This was definitely one of the best weeks that I’ve spent in Nicaragua. Then again, that shouldn’t be a surprise to me since I knew that San Juan del Sur was going to be right up my alley what with the whole beach-sand-sun-surfing thing. I’m already dreading our departure tomorrow to the middle of nowhere in Masaya, where I’ll be lucky to have electricity and a mosquito net. Then again, my Spanish could use some touching up again so I’m looking forward to the intense language and cultural immersion that we’ll be experiencing tomorrow.
Today I dragged myself out of bed at 8:30 to get my free breakfast, which ends at 9. I’m not sure if the lady who runs the hotel knows this, but her clock is always about twenty minutes and she gives every sign that she thinks it’s the right time. Either way, it means I get breakfast for twenty minutes longer than I normally would.
I promptly went back to sleep for another two or three hours after breakfast and after sorting out my laundry. Somehow (and this typical of me) I couldn’t find any laundry places that my fellow peers had used that very morning but all the ones I found were closed or told me that my laundry would be done the next day (Monday). I’m going to be cutting it very close by picking up my laundry pretty much at the same time our bus is coming. The laundry situation also meant that I had to go without a towel for the entire day, even on our boat tour and after I showered, yet at the same time I couldn’t NOT wash my towel which had been dragged all over the beach and back the day before. To substitute, I used my bed sheet, which was surprisingly absorbent.
After waking up from my nap/extended night’s sleep, I took a walk around, buying some souveneirs for people back home and exploring the few blocks around our hotel around a bit. I later found out that Hotel Estrella, the hotel we’re staying at, is the oldest hotel still in existence at San Juan del Sur. There’s a photo behind the main counter showing a railroad track that originally existed right in front of the hotel. I’ve also realized how small a country Nicaragua is. Or, should I say, how self-contained the tourist track is. I’ve run into people I’ve met in Granada and Leon and Matagalpa, who either took tours with us or were a friend of the friend or happened to work at the hostel where we formerly were staying. There’s an immense feedback loop that goes on amongst people here as students/sometimes tourists and we end up running into one another over and over again.
At two we departed for a sunset cruise, which I had been looking forward to since we got here to San Juan del Sur. My only regret is that I didn’t get to take surf lessons, though that regret is my fault because I was too cheap to splurge on lessons. The “cruise” took place on this dingy little boat with a netted roof, a boat which I did not mind at all, since that’s what we’ve been taking on tours all the time. However, I tried hard during the entire 5 hours we were out on the water not to spend too much time pondering the fact that we were on a small, plastic bathtub with a motor attached out in the mighty Pacific Ocean.
We sailed out on these gorgeous waters, past amazing cliffs and small rock islands. We even spotted from far away Playa Maderas, where we had spent the day before. I wonder how the beaches here got formed, since they’re all these little scallops of sand that are carved out from the cliffs on the shore of the coast. The geological formations reminded me very strongly of Capri, my favorite place in the world besides home. The water was crystalline, flat and clear, and wondrous rock formations and crests would rise out of the water around us.
We sputtered around for about a half hour before reaching our destination, a beach I think was named White Sands. The beach was completely deserted and un-commercialized, with the exception of some seemingly abandoned straw-thatched houses, completely untouched as well. Like all the beaches here, it was nestled in a little cove which looked like a hidden scallop of sand from the ocean. The water was a beautiful green-blue color and clear enough that one could see right through. On both sides we were surrounded by tall black cliffs. The sand was incredibly soft on the beach, but before we could reach the beach, we all donned snorkel gear and flippers and jumped off the side of our boat to explore the life on the floor of the ocean. There wasn’t much, but I had fun anyways learning to snorkel for the first time, which wasn’t took difficult except for the fact that I had leaky goggles that kept causing me to snort/swallow burning salt water. Sitting on the beach and looking out of the bay through the cliffs was almost unreal. Except for some pricy yacht floating off in the distance (it looked straight out of a J. Crew catalogue shoot), it was just us with our colorful snorkel gear, a small boat, and the waves, sun and sand.
Afterwards, we headed out to deeper waters where we began fishing with some crude bait and tackle. We managed to catch a few small ones, but those served as bait for the real catches later on - two huge, two foot long fish that we caught within the span of half an hour. I’ve never understood the appeal of deep-sea fishing (or fishing really, at all) until today; fishing is in fact one of the most exciting pastimes. We connected (by we I mean our tour guides) three fishing lines together to create a stronger, fortified fishing line which we loaded with an entire fish. We caught a two foot long sturgeon first. Then, we landed a massive fish called a jack (I think?) which took Greg about ten minutes of hard core wrestling to bring up. I just about died with laughter when Greg had to wear a pelvic brace thing from which he could put the fishing rod to create more resistance with which to reel the fish in. One of the crew would be waiting near by to spear the writhing fish with a harpoon. Then of course, it was the obligatory victor’s shot with the fish. Our overflowing cooler had to be sat on because the fish would still flop around even after being harpooned and having their spinal cord cut.
We stayed out long enough for the sun to set on the water. Beautiful sunset, great catches of fish, general chill atmosphere and laughter...it was the perfect end to a good week. We dismounted the boat on the beach, seemingly emerging out of the water with huge fish in our hands. I wonder what people walking on the beach thought. We also found a restaurant that would cook our fish for us, and it turned out to be not only economical but also delicious. One of the fish (the jack, whatever it was called) turned out to have extremely dark meet, so that grilled, it looked like steak.
I also heard some interesting conversation about Daniel Ortega and FSLN on the boat.The two drivers were NOT fans of Ortega, noting that in the seventies and eighties when Nicaragua’s civil war raged, he mandated that all young go into the army and sending them out to extremely rural places, often pulling them from college. Additionally, his administration seemed to behind the killing of the father of one of the tour guides. The two guys also said that there was a healthy mix of people both for and against Ortega in San Juan. They called him a communist, no better than Fidel or Chavez, which are extremely strong words in a country where I see trees and electric posts painted with the black and red colors (death and blood) of FSLN and pro-Ortega slogans painted over houses, sidewalks, the sides of buildings, etc. Ortega has almost unanimous popularity among the poorer Nicaraguans. Carolina, my Ometepe mom, told me that Ortega had been the only president for the poor and done admirable things such as give out free roofs and food, which I found to be nice, but dangerous because a) populist campaigns like that tend to obscure the real issues and let radical leaders get into power and b) that only ameliorates the symptoms of poverty rather than solves their root cause. Perhaps San Juan del Sur is so touristy that it is more capitalist than the rest of the country and so many people are opposed to him on economic policy issues. Ortega does say, directly on his ubiquitous political billboards (even though the election was more than two years ago) “Socialist, Christian and Solidarity,” something you could never get away with, not to mention win on, in the US.
Goodnight! I’ll be sleeping without covers tonight...
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