Somewhere Over the Rainbow

17 de agosto - sabado (en el avion al Miami de Managua)

1:15 pm  

I was so proud of myself for keeping up with regular writing during our travels more or less. But then we started doing a lot more rigorous hiking and activities & we were so busy from sun up to sun down that spending hours to write just got checked off my list of things to do & sleeping took more of a greater priority. Entonces…

Here we are at the end of our trip already back on a plane headed for Miami and reaching Denver by about 11:00 p.m. tonight. Noman has some sort of surprise awaiting me (or us?) when we get home. I have absolutely no clue what it is! All I know is… something happened at the last minute or he thought of something at the last minute & as a result, this is what he's filled me in on:

• He missed his initial flight from Denver to Charlotte
• The car is completely packed full of who knows what sitting at the airport
• Because there’s only enough space in the car for a driver, I’ll have to take a bus separately to get home when we arrive in the middle of the night and he’ll have to come pick me up from downtown
• We’ll be paying for 2 weeks of parking at the airport since he missed his first flight and left so late
• He lost the parking ticket so he doesn’t know exactly where the car was parked at the airport or how much they’ll charge him...
• We have to be somewhat busy tomorrow doing “something” 
• He’s told everyone about what this surprise is- even friends we met along the way while traveling- except me... and I have no clue what he’s talking about… his family was really surprised that he did all this without telling me.

This is all that I’ve been told so far. We’ll see when we get there tonight I guess.  My only guess was “are we moving?!” Like maybe he found a cool place to move to all of the sudden- which would be cool, but he told me that’s not what it is. So we’ll see after my bus ride home tonight.

So other than that randomness, let me catch you up on the past week a half and wow!!!...what A LOT we’ve done in that amount of time! Here’s the highlights of our agenda/accomplishments to start with and we’ll see how much time I have to explain any or all once I put down a rough list (being that we’re supposed to arrive in Miami in about 45 minutes and it's taken me a while already just to write this intro...

• Indian night learning how to make homemade curry & naan at Essence Arenal (our army tent veggie hotel)!
• took a super expensive private shuttle ($55/ per person!!! geez!) early in the morning on Paris’ birthday to go to Tortugero-“the turtle place"/island off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica
• 1 hour boat ride more to get there
• Lonely Planet guy showed us where our hostel "miss Miriam ll" was, which was super helpful because we showed up on this island having no clue where to go next!
• Me, pear, & a daughter-mom pair from Germany when on a turtle watch in the middle of the night in secret, undercover-co-op, black military gear & watched sea turtles come in and off the coast and lay eggs (these were HUGEEEEEE greenback turtles!!!)
• Woke up for a canoe animal watching excursion at about 5:30 the next morning: including the sights of rare birds, howler & spider monkeys, an anteater, and a few cayman crocodiles which were eerily close to our canoe!
• Transit back to San Jose on Friday morning: boat off the turtle island ~ bus to the next city, Cariari ~ public bus to San Jose ~ taxi to hotel (total cost less than $10!) and total time: approx. 6-7 hours.  And boy was my mom a trooper with her limping leg!
• 1 night back at Casa del Parque in the capitol city and dinner at a cool, local pizzeria.
• No show taxi driver in the morning, so we saved some money & found the public bus for about $2 to take mom to the airport. We missed our stop to actually get off the bus at the airport and ended up stranded on the middle of the highway for a while before finding a taxi to rescue us and take us back to the airport.
• Goodbye mama :(  She flew out to go back to North Carolina because her teaching semester starts sooner than mine.
• Hello Noman :)  He flew in from North Carolina, ironically enough, after visiting his family for Ramadan.
• Paris, Noman, and I took a public bus back to Casa de Parque for 1 night, including a weird walk around Chinatown, including an unplanned, overly expensive dinner (we basically got lost walking all around & were starving & it was the only place we could find to eat!)
• Bused it to Monteverde/SantaElena the next morning around 5:30 AM. 
• Found our hotel after roaming the streets with Paris shouting out “Kristy Benton??!” looking for a person who left her kindle on the bus with us.
• We end up finding the girl, Kirsty, actually checking into the same hostel as us ironcially.
• Spend the next 3 nights with a fun mix of new friends at our hostel Pension Santa Elena - Mats from the Netherlands, Kirsty (kindle girl) from the UK, & Samir (briefly) also from the UK.
• Night walk to animal watch w/ flashlights
• Woke up early to go on another nature hike in the cloud forest. Very cool! And beautiful! And excellent guide who was excited about every single tree and bird and animal we came across!!! :)
• Afternoon rappelling down a set of 6 waterfalls...WOW! Amazing! Slightly nerve racking! Exhausting! Bruise inducing!
• Learned a fun new card game that’s apparently super popular called “backpacker’s favorite”, aka 'Shithead'.
• Next day - canopy/adventure excursion including: Ziplines through what seemed to be the top of the earth...crazy high! One was over a mile long too! Sitting & strapped in face-first like” superman“ flying, suspension bridge, & a Tarzan ”swing” which is the scariest, or at last ranking very high on the list of scariest experiences I've ever had... up there with hot air balloon ride (although I know I’m the ONLY one who was even remotely scared of that) but this Tarzan thing was mutually deemed terrifying by ALL!!! It included being pushed off a crazy high platform & free-falling, sort of similar to bungee jumping before the rope caught you & went swinging way high up back & forth. It was crazy INTENSE!! And “awesome!" (as we’ve now been told by our new travelling companions that Americans severely overuse this expression).
• Communal dinner with me, Pear, Noman, Mats, & Kirsty followed by birthday surprise dessert for Paris & of course… more Shithead.
• Back at the bus station the next morning by 5:15 a.m.to head onto our next adventure en route to Nicaragua... What's up with all these early mornings on vacation???  But that's when the buses come, so that's what you have to plan around.
• We meet a guy from Canada named Roman at the bus station who decides to tag along with us for the next few days.  Side note: this is Roman’s first international trip, he’s 23 years old and is traveling by himself, has a tiny backpack carrying only TWO shirts, ONE pair of pants, ONE pair of shorts, ONE pair of underwear, a towel, some sunscreen, bug spray, and a pair of flipflops. That’s IT! He knows NO Spanish except for the few words he’s picked up along the way… like a few colors & “donde esta”… whoa! 
• One bus to another bus to the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua...
• Paris temporarily loses her passport & goes sprinting back to find it at the border!
• Successful! Passport found! Whew!!! That was close...
• Another bus to a boat.. and voila… we have arrived at a very cool spot. Isle de Ometepe!

Arriving in Miami.. To BE continued…

(5:10 pm. - moutain time / 7:10 p.m. Miami time) Noman & I have made it to our gate and have about 45 more minutes before we board. Good unexpected surprise = they just made an announcement asking for 2 couples of people to volunteer to sit in the emergency exit seats & we jumped up (no one else was listening apparently) and we snatched them! Very exciting considering our flight from here to Denver is 4 hours. So now we’ve acquired extra legroom! Yahoo!!  

Alright, back to the list… where were we???

Isla de Ometepe!

• We walk around for a little bit with our new found friend Roman in tow -looking for a good hostel, when a girl on a scooter tells us about a place, so we start following her. Then her brother shows us on his scooter also & soon enough we’re following both of them to who knows where. Luckily, we end up at a great place, owned by a guy named Robinson- a charming, tall, smiley, super chatty guy about our age who used to live in Tennessee of all places, who bought and has been running a small hostel on this island for about a year. We found out later that he’s a massive ladies man/player, but he was helpful & enjoyable to be around nonetheless. There’s a giant room with 3 double beds and lots of windows for about $7 per night & we're all set up to stay for a few nights on the island!  Exciting!
• We’re up early the next morning by 5:30 and by 7 (after being snapped at by the owner of the American Café for being late to our scheduled breakfast) we’re on a short bus ride toward one of the 2 giant volcanoes on the island, ready for a MASSIVE hike!
• We meet a new friend from Argentina named Mauro who joins our group for the hike, so now we’re up to 5! Plus our guide, Walter.
• This hike certainly ranks up there with Cerro Chato, the last volcano we hiked in Costa Rica, now topping the list of the TWO most difficult hikes I’ve ever done!  5-6 hour hike total for me & Noman and an hour & a half longer for Paris who hiked even further up the volcano & another hour on top of that for Mauro,Roman,& Walter who made it to the very top. Holy crap! What a hike! But wow, the view from on top was incredible! Definitely worth it!
• Fun dinner to celebrate afterwards-after rounds of showers becuase we’re all covered in dirt, dripping in sweat, & disgusting!... we go to a recommended Italian pizzeria- me, Noman, Mauro, Roman, Paris, and a girl joins us who regularly visits the island due to nursing research she does there with woodstoves.
• Rounds of shithead are in order-then off to bed-I pass out for a while in a comfy hammock :)
• Island- day # 2. . . we rent scooters & ride around the island! Sooo much fun!! This is my 2^nd time ever officially driving a motorbike. The first was with Courtney in Panama City Beach, Florida which was actually stressful because I didn’t know how to break and there was tons of traffic as we were driving up and down the main, busy strip. This time was the exact opposite:  long country roads except the occasional herd of cows, and I actually knew how to drive it! So that was helpful of course ;) Paris tried at the beginning but wrecked & ran into a sidewalk in less than 1 minute after starting. So just Nom, Roman, and I drove and Pear just rode with us. We drove down to the beach, ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant by the water & then met Mauro at a natural spring nearby where we all went swimming. Noman was especially excited about drinking fresh coconut juice at the springs :)
• We drive our bikes back across the island, say bye to Roman, Mauro, & Robinson, just in time to catch a 4:00 ferry out and manage to somehow figure which public bus will get us closest to our next destination in Nicaragua - Granada!
• After a few more hours, we end up in Masay on the side of the road & it’s already gotten dark, so we decide to take a short taxi ride on to find a hostel before it gets too late. We find a very unique spot at a colonial mansion that’s been converted into an amazing backpacker’s hostel with open roofs/garden areas, stone pool, beautiful trees throughout and lots of hammocks!
• The next morning we enjoy free all you can eat pancakes at our new favorite hostel and our nice taxi driver from the previous day comes back to collect us and take us to the airport. He asks if we want to visit a popular market along the way that we’d read about & is in Masay, so because we left so early, we were lucky to be able to make an extra hour stop & buy a few cool souvenirs before leaving, including a cool ceramic jar & an awesome beige and red bag to add to my international collection!!! Perfect way to end our trip!
• Managua to Miami & now Miami to Denver! I’m finishing this just in time because our plane is just about to take off! 4 hours from now we’ll be be back in Denver- one adventure has come to an end, while apparently another will begin with Noman’s surprise ;)

See you next time!  Where should we travel to next???