The ferry fare from Isle de Omepete back to San Jorge was C20 extra. Just because? Different company? No idea! From there we went for the lazy option and jumped in a taxi to take us to the guesthouse we’d booked in San Juan del Sur. It took a while to get the driver to agree to a $15 fare for him to finally state it would be $7 each – you do the maths! It wasn’t a ridiculous amount for the distance travel and the convenience. Bueno Onde Backpackers http://www.buena-onda-backpackers.com/ was extremely good value at $22 for a large private room. We didn’t have our own balcony but there were loads of comfortable places to sit that caught a most welcome breeze. The French owner was incredibly amiable – he even brought us a glass of chilled white wine as a welcome drink. The catch? The hostel is located on the outskirts of town and up a hill, so no opening your door and skipping into the sea. However, the views over the bay were wonderful.
We’d read that this area was one of the most touristy in Nicaragua but we thought that probably didn’t amount to much and the weekend trippers would have left. Yes, there are lots of souvenir shops and tour operators but it is far from spoilt and has plenty of places to stay and eat. As we were walking down the main strip I heard someone bid me, “Ola” so I politely replied. I was startled on looking round that I’d made an avian acquaintance and perturbed to see it behind bars. It seems parrots in cages are common here in Nicaragua. The bay is in the form of a huge, deep horseshoe with wide sweeping sands, when the tide is out. There’s no natural shade but the constant breeze stops you from feeling like you’re cooking. The downside to the wind is we got rather sand blasted so beat a retreat within an hour. Actually we didn’t have much time as we had to go back to our room to collect the passports so we could book our onward inter-country bus ticket.
Later that evening we hoped in a jeep to take us to find some turtles. There are a couple of beaches in the area that are among the world’s most important turtle nesting sites. We assumed we’d be going to one of these so gladly agreed to $25 transport and C200 – each. A couple of nights previously someone had been lucky enough to see over 1000 turtles emerging from the sea and digging their nest pits. We knew we were beyond the peak of the mass landings where up to 20 000 olive-ridley turtles come ashore every night. We felt we could be quietly optimistic but actually would be glad just to see one. In the end that was all we did see and then it proved to be a most upsetting experience. It transpired that we weren’t taken to an official reserve but were taken by a man with a pickup and a torch to a random beach. He couldn’t / didn’t tell us anything about these magnificent marine reptiles and didn’t even seem to know the best approach for finding them.
The one lonesome turtle we did see, he successfully managed to scare straight back to sea through directly shining his torch onto to it too often. Steve and I left the beach feeling dismayed that this sort of malpractice is in operation and depressed that we’d contributed to it. It’s always the luck of the draw with wildlife and we don’t mind seeing nothing, if we feel the money we’ve paid is going into protecting the animals and their habitat.
The following morning we were still very downcast so decided to move on. Not before informing the owner of our experience, who was disappointed to hear that he wasn’t organising the best tours for his guests.
