Goodbye Costa Rica, hello Nicaragua

Originally, the plan was to stay in Tortuguero until October 3rd or 4th to represent Nicholas at the hostel. For some reason, he unexpectedly returned after two days (we still don't really know why and have developed various theories about possible drug dealings) but he immediately told us that we could stay as long as originally agreed. However, the two of us quickly agreed that we would rather leave a few days later - as beautiful as Tortuguero is, we had seen everything we wanted to see and we still have a few beautiful beaches ahead of us ;) and even when Nicholas wasn't there for those two days, our 'work' was limited to a maximum of half an hour a day, so we weren't much help to him either. So, on the morning of the 27th (the alarm clock rang at 3:45 am), we set off towards Nicaragua.

Conclusion of our second workaway station: the island and the location of the hostel were unbeatable, but we didn't feel as comfortable as we did with Noemy. For me (Janina), it was a bit difficult because of the language - Nicholas only spoke and wrote to Paddy and basically ignored me, probably because he wanted to avoid having to speak English. In the meantime, I also understand quite a bit of Spanish, even if I can't contribute much to the conversation (I'm still too slow) :) In addition, there was an extremely annoying and quite disrespectful friend of Nicholas's who was constantly hanging out in the hostel's garden (even when Nicholas was absent), playing loud shooting games on his phone, or getting into arguments with Paddy over trivial matters. However, having heated discussions in Spanish certainly takes the language level to a whole new level ;) Nevertheless, the time was great, we saw so much and with the beach and the sea right outside our door, it's impossible not to get a vacation feeling!

Since we were told several times that it is not advisable to arrive in Nicaragua at night and the bus journey takes quite a while, we decided to make a stopover in Liberia (just before the border with Nicaragua) and stay there for one night. The next morning, we continued our journey to the border by bus. The excitement was quite high because I happened to read on the internet that the passport must be valid for another 6 months upon entry into Nicaragua, which was not the case with my passport. But we were lucky - after the weirdest border crossing ever (food stalls, people shouting from all sides asking if you want to exchange money, and having to walk about 1 km between leaving Costa Rica and entering Nicaragua), we stood in line for entry with a nice guy at the counter who said he wanted to help us. He then called his boss and asked if he could let us into the country. As we suspected in advance, it seems that we are absolutely privileged with our German passports, which admittedly feels really strange - but of course we were glad to be allowed to enter the country.

For our first stop in Nicaragua, after looking through some travel blogs, we decided on San Juan del Sur, which is considered a surf destination in Nicaragua. Despite the great hostel, we quickly agreed that we would leave again the next day instead of staying for the planned 3 nights. The beach was dirty and not particularly beautiful, the prices were just as high as in Costa Rica, and we were shouted at with 'Taxi! Taxi!' or asked if we wanted to buy sunglasses every few meters. I found the town quite cute, but Paddy not even that :D To get to the beautiful beaches in the area, you have to pay for shuttles, but since neither of us can surf, we decided that it probably wouldn't be worth it for us. With over 3 months of travel, not every stop can be a perfect match :)

As it turns out, San Juan del Sur is also suitable for an escalated Sunday drinking event - everyone talked about the 'Sunday Funday', a tour for 30 dollars through a few hostels where you can get drunk all Sunday. But we agreed that we didn't have to travel to Nicaragua for something like that, so the next morning, after a very delicious breakfast at the city market hall (the best part of our stay in San Juan del Sur), we headed towards Ometepe, a large island in Lake Nicaragua in the interior of the country.