Born to Surf

Welcome to NICARAGUA!!!!

As soon as we cross the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua, the difference betwen the two countries was in your face. Cars are extremally old, buses they use are school buses from the 50’s, houses are shacks that are made of whatever materials they can find , cows on the streets. Everything very rustic

Playa Hermosa sunset

The prices also fell substantially and a cab from the border to a little town, San Juan del Sur, was US$25 and took 40 minutes to arrive. This small town has evolved into a major surf town for the area, where people come to do what they call as SURFARI. Once you check-in to your hostel/hotel, experienced surfers merely pack their gear and go surf one of the nearby beaches.  For the surf-virgins, we can rent our gear at any of the local shops and take a lesson easily.

The place is very mellow.  The small bay sits between 2 little mountains covered with forest. Restaurants line up on the bay and there are some local artisans selling their work on the street. The perfect place where hippies and surfers get together for a beer

Surfer from way back

We stayed at the very well-known, Hostel Casa Oro. There they offer surf lessons for only    US$20. And of course, we went looking for our dream to surf in the Pacific Ocean; it worked out well.  It was one of those really long boards, 9 feet and 4 inches, but we were able to stand up several times. The board looked more like a flat kayak and of course we had a few wipe-outs, but who doesn’t?

14 yo security with a a gigantic gun

Next day, we were promoted to surf on a 9 foot board, then to 8 feet and 6 inches. A little more difficult, but we had nice waves.  I was so excited and I was working so hard that my arms were really sore at the end of the day and I ended up wanting more. Who knows, maybe at the next beach? The biggest surprise was how scary this beach we went was. Called Playa Hermosa, there was armed secutiry for us. Very deserted, the beach was just beautiful. We had a nice time when there were only 8 people on the beach.

Born to SURF

Turtle eggs at midnight

On the last night we went to a tour at the Turtle reserve, where the turtles lay their eggs. 3 nights before we went, there were 1,400 turtles on the beach, on our night only one came. But was interesting to see her working and laying the eggs. I did not know that but there is turtle egg traffic and even the Nicaraguan armed forces were on the beach to offer some protection to the turtles.

We finally left the surf town to Ometepe Island in the Nicaraguan lake. I will take about this later and about the great colonial town of Granada in the next post.

If you would like to see more pics, just click  here.