19/08/2022 From León to Granada
Granada
We took the shuttle from León at 9 am and arrived in Granada about three hours later.
It was nice to be back here and see all the beautiful colourful houses again.
Lunch at Pita Pita
After we checked into Oasis Hostel for one night, we spoiled ourselves and swapped streetfood for a nice restaurant. “Pita Pita” is located right next to the Garden Café where I had lunch last time in Granada.
And then it was time to get ready for one the reason why we got back to Granada on a Friday: the treehouse party.
Go wild at the treehouse party
Apparently, this treehouse party is really well-known amongst backpackers that travel through Central America. So we wanted to see what the hype was all about.
Feeling like cows
The 40-minute-ride to get there was already quite interesting: together with lots of other backpackers we all stood crammed together on the back of a transporter. We felt like cattle!
Beautiful views
In the jungle we had to hike up a steep rocky hill until we got to the treehouse.
The view was clearly amazing! We took the early shuttle to be at the treehouse for sunset and it was definitely worth it!
Tattoo studio at the jungle party
The later it got, the crazier the party became. You could get face paint in one corner. Furthermore, you could walk over the small hanging bridge to another small treehouse. Here a tattoo artist tattooed party people, who were either crazy or drunk enough (or both) to get a tattoo at a party in the jungle.
Let’s (not) see the wizard!
And if you were even crazier you could climb up to another floor of the treehouse to see the “wizard”. The wizard is a woman who sells all types of drugs to the party people. And it seemed to us that we were the only people at the party that hadn’t seen the wizard. Most of the people at this party were definitely on another level…
In the end we really enjoyed the party, the views and the setting and we loved seeing and talking to people again who we had met at other places in Nicaragua before. However, we personally preferred the Sunday Funday in San Juan del Sur: It was more our type of music, we liked the change of scenery with the four different party locations and it was a bit easier to actually talk to people who weren’t on drugs.
20/08/2022 From Granada, Nicaragua to somewhere in Costa Rica
Bye bye, Nicaragua!
After waking up at around 7.30 a.m. in the hostel (in a private room this time), while everyone else was still asleep after the jungle party last night, Blake and I had our free breakfast (banana pancakes) and then checked out.
Today was chicken bus day again! We are heading back to Costa Rica. But we haven’t booked any accommodation for the night, mainly because we don’t know how far we will be getting. Again, there are no real bus time tables, neither on the Nicaraguan side nor on the Costa Rican side.
So let’s start the journey and see where we’ll end up tonight!
From Granada to Rivas
The fist chicken bus was six blocks away from our hostel. When we got closer, we could hear a man yelling “Rivas! Vamos!”. The man pretty much ripped off our backpacks from our shoulders and threw them onto the roof of the big yellow school bus – off we were to Rivas. Besides one other white couple we were the only “Cheles” on the bus (= a white or pale-skinned person, coming from “leche”, meaning “milk”).
During the two-hour-bus ride there were several people asking everyone for money on the bus: someone selling banana chips, another one selling drinks, a blind person, a man selling medicine and a young kid that was singing a song.
From Rivas to the border Penas Blancas
Our plan was to catch another chicken bus to the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I think the guy inside the chicken bus, who was collecting the money, ripped us off, as he told us there is no bus going to the border anymore since it’s a Saturday. With the research I had done (you can’t get the German fully out of me), I doubted it. Unfortunately, he took our bags off the roof of the bus in the middle of nowhere before getting into the town Rivas. Surprisingly, there was a taxi waiting for us exactly where the bus had stopped. We bargained the taxi driver down. But at this point we had no other chance than to agree to the taxi ride to the border.
Exiting Nicaragua and entering Costa Rica
When we exited Nicaragua (again with our drone – thank god), we ran into another Dutch couple we had met at the free walking tour in León. Together with them we hopped into a (much fancier) bus. Only 300m further we had to unload our backpacks again in order to enter Costa Rica by foot. When we were at the same border two weeks ago, we walked that short part together with the German guy Olli and the Swiss couple.
From the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border to Liberia
After getting another stamp into our passports, we were back in Costa Rica. We put the backpacks back on the bus and went to Liberia.
Stop in Liberia
At 3 pm the bus dropped us off in the middle of a big street. We had achieved our goal for the day: getting to Liberia – everything else would be extra for here on. We walked to the nearest McDonald’s for wifi (and to get out of the heat) to think about our next move. All the buses we needed to catch were gone for the day.
Should we stay in Liberia and do a six-hour-bus ride with three different buses the next day for very little money? Or should we pay way too much money for a taxi and wake up in La Fortuna the next morning (hopefully full of energy again)?
Here it became clear once again that we certainly are flashpackers and not (always) cheap backpackers anymore as we chose door number two.
La Fortuna – here we go!
On a side note: we only decided in McDonald’s in Liberia that La Fortuna would be our next stop. Originally, we had planned to go to a national park on the way. But with the poor public transport system in Costa Rica it wasn’t really practical.
A taxi that isn’t a taxi
So right now we are sitting in a guy’s personal car who told Blake to sit in the front (so that it wouldn’t look like a taxi ride – he clearly isn’t authorized). We just stopped at his house and then at a lottery booth for him to buy lottary tickets.
But now we are really off to La Fortuna. We should get there around 8 pm. Let’s hope an accommodation still wants to take us (and our money) as we haven’t booked anything yet. The German-planning-Jana is already drifting away 😉.
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