Capital Hopping: from Managua to San Jose

The journey back to the capital from the Caribbean coast was just as uncomfortable as the journey there, thanks to the bus driver's extremely fast driving style, which made us feel like we were sticking to the ceiling of the bus at times. Before we set off, we were once again unpleasantly begged for money in a very uncomfortable way: the guy who loaded our backpacks only wanted money from us (all the other passengers also had luggage that he loaded) and followed us to the back seats of the bus.

Because we ran out of time for the Corn Islands, we had to decide whether to go on a volcano tour or stay in Managua for two nights to get tattoos - but we simply couldn't resist the temptation of a new tattoo ;) We had booked two nights in an Air BnB near the tattoo studio with a nice family and a cute dog named John. Other than that, we weren't particularly motivated to explore the city. In fact, we only left our little apartment to go shopping and get the tattoo. And that turned out to be exhausting enough: for some reason, the residential area around our Air BnB was fenced off by the police (we actually thought we had ended up in a very quiet residential area) and every single time we left the apartment, we had to answer a series of funny questions from several police officers, as if we were the only idiots. It started with "where are you from and what are you doing here" and went all the way to "how much are you paying for your accommodation" (what the hell is that to you). Sometimes they even made us wait for their superiors to come so they could ask us the same questions again. To make matters worse, none of the police officers knew about Air BnB and they all wanted to send us to the nearest hotel. It was also remarkable that even the police can't treat women and men equally - Paddy was always given a handshake, never me, and I was never asked my name, only Paddy's. Anyway, the whole thing seemed very arbitrary to us - while we were waiting and being bombarded with questions, pedestrians and drivers were going in and out of the restricted area without any problems, without anyone even asking for their names. Despite all this, our tattoos were still worth the two nights in Managua, even though Paddy felt like he was dying a thousand deaths during the tattooing process :D

For our journey from Managua to San Jose, we treated ourselves to the luxury of a direct bus - with air conditioning, legroom, and even Wi-Fi. It was a dream compared to the wild rides on the chicken buses! Fortunately, the border crossing was unproblematic and by the afternoon, we were already in San Jose, where we stayed for one night. After dinner at a more or less good Chinese restaurant (I had a vegetarian meal with meat, something different for me), we went straight to the hostel dorm to get ready with excitement for our visit to the dog rescue station the next morning.