Una gran aventura - Border hopping from CR-Nica

The very idea sounded ludicrous. With the TicaBus and the TransNica bus - our two options for a comfortable, hassle-free journey from Costa Rica to Nicaragua - both booked until the 27th December, the travel agent in Monteverde had just delivered our only option for travel across the border. We could get on a local bus at 4.25am, get off two hours later at some random point on the PanAmerican Highway, flag down any local bus heading north, change at Liberia for another local bus to Penas Blancas, cross the border, and get a local bus on the Nicaraguan side. Our final destination was to be Isla de Ometepe, which would require a ferry and another bus before we would finally (hopefully) arrive.

With so many variables, and not being so keen to stand on a highway at 6.30am trying to flag down buses, I needed reassurance from the travel agent. Would we definitely be able to get a bus to stop and pick us up from the highway?

“Sure,” our Tico amigo replied. “Maybe it take you 4 hours, maybe it take you 10 hours. But sure, a bus will stop. No problem!”

We asked some local taxi drivers how much they would want to drive us to the border. The lowest bidder was US$200 - that’s a pretty expensive cab fare.

So that is how we found ourselves waiting for the 4:25am bus out of Monteverde, bleary-eyed but ready for the epic journey north to Nicaragua.

We boarded the local ‘chicken bus’ with a handful of other Costa Ricans, and bumped our way over the dirt roads and out through the darkness. Our bus driver was an amicable chap who stopped every 100metres or so to pick up a new passenger. There is no need for a bus stop in Central America, as buses stop anywhere along the road to pick up anyone, even - as we soon discovered - if the bus is already packed to the brim with people sitting and standing in every available space. It is like a Dr Seuss poem;

There is always more room!
Move up, move down!
Move left, move right, move right around!
That arm can go here,
Her leg can fit there!
Hey look - you’ve only got 4 in that chair!
Your bag will do nicely
Up here on your head,
And you, sir, can sit on the dashboard instead!
Can you do yoga?
Twist your elbow, your knee,
More people can fit, just wait and see!
Squash in, squish out,
Squash through the door,
There is always, always, room for some more!
More people can fit,
And here is the proof:
It looks like its time to make room on the roof!

As the sun rose, the darkness out of the window gave way to a gorgeous view of rolling green mountains dotted with cows and horses. At least, this is how Fletch described it (I was fast asleep - not even the chicken buses can cure my vehicle-induced narcolepsy). Christmas trees stood proudly on the front porches of the little cement houses along the roadside, their windows twinkled with fairy lights in preparation for navidad.

The bus dropped us off at 6:30am at La Irma - basically a service station and a bus shed on the side of the highway. We were in good company, with about 8 other locals and an Israeli backpacker also destined to wait for the bus heading north. For 30 minutes, we watched an endless parade of buses headed south whiz past. Three Costa Rican men gave up and jumped in a taxi. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. I yawned. And then - a bus! To Penas Blancas!! I jumped up and hauled my pack on my back, then flagged like a maniac at the bus. Closer, closer…..and there it goes. The bus didn’t stop - it was packed so full that the driver had made the regrettable and very uncharacteristic decision; no more passengers. Dr Seuss would be sad.

Fortunately, another bus passed about 15minutes later, and this driver was happy to squash a few more people on. We climbed aboard, and stood in each others’ armpits for the next 72km to Liberia bus station. Here, the operation became a little easier. As soon as we got off the bus, we heard the holler of ‘A la frontera! To the border!’ from a neighbouring bus and followed the sea of Nicaraguans aboard for our last leg in Costa Rica. We even scored the last seat! To celebrate, we opened a packet of fried plantains doused in lemon and salt for breakfast. Mmmm que rico!

We had been warned that there would be many people at the border crossing. Thousands of Nicaraguans have immigrated to Costa Rica for work and they’re all headed home for Christmas, and we had chosen the busiest day of the year to join them. This is the reason that the direct TicaBus and TransNica services were booked out. This is the reason that all of the buses headed north were full to bursting. And this is the reason why it took the Heinemanns just under 4 hours to cross the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

The wait on the Costa Rican side was bearable; the queue was only about 200m long and we were mostly in the shade. When we finally arrived at the window, the disinterested immigration official stamped our passports whilst talking on her mobile phone, without so much as a glance at our faces. With this precious stamp, which we had waited an hour for, we were free to leave Costa Rica.

A proud Nica on the Costa Rican side had assured me, “The line is not so long in Nicaragua. There, they are more organised. They have more officials. It will be very quick.” His patriotism was endearing, but he was wrong.

We trudged through about 800 metres of no-man’s land, full of mud and sludge, as we approached the Nicaraguan post. Scores of trucks waited idly, stuck between the two countries and stuck in the mud.

We showed our passports several times to various officers, as we were herded closer and closer to the immigration booths. And then we saw the line.

It stretched past the booths and around the perimeter of the car park, before snaking back towards the entry to the facility. The line was about 500 metres of Nicaraguan excitement, it was moving verrrrrry sloooowly, and we tacked onto the end of it. If the immigration line is anything to go by, Nicaragua is definitely the place to be this Christmas.

The border post was a veritable carnival. There was a stage set up with children performing traditional dances, and speakers pumping out reggaeton tunes at full volume. Hawkers plied the queue, selling everything from watches to sandals to Christmas CDs. People paid a few cordobas for someone to fill in their immigration form; we paid a few cordobas for them to give us a blank form so that we could keep our passports. We bought a chocolate ice cream from the ice cream man, and a Gatorade and 2L of water from the lady selling drinks. At lunch time, a stall appeared selling fried chicken and corn chips, right next to the man selling souvenirs. And still we waited.

We made friends with Ronnie, a cheeky 14 year old kid in front of us with excitable eyebrows. Ronnie was heading back to Nicaragua for Christmas, loved to play baseball and had the same haircut my brothers had in 1995 (crewcut around the side with zig-zags carved into it). He was the epitome of Nicaraguan cool.

Ronnie tried to guess our age;
“How old do you think Fletch is?”
“Umm..38?”
“No! Lower.”
“Umm…21?”
“No! In the middle”
“Umm….39? He is old!”

And he tried to guess where we were from;
“Germany?”
“Nope.”
“USA?”
“Nope.”
“England?”
“Nope.”
“Europe?”
“Nope. Try Asia-Pacific..”
“Ahh. Russia!”

Despite having questionable numeracy and geographical skills, Ronnie was a great kid, and we enjoyed his company for a good hour or so until he mysteriously disappeared, possibly in pursuit of the dancing Nicaraguan girls.

Finally, we found ourselves at the window of the Nicaraguan border control, where we paid US$12 to finally get that stamp in our passport. Hooray! We then squeezed past the crowds, crossed the road and joined another line to enter the bus stop. We had quixotic intentions to travel on the local chicken bus to our next destination, until we realised that the chaos of the border had merely relocated to the bus we were about to board. It looked like this:

So, we cheated. We jumped in a taxi with some random Americans who were headed to the beach, forgoing a $1 bus ticket for a $10 taxi ride with the assurance that our bags were safely in the boot and not on the roof. In actual fact, the taxi was really just some guys’ car with a sign in the window, and the boot didn’t close properly, but it still seemed a better option than this:

We weren’t headed to the beach, but the advantage of our detour was that we got to see a glimpse of San Juan del Sur from the taxi window. It looked like this:

At about 3:30pm, we arrived in San Jorge, to jump on the ferry across to Isla de Ometepe. It was precisely this time that Fletchie lost his sense of humour. When I tried to take a photo on the boat, he looked like this:

The ferry lurched for an hour across Lago de Nicaragua towards Isla de Ometepe, an island formed by two volcanoes rising out of the lake with an isthmus connecting them. If there’s one thing we have learnt about volcanoes, it is that you really only ever get to see half of them as the top half is nearly always shrouded in cloud.

The ferry dropped us at Myogalpa town, where we squeezed onto yet another chicken bus headed towards our final destination - Charco Verde. Finally, just after 6:00pm, more than 13 hours after we left Monteverde, we ended up at our home for the next few days. And the journey had been worth it, because our new home looks like this: