, explaining how I hoped to be half way across the country by nightfall and yet not bothering to consult the guidebook. In the end it took this merry incompetence half a day to manifest itself and by the time I caught the bus and rode the boat across the boarder I thought I was doing really well.

It was a bright sunny day, the river was beautiful and small children were jumping of moss-clad trees into the water. I was still in the best of moods as we crossed the border and entered Lake Managua. The boat chugged up to a massive sprawl of decaying corrugated iron and grey concrete that appeared to be a small port town. As we entered a large ferry (the one I had intended to catch to Granada) slipped its moorings and headed out to sea trailing a thin line of smoke. Even then I wasn’t really upset, there would be other boats waiting to take me up the lake that disappeared into the smog to my left. As I exited the launch and clambered onto the immigrations services dock I could already smell the fine food waiting for me in Cordoba.

“four days”, the customs man holds up his grubby fingers to further emphasize a point I have trouble grasping. I have just discovered that, to catch the next ferry from the aforementioned grubby port I will have to wait in the infested hellhole for four days, subsiding on money that is inaccessible as the nearest ATM is on the other side of the country. Now thoroughly missing Tattie, Jamie and all other my lovely friends in the Tranquilo I ask if there is any other way to get to Granada. The man smiles and nods, “autobus” he grins in a slightly ominous manner.

Thirteen hours later and the bus ride continues like some daemon rollercoaster I have become locked onto. For the first few hours I tried to read but the excessive jolting makes my eyes skip every second word and I soon give up, deciding that the road conditions are marginally worse than in Cambodia. Sitting opposite me is a young man, a fellow refugee from the boat who wears the massive fake Rolex that seems to be the Nicaraguan national uniform. Jammed next to me in the seat are two giggly female students who find it very amusing that I cannot sit straight due to the size of my legs. Everyone seems really smiley and happy, (or they did for the first few hours) and the only person I am slightly concerned about is the mustachioed man with a cowboy hat and wrapped sack conspicuously containing a small rifle. Soon it will be my turn to sleep and I will exchange places with one of the girls and climb onto the bed of rice sacks lining the isle.

One hour after that I am jumping down from the yellow bus, pack on my back and no idea where I am. The city is not the one I remember, shuttered and dark as dogs creep through the shadows and crack whores chase me up the street, demanding either sex or something to eat. Finally avoiding them, I climb over large piles of rubble and reach Hostal Central to find it boarded up with a large For Sale sign tacked to the door. Luckily, as a drunk runs after me up the road, I find two happy policemen who chaperone me to the nearest hostel and, with hands on machetes, persuade the doorman to let me in free of charge.

Volcano Arenal, Costa Rica

Flame, bright and orange, juts from the blackness ahead and cascades downwards with the smell of burned sulfur and an odd popping noise. We stand there, transfixed as the volcano above us erupts in erratic bursts, spewing magma and smoke into the jungle. In the dark I could see Ryan smiling, the click of his camera in sync with the occasional booming roar and flash of flame. The American couple between us seemed oddly out of place up here in the cloud forest, and indeed had they had not picked up two bedraggled hitchhikers (me and Ryan) they probably would never have found this muddy path leading upwards into the crater. We all stood and stared, united by this common glimpse of natural beauty that stirred something deep within me. The romantic part of my brain tells me that maybe I gained contact with some long dead ancestor who once stood, clad in furs thousands of years ago, watching the bright flash of mysterious energy explode from the earth with the same sense of wonder.

I had not planned to go to the Volcano and was instead making far grander plans. Lying one night on my rough straw mattress in Costa Rica’s Tarrazu highlands I had decided to see my friend Rosie. She was in Peru, I knew that much, and at the time South America seemed relatively easy to get to (after all, when consulting my tiny map of the world, courtesy of the C.I.A Costa Rica and Peru seemed to almost touch they were so close together) so I packed my bags and headed for San Jose the next morning. Upon arriving at the Tranquilo, which had yet again become my base of operations in Central America, I stared dumbfounded at a full-scale map of Central and South America. There was Costa Rica, and further south (a lot further south it turned out) was Peru but in the middle was a huge chunk of mountainous land labeled COLUMBIA in ominous black writing. Later that night I was planning my trip and had come up with two possible ways to get down to Peru, which I eagerly presented them to two men who had offered to travel with me. The first, a dreadlocked tyrant who claimed to be a writer/master mariner/ former drug dealer and who carried a massive serrated killing blade wrapped up in his towel seemed none too enthusiastic about my ideas. He promptly informed me that if I was caught stowing away on a cargo boat enroot from the Panama canal the crew would either drop me off at shore, or simply put, “they wouldn’t.”
Ryan, my new Canadian friend looked very strangely at me when I told him I might go through the Darien gap. “Its idiots like you” he told me “that give Columbia a bad name.” He then informed me that in this small strip of land I would find “paramilitary, rebels, other rebels and bandits pretending to be rebels.” I must say I found his cynicism rich, coming from a man who had argued in favor of a hair brained scheme involving the use of geese as a new means of transport. In the end though, he persuaded me against South America and we set about a expedition that would take us to a small island off Costa Rica’s western coast, together with Rick the aforementioned “master mariner” who reckoned he could appropriate us a yacht somehow.


Rick


Ryan

Problems arose very early in the planning of our trip however, as it was soon apparent that the island was not on any maps. Looking at the massive wall chart of Costa Rica pinned on the grubby hostel wall we finally found it in a magnified white box but were unable to place it on the actual map. That night we asked the hostel cleaning woman if she knew where the island could be found and were amazed when she nodded and pointed at the map. ‘Here’ she said, tapping the part of the chart where the little white box was, ‘here.’ Later, after we had given up on that trip and were instead heading to Costa Rica’s only active volcano we still talked about her mysterious island, hidden somewhere off the coast and incased in a massive white box.

An average price for the trip to the volcano of Arenal, a dip in the closed off hot spring there and a night’s accommodation is close to sixty dollars. Thanks to Ryan’s sense of cunning we were able to shave off bunches of dollars in all these areas, taking the overall price to about ten. We started this bonanza of saving by living in a room reminiscent of the house in Fight Club, a squalid hole where the toilet seat slipped off the bowl without warning and there were not enough beds. While Rick and his long suffering companion Cheryl decided to pay full price for a hot spring tour and disappeared off in a bus, me and Ryan and decided to walk up the Volcano. We had Rick’s head light, together with the promise that he would “stab us” is it wasn’t returned in once piece and there was still an hour before the sun went down. Cockily we started off alone the highway, taxi’s and pickups flashing by in a blur of steel, the volcano always ahead and yet hidden for the time being by a mass of white cloud.



For several hours we walked, the sun disappearing fast and apart from a slight detour into a forest reserve (we were promptly ejected by a tiny bat who bounced along the road before swooping over our heads) we made good progress. Soon the light was completely gone and sweat and humidity had soaked the dress shirt I had stupidly chosen to wear for the hike. On we hiked, into a jungle and finally onto a barren road where the nice American couple pulled over in their rented 4x4 and let us clamber in. From there the expedition passed with surprising rapidity as our speed freak of a driver threw the car over every bump we saw at full speed, and it was not long before we had reached the hilltop observatory/hotel where our new companions had planned to stay. The gate guard, a angry man with a clip board refused us entry, even after Ryan assured him we were on the guest list, under the name Oscar, ‘Oscar with a X.’ Luckily we had received directions to a hidden area where (after jumping a few fences) we were able to swim in a free hot spring and watch the lava cascade down the mountain.
The expedition might of turned out slightly differently had we not met a nice Tico who gave us a quick lift up the road and slightly worrying directions to the volcano. ‘Turn left and you’ll get a great view of the volcano’ he told us, ‘turn right and you’ll die.’