The "Real" Backpacker...and a GAME!

I just hung up with my mom who has reassured me that I have absolutely no blog fans left and you have all given up on me after abandoning you for 10 days...but I have faith. And...if you are still out there reading, there is a GAME in this blog with audience participation and PRIZES! Yep...keep reading and you could be a winner!

All right. What are you doing right now? If you have any plans of reading this blog in 1.5 minutes and moving on with your day, think again. This one is going to be a long one! But, if like many of you, you have just sat down at your desk with a boxed salad (General Mills people) or a microwaved Lean Cuisine (Federation people), have just tucked the kids into bed or just looking for something to do for the next 15 minutes, lean back and enjoy the adventures of Debra as an Official Backpacker.

So before we go any further, the most important part...the game! Ok...I am about to tell you all of the amazing, unpredictable and crazy adventures of the last 10 days. Your job??

HOW MUCH DID IT ALL COST??

Yep..this is a Price is Right guessing game. I will describe my bus rides, my hostel stays and my restaurant fare and you need to guess what the grand total of the trip was. Whoever gets the closest, wins! (and the benefit for me is that I get to see who is reading the blog. SO...please guess! I really want to know who is reading this and this way, you don’t have to worry about putting up a witty comment...just a number. So I expect a guess out of ALL of you!)

Ok...let’s get started.

To help all of you out there who may not be intimately familiar with the geography of Central America, here is a map to help!! I have put little colored dots next to the cities we were in so you can get an idea of just how ridiculously far we traveled in just 10 days!

So despite my BEST efforts, I packed my too big of a backpack up on Sunday and headed off to the Hedman Alas bus station here in Copan (Red dot). My bag was packed with all the essentials: A couple shirts, a couple shorts, my malaria medicine and a HUGE jar of peanut butter....without which I think I would have died on this trip. Met my travel partner in crime, Caroline, and we left on the 10am bus to San Pedro Sula (orange dot). Now I think I can officially say after 10 days of sampling every single type of bus that central america has to offer, Hedman Alas is far and away the best (and most expensive...hint, hint...). These people do not mess around...AC, movies, reclining seats, snacks, the works.

Now my first bus ride I was in the middle seat int he back row of 5 seats across. Not the best seat in the house but I wasn’t going to start complaining yet. They proceeded to show the worst movie that has ever been made. Public Service announcement. Do not. I repeat, do NOT. Ever. Watch the movie Seraphim Falls.” Please trust me on that one.

So, after 3 hours, we arrived at San Pedro Sula (Orange dot) and transferred busses to Tegucigalpa (Yellow dot). This ride was much better..window seat and a great movie (and delicious Doritos).

So after a full day of travel, we were in Tegucigalpa…the capital of Honduras! So long story short, we stayed with Caroline’s boyfriend’s brother-in-law n Tegucigalpa. So he took us to the finest dining in Tegucigalpa…the mall food court!

I decided to take my life in my own hands and eat Subway there…and it was freaking aamazing! (when you live in a country where it is advised never to eat raw veggies, some cold veggies taste incredible..seriously, Jared knew what was up there…it was so good!)

We went to Juan’s house and snuggled up in our cozy double bed and off to sleep for night number one. Now…this might not sem like a big deal but for any of you who know me, you know I am most definitely a sleep talker. I have been known to say some crazy things in my sleep. So when I woke up on Monday morning and Caroline informed me that I had been talking, I wasn’t at all surprised.

BUT…what I was surprised to hear was that I was speaking in Spanish! Yep…the language has crossed over into my subconscious folks. Good stuff.

Ok…so back to the bus bright and early to head to Esteli, Nicuragua (Green Dot). The ride was pretty uneventful but there were about 25 teenage missionaries on board with us and these kids were hard core. All of them had their bibles out and let’s just say I wasn’t exactly mentioning the fact that I eat Chinese food on December 25 every year. We watched the movie “A Walk to Remember” but many of the teens were offended because of the kissing. Seriously people…

Ok so everything was going well on the way down to Esteli. And Nicaragua is GORGEOUS! Made it through the strange but easy border when all of the sudden, I started to feel a little queasy. So I just kind of said a silent wish that the bus would stop for a bit. Well, this is where the phrase “be careful what you wish for” came from.

All of the sudden, the bus came to a halt in the middle of the Pan American Highway. We looked ouside and it looked like a traffic jam. “No problem,” or so I thought. But after about 5 minutes of stand still, the bus shut it’s engine off. NEVER a good sign.

Well, it was about 100 degrees in that bus in the matter of about 7 minutes and the bus driver said we could all get out of the bus (still on the middle of the highway)…again, never a good sign that anything is moving too fast.

Turns out that there was some sort of bank strike and the workers block the road to make statement. So…we had about 2.5 hours on the side of the road where we met some really cool other travelers and started up a game of Uno with them (as it turns out, Europeans play by completely different rules).

The stopover would have been ok but we almost got plowed down by a chicken bus in the middles of the highway who decided to back up. Seriously…almost got ran over but I managed to save the Uno cards from destruction and myself from mutilation and ran out of the way.

So after a LONG delay, we made it to Esteli, Nicuragua. In Esteli, the organization I am here with (GVI) has a brand new project that is just starting up that we wanted to see and help out with for a few days.

So we met up with another person from GVI (Steve…who I worked with in Antigua) for dinner and then off to the first hostel of my experience.

Little Hostel Luna is a very quaint little place with dorm style rooms (I feel like I should be writing for Lonely Planet right now) and we were actually lucky to be the only ones in our dorm room so we each had our own bunk bed. The place was run by an English woman named Janie but who now goes by Juanita…who by the way was GREAT and helped us out with everything from water to how to get out of Esteli.

Tuesday morning we were off to the project. To say this project is different from the other projects I have worked on is an understatement. After taking a bus a few minutes, you have about a 30 minutes walk to the school. The school is nothing more than a tin shack, tiny room with three classes inside.

Like I said, the project is in it’s infancy and it just makes me realize just how far the other projects have probably all come from the beginning. These kids sit in broken desks with pigs (yes pigs), puppies, chickens and about 1,000 flies in the classroom with them. Talk about distractions.

But these kids are just happy to have a school to go to. The area is very near to a garbage dump where the kids work at in the afternoon. They all hop onto the garbage truck and to to the dump to sift through to find aluminum.

It is hard not to be overwhelemed with sadness when you see these kids. And the first day, I was really just sad for them.

But like always, kids never seize to amaze. They are all so amazing…and truthfully, not that different from any other kids. They play freeze tag, the girls make up choreagraphed dances, they play hand clap games…and laugh and get into trouble some too!

So Esteli was awesome and I’m so glad I got to see the newest of GVI’s endevours. But there was no time to waste. Right after school on Wednesday, we were back to the bus station and headed to Tipi-Tapa!

In Tipi-Tapa, we hopped off the bus and were immediately greeted by a mini shuttle to Granada (Purple Dot). The mini-shuttle had seats for 12 but there were 26 of us in there….nuts! So after about 1.5 hours in the ridiculously cramped shuttle, we made it to Granada!

Granada is a little colonial town on Lake Nicaragua and it was adorable. We paged through Caroline’s Lonely Planet book and found what seemed like would be a good Hostel named Hostel Oasis. Well, after I dragged my way too big suitcase around Granada and was ready to ust sleep on the streets, we found the little Oasis and even though it was no Hilton, it did the job.

We weren’t quite as lucky to have our own room with this one and actually were in a room with about 10 other completely full bunk beds. (Seriously...thank god for sleep aid medication…) We plopped our bags down and got comfy in our new place. This was definitely a backpackers place with people snoring in hammocks and taking advantage of the free internet.

We found a fun little Mexican restaurant where we had quite possibly THE strangest street entertainment I have ever seen. Let’s just say that these breakdancers would definitely have made the blooper reel in the So You Think You Can Dance tryouts.

After dinner, we wanted a little something sweet and headed to the chocolate cafeteria for some delicious chocolate cake…mmmm….so very Nicaraguan of us.

Back to the hostel to snuggle up with 19 other strangers. Caroline and I spent Thursday getting to know Granada. We literally went straight down the list of “sights” in the guidebook and I think we actually managed to see every last one of them! We went into many churches and even had a hilarious conversation about birth control options inside one with the big JC himself staring down at us. And of course, we managed to take some completely inappropriate pictures.(me in confessional)

Thursday night we stumbled upon a free (hint, hint!) modern dance performance…which was amazing. If it hadn’t been 107 degrees in the performance center, it would have been perfect. But it was great…filled with costume malfunctions and all (I’ll let your imaginations go on that one…) and then dinner at the most adorable Italian restaurant where I fell madly in love with our waiter...

So Friday morning, we were on the move again! Yup…we caught the 6:45 am bus to the Rivas and then to the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Now I have been fortunate enough to do some pretty good traveling in my life and I’ve crossed a few borders. But none, I mean NONE are even 10% as INSANE as this border was. So after being directed to door number 1 and then door number 2 and then door number 1 and back again (all with my luggage that was way too big…have I mentioned that??) we managed to cross the border out of Nicaragua.

Now I thought that was it…nope. Now we have to cross the border into Costa Rica. So…we drag our bags about a half a mile through deep mud and puddles through essentially about 35 moving Mack trucks. It could have been a video game people. It was crazy. I seriously think this is there way of border control. They figure if you survive the border cross, you can make it though the country.

So after nearly dodging the 35 trucks, we make it to the other line where you have to pay (hint) to cross the border. We use the let’s just say, very undesirable bathrooms and it was off on another bus to Liberia in Costa Rica!

In Liberia, we had to change buses to crazy local buses to Playa Tamarindo (white dot). So we are driving into what looks like Playa Tamarindo but have no idea where to get off or where the hostels are or pretty much anything.

Then, we spot an equally confused looking traveler on the bus named Audree. Well, this girl had done her reading on Costa Rican hostels and she led the way from there.

After nixing a few hostels (one that was painted like a milk bottle on the outside and one that smelled like a combination of fried eggs and body odor) we stumbled upon Hotel Chocolate…and it was fabulous! They had an actual room for us (not a hostel!) with three beds.

So Audree was our roommate and travel mate for the next two days. It’s so weird when you are traveling how quickly you can make friends…and new roommates. It’s like an unspoken agreement. I’m not sure how to describe it and I’m not sure you can until you’ve just done it but it is both odd and comforting and the same time.

It was rainy and muddy out but that didn’t stop us from checking out the beach and grabbing some dinner. The beach was GORGEOUS and we knew we had chosen a good one right away.
It was a pretty early night after pizza (yum…) and a trip to the grocery store where they had…wait for it…YOPLAIT! We had a fridge in our room so I stocked up for about 3 weeks (even though we had 1.5 days in Costa Rica ahead…)

Next morning, it was up bright and early to lay in a hammock, read and fall back asleep. Then sometime midmorning, we dragged our asses to the beach (our lives are so hard). The weather cooperated and we had sunny skies the whole day.

We found a man send from heaven who was renting beach chairs and umbrellas (let’s just say, best money spent on the trip) and settled into our “day at the beach.” Audree and I rented Body Boards and managed to catch a few waves which was so fun…check out some pictures…

We broke up the day with some smoothies and French fries and then to watch the sunset. Back to hotel, showers, and another delicious dinner. (At this point, we had had Italian 3 nights in a row…pretty much the tour of italy through Central America. But Italian is always reliable…)

Bright and early Sunday morning, it was back to the bus…and we started our very long journey back.

Now up to this point, other than a couple small snags (namely a almost being run over by a chicken bus and crossing a treacherous border) we had a relatively smooth journey down. Well, that was all about the change.

We hopped on the bus in Playa Tamarindo to go back to Liberia and sat next to two transsexuals who kicked us out of our seats….this should have been some kind of sign. We got to Liberia and waited for about 1.5 hours for a bus that just never came. Luckily, we found 3 Austrailian surfers who where in the same predicament so we shared a mini-shuttle with them and about 7 tons of tortilla chips to the border. Yes…back to the border.

Luckily, this time we were sent what we now call “God’s Gift to Gringos”…aka: a small boy looking for tips who safely guided us across the border (after the sun chairs, perhaps the best money we spent). It took us about 2 hours to get through the border…insane.

Got to the other side and were in a sea of chicken busses. Finding the one to take us to Virgen was no easy task and there were about 15 cab drivers yelling “TAXI! TAXI!” in our ears. Somehow we don’t blend in as locals…not sure why.

So we finally climb onto the bus and make it to Virgen where supposedly there is supposed to be abus to another lazy beach town we wanted to see called San Juan del Sur (pink dot). Well, we waited at the “bus stop” for about 2 hours. I say “bus stop” in quotes because we were basically in someone’s front yard with a pig tied to a tree, roosters running around our feet and a homeless guy. So after two hours, we gave up and sucked it up and took a cab into San Juan del Sur.

This “cab’ (again in quotes) was a run down car that had about 17 miles left in it but managed to pack about 9 people in the back seat of a tiny Honda and we were off.

Needless to say that by the time we got to San Juan del Sur, we weren’t exactly in the mood to “shop around” for hostels. So we just went to the first one on the book.

Bad Idea. Bad, bad idea.

Hostel del Oro is literally where hostels get a bad name. It smelled like my suitcase after a summer at Herzl, was a mosquito’s paradise and was filled with the grossest type of traveler…the surfer. It was not good. To top it off, our pillows were not pillows. Caroline’s was literally a sack of potatoes and mine was like a bag of rope.
At this point, we had two choices. A) Break down and start hating the trip or B) fall hysterically laughing onto our “beds” for about 15 minutes. We chose option B. It really was hilarious.

After the bout of hysterically, we mangaged to check out the beach which really was gorgeous but after our day, we weren’t so much feelin’ the vibe of San Juan del Sur.

We finished out “tour of italy” with a great little restaurant and tried to stay out as late as possible to avoid as many hours in that hostel as possible.

We took the 5am bus OUTTA there Monday morning and headed to Managua (blue dot). We arrived in Managua at 8:00 am and then found out that the earliest bus to Tegucigalpa was at 2. Now Managua isn’t exactly known as the safest city on earth so we went to the one place that was….the mall! Yep…we spent out day at Payless Shoes, McDonald’s and Imaginarioum toy store to kill time before our journey back.

Finally boarded the bus at 2 and made it to Tegucigalpa (back to the yellow dot!) late that night and had an absolutely beautiful lightning storm on our way. It was amazing.

Caroline’s boyfriend’s, borther-in-law…you get it…picked us up and it was back to his house for another night before heading back to Copan (red dot!!!) in the morning!

Needless to say, the trip was unbelievable. That is the best word I can think to describe it. I can hardly believe it really happened! The trip was amazing but I have to say…it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. And without a few things, I could have never done it…

• My peanut butter…seriously…best snack every invented.
• Ambien…I love sleeping pills…
• Afterbite cream…no need to say more
• My headlamp…guided my way to several shared bathrooms
• My iPod and Kindle…good music and books…without I either would have gone crazy or driven Caroline crazy
• Caroline…I couldn’t have asked for a better travel partner…Caroline can navigate those busses…and it doesn’t hurt that she is completely fluent in Spanish. We just kept saying how we took a risk with each other considering we really didn’t know each other and most people I know and love I wouldn’t have done this trip with! Thank you Caroline for everything!!

Like every trip though, no matter how wonderful it is, it just makes you realie how good it is to be “home”…and for now, that home is right here in Copan!

Ok…so now it’s your turn blog readers….how much did this 10 day adventure cost??? Keep in mind, 10 nights lodging, busses, taxis, 30 meals, border crossings, peanut butter, sun chairs, gringo guides, ALL of it. I will post the answer in about a week with a break down of all the costs (don’t worry, I’ll blog before that I just want to give people a chance to respond…

I want guesses from everyone! Closest to the real answer wins a prize…ok, show me that you are still out there reading!

xoxo,
Debra