For
your convenience, we have hyperlinked
each one of the destinations listed below, in our humble rendition of an Interactive
Itinerary. That means that when you point
your cursor right over the name of either one of the nine cities we will be
visiting between July 12 and August 5, 2012, you will be taken to an
informational site that will give you a sense as to what the landscape is like,
the people, their cultural traits, their celebrations and the region’s major
tourist attractions.
What
follows is a quick hyperlinked run down
of the different sites we’ll visit, and the lodging and people we’ll be meeting
along the way. Oh! By the way: don’t worry about your rusty Geography skills:
here’s a map of the Central American Isthmus so that you know where to look for us when browsing
through Google Earth.
On the Way to the Southern Corridor
We’re flying
United Airlines from Seattle to Houston, Texas, and from there we fly to Managua, the Capital
City of Nicaragua. We’ll land on Thursday, July 12, at 11:00 a.m. We will be
picked up at the Aeropuerto
Internacional de Managua by Don Marcelo
Prado, the proud owner of Casa San Juan (Casasanjuan.net), a family owned
business started in 1972 by his grandad, Don Francisco Mejía, a man fond of
providing hospitality and respite to mochileros, or backpackers, who back then were passing through
Nicaragua as much as they are now, us included in the bill. We’ll be staying
there from the 12th through the 14th.
On the night of the 13th, we’ll be
hanging out at the famed La
Casa de los Mejia Godoy, home to the famous Carlos Mejía Godoy
y los de Palacaguina band, a group of musicians who started writing
and composing emblematic songs with a social justice punch in the 70’s. We will
be front-row, basking in the light of such a legendary artist and his pals on
such a night. In between, we will get acquainted with the city and its history
by visiting different sites, including the famous one known as Huellas
de Acahualinca.
After this relaxing yet active entry into
Nicaragua, we head down South, to the town of Masaya on Sunday, July 15, where
we hope to visit several sites, including the Mercado
de Artesanías, or
Artists & Crafters Market for which the twon is well known. While there,
we’ll be staying at Hotel
Monimbo.
After this quick stroll through Masaya, on the
16th we’ll be visiting beautiful Laguna de
Apoyo, one of the most visited lagoons in the region (did we mention that
Nicaragua is adorned with a plethora of small lakes and lagoons throughout its
territory?) While there, we will stay at San Simian Hotel (Sansimian.com). We’ll be enjoying
the hospitality of Daniel, the Swiss owner of the hotel, who has given us the Watermelon
Bungalow (or “Sandía”, in
Spanish) not knowing how much Ario enjoys watermelon.
Continuing down South, we’ll be heading to the
City of Granada,
where the sites are many, and the activities to be had, plentiful. We’ll be
arriving there on the 17th, and we’ll stay there ‘till the 20th at the much
hailed Hotel Maltese (ph #
2552-7641), where we hope to rent bikes if the weather is not too hot (Kat is
afraid she’ll melt in these latitudes!)
After spending some time with the bohemian crowds
of Granada, we’ll be making our way down to the border of Costa Rica, where we
will be visiting San Juan del Sur
for a much needed visit with the beaches and the ocean. While there we hope to
stay at Hotel
el puerto (our reservations haven’t been confirmed at this point!) We’ll be
hanging out here the 20th and the 21st.
On the 22nd of July we’ll be heading to
enchanted Isla de Ometepe,
where we hope to partake in the Annual
Festivities in honor of Santa Ana, the Patron Saint of the isle. While in
this island, we’ll stay at the ecologically run and conscious Hotel Escuela Teosintal. We will
leave this enchanted piece of paradise on July 25.
Looping Back North, and closing the circuit
Looping Back North, and closing the circuit
At
midnight, on Wednesday, July 25, we’ll be testing the Ometepe-to-Granada Ferry
System, which
hopefully will place us in Granada at 4:30 a.m., where we’ll have breakfast to
subsequently find our way to our first northern destination: the town of Matagalpa, where we will stay
for two nights (the 26th and the 27th).
We’re specially interested in this town because we
have heard so many good things about it, including the fact the climate tends
to be a lot more temperate, there’s excellent coffee, and language schools crop
up as much as the coffee beans in the nearby plantations, thus making this
location an excellent candidate for us to spend most of our time in Nicaragua
within its borders… we shall see, but know that you’ll be fully informed whether
this is the case or not in the long run. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!!!
On the 28th and the 29th
we’ll be visiting the nearby town of Jinotega, referred to as “the
City of Mists,” a nice
little location enclosed on all sides by mountains dappled in cloud forests
crowned with granite ridges and pocked with deep gorges. Sounds like Kat’s kind
of town, right? Well, we shall see…
On the 30th and the 31st we
hope to make it to the border town of Esteli. Legend holds that
if there is such a thing as Eternal Spring in Nicaragua, you shall find it in Estelí. Home to
the oldest coffee plantations in the Central American region, being a
Sandinista stronghold, having a University campus, and a market center for
thousands of farmers, Estelí seems to abound in possibilities as well for our
potential stay in Nicaragua… it will be hard not to put all our eggs in one
basket, don’t you agree?
On the 1st and the 2nd of
August, we close the northern loop by visiting the intensely political, and
overwhelmingly charming city of Leon, a
destination known for its awe inspiring churches and streetscapes that lead to
stunning little eateries and an intense nightlife any day of the week.
After two or three days in León (we’ll let the
political muses and the holy ghost guide us), we’ll head back to Managua where
we will take a Tica
Bus bound to San Salvador, where Ario’s family will be waiting for us to
sit down and enjoy twice told tales and pictures of our cultural immersion in
the land of lakes, poets, and revolution: Nicaragua. Also, we will be arriving
to partake in the National Annual Festivities of El Salvador’s patron saint, El
Salvador del Mundo.
Stay tuned to hear our impressions of that new
adventure…
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