Congratulations to Costa Rica!

Here's a little shout out to my student M and his Costa Rican heritage:  congratulations on the Costa Rican team's historic performance at the World Cup!

The valiant Central American nation's football team thrilled its fans when it reached its first World Cup quarter final match with European powerhouse the Netherlands.

I caught the first half of the scoreless draw last night but fell asleep and missed the disappointing penalty shoot-out at the end.

Holland out-shot the Ticos 4-3 to end Costa Rican hopes, but it was a wild ride just same. . .


http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/jul/04/world-cup-2014-five-things-costa-rica

To Perquin Via Choluteca, or From the North?

My next decision is one of logisitics:  should I return to El Salvador right away from the east and proceed to Perquin from there?  Or should I travel by way of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and approach Perquin from the north?

The Lonely Planet warns that because of a border dispute with Honduras, El Salvador does not have an immigration checkpoint on the road to Perquin from the north.  This may not be a problem for me since technically I'm still traveling on my initial 90 day stamp I received from the Guatemalans at the start of my journey.

But the Planet warns that if I exit from another El Salvador checkpoint, I could conceivably face the issue of having formally exited Honduras without formally entering El Salvador.  Because of this potential uncertainty, I'm probably inclined to enter El Salvador from the east, just to be on the better-safe-than-sorry side of things.

On the other hand, since I've now postponed Costa Rica until late this summer, that gives me more time now to visit Honduras for a bit, which I'd really like to do.  Though I'd prefer to skip Tegucigalpa, it might be worth my while to explore some of the area to the north of El Salvador.

My original intent had been to use Honduras as a transit point between destinations, but now that the option is open, it seems a shame to completely pass on by.

Thus I'll be busy with my guidebooks tonight to fix some alternate plans.

Helping Moses Stay In School

I was walking across the Granada's parque central late last Saturday afternoon when the kid caught my eye.  Later what struck me was the pure desperation I glimpsed in his eyes.

"Hey, man, hello, how are you?" he said as he approached me.  Thus began a short conversation of small talk with Moses, a 19 year old native Granadan.  He was yet another of several young local men that I met over the weekend who have an excellent grasp of English from their interactions with tourists.

Granada is the main town that kicked off Nicaragua's recently successful experience with tourism, and it shows.  There are so many hotel rooms that it's easy to find a decent one for less than $20.  And there are plenty of "touristy" type amenities such as horse and carriage rides, and restaurants--some with "international" cuisine--that have inflated "tourist prices" to match.

Unfortunately, there are also some of the more unpleasant kinds of things you find in a tourist town, such as an unusually high number of beggars, hustlers and even drug dealers.

So I was already on my guard when Moses approached me.  But he was catching me at a bad time, toward the end of a hot day, when I was on my way back to my room for a cold shower and a nap. And since I sensed he was about to pitch me for some dough, I quickly brought things to a close.

"Listen, it was nice to meet you, but I have to get going now, " I said as we shook hands.  "Maybe I'll see you again here in the center."  And I turned to leave.

Just as I turned onto the street of my hotel, I heard him calling me, half a block behind.  This I really didn't appreciate--he had followed me for a block and a half--but I turned around to face him.

He began to tell me the story of how he is a student who goes to school everyday.  "The school is free, and this is my last year, but I can't afford the cost of the notebooks. . ."  I let him speak in this vein for another 30 seconds.

"Listen," I said, "I'm sorry but I cannot help you at the moment.  Look for me again sometime later in the center, but right now I can't do anything for you."

This was true since I had only a little cash, not even enough for a coffee, on my person.  But I was annoyed that he'd followed me almost to my hotel, and that just wouldn't do in my book.   So he turned away in defeat, still with that look of hopelessness in his eyes, and we went our separate ways.

I didn't see him again on Sunday or Monday but this morning as I was having my coffee and watching the first half of the Uruguay-Mexico match, he spotted me and approached, "Hey man, how you doing?"

"I'm good, how are you?" I said as he joined me at my table.  And he began to tell me his story, that he's a student in his last year of a five year "college" (but I think he meant high school), that most of his family lives in Costa Rica.  "There is more work there, so my mother, my brother and my sisters live there to work.  It's very hard to find a job here in Nicaragua."

He said his father died eight years ago in a car accident and his mother remarried "but my stepfather doesn't like me."   In Granada he stays in the house of a friend's family "but they are very poor.  Basically I'm alone here."

He wants to visit his mother in Alajuela, near Costa Rica's capital San Jose, but he doesn't have a passport.  "I have no visa, either."  His mission now is to graduate from school where he takes "all the subjects:  history, geography, Spanish, mathematics, physics."  He will graduate in November this year, then "when I have my diploma I can start to look for a job as a waiter or bartender or..."

"Tell me about the notebooks."  So he explains that although school is free, he needs five notebooks, one for each class.  "They are too expensive."  He said he skipped school on Monday because he doesn't have anything in which to take his notes.

So I question him a bit.  "When does your school year begin?"  In January, he said.  "So since January you go without notebooks?"  No, but the ones he had are now full.  "What about your teacher?  Can he help?"  The school is already free, he said.  It's not his teacher's responsibility to come up with the notebooks.  "What does your teacher say if you go to school but without the notebooks?"  He says, Moses:  where are your notebooks?  How can you finish your schoolwork with no notebooks?

"How much do the notebooks cost?"  About 110 cordobas for five notebooks at the market, a little more than five bucks.  "That's a lot of money!"  I say, and it's true, there's no doubt about it.  It's about what we in America would pay for the same thing--maybe even more expensive than what we would pay.

"At the library," Moses said, "they are even more expensive, maybe 30 cordobas each."

Five bucks is a lot of money, I thought to myself, but if his story is true I should help him out.  Five bucks is a lot, but not if it helps a kid to stay in school.

I finished my coffee and made a decision.  "Okay, let's go to the market and buy you some notebooks."

So off we went.  It's clear Moses isn't a street kid.  He's clean but ragged around the edges.  His jeans and t-shirt are a little bit old, maybe, but they are freshly laundered.   Like me, he wears open leather sandals, but his are a few years old and worn, probably in need of repair.  I'm sure it's not just notebooks that he needs.

We approached a woman's stall where thick notebooks were stacked up.  Moses has been here before, and he knows exactly what he wants, but I'm not sure what he's asking the woman.

I ask her how much for a notebook.  "Vente cinco."  Twenty five.  So that would be 125 for five, even more than what Moses had said.

But now Moses is picking up only three notebooks, and he seems to be asking the woman for some kind of discount.  Since my Spanish is "pre-Twinkle," I'm kind of lost, but I've already made a decision, and I'll follow it through.

"One hundred five cordobas," says the woman, for the three notebooks Moses has in hand.  I pay her and we leave.  "Will this help you?  Do you have enough pens?" I ask.

"This helps me very much, " he says.  "Thank you for helping me with this.  Yes, I have enough pens."

Was this some kind of "notebook scam"?  Did he have an "arrangement" with the owner of the stall?  Why did she tell me they cost 25 cordobas, but then charge me 30 cordobas more than the 75 total that three should have cost?  The woman had been hesitant to name her price, and I had been in the dark with my limited Spanish.

But I had already made a decision, and I wasn't interested in any more details.  I didn't feel that it was useful to pursue any more info from Moses if the cost of that info required either one of us to lose face.

Besides, when he turned my way to thank me, the look of pure gratitude on his face was enough to set my mind at ease.

We walked back to the center, and we parted ways with another handshake.  "Thank you very much again for helping me with this."

"Buenas suerte, " I said to him, "Good luck in school, and maybe I'll see you again next year if I come back to Granada, and then you will have your diploma and your job."

"Good luck!" he said.  "I hope to see you here again."

Nica´s One of My Favorites

Leon is a premier destination for me on this trip, but I gotta admit that Nicaragua itself is a prime destination for me.

With all due respect to my Costa Rican Suzuki mother and her beautiful country and people, I have to declare that Nicaragua might be my favorite Central American country.  However, I´m not sure I can explain why.  There´s something about it I immediately notice once I´m past the formalities and on a bus moving toward my destination, but as I write this I´m still trying to put my finger on it.

It´s not only that Nicaragua, compared to Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras, seems so much less menacing, though that truly seems to be the case.  Lonely Planet claims El Salvador has 16,000 shotgun-toting private security guards, and it´s clear that Nicaragua is not nearly as obsessed with basic security as the other countries I´ve mentioned. 

And like the others, in Nicaragua there is poverty, broken infrastructure and the usual political conflict and controversy.

Yet it seems that Nicaragua has better tourist facilities and more features for ordinary joes like me.  For example, I love a good cup of coffee, and El Salvador was almost completely horrible for getting one.  Nearly every day last week I struggled in the morning just to feel awake with the muddy water that passes for coffee in that country.  But in Leon I´ve counted at least three espresso shops so far and I´m sure there are more.  The infrastructure here is already set up to get me moving on a daily basis.

In El Salvador at least so far there are very few entrepreneurs stepping up to provide guiding and other services to places like Volcan de San Miguel.   As the Lonely Planet points out, if you want to go there you have to do all the legwork yourself.  But here in Leon, there are plenty of businesses geared toward meeting the needs of the foreign visitor.

I´m not saying that espresso shops or guide services make it for me.  El Salvador is a fascinating place with very hardworking people who generally are quite welcoming to foreigners, and I still want to swing back there to visit Perquin on my way back north.  But I gotta say the Salvadoreans have a lousy cup of coffee, and after 10 days that´s wearing for me, on top of all the usual chores I have to do just to get around and be around in safety.

Here in Leon and other Nicaraguan towns I feel there are many people in a nascent tourist industry who care about what I need, about where I want to go, and about how I might get there.  At the same time the local scene isn´t spoiled to the point where the visitor feels any pressure to kick up bucks to an industry.  Most importantly, the security situation here doesn´t feel nearly as ¨edgy¨ as in other places in the region.   Altogether that´s a most basic definition of hospitality, and my impression is the Nicaraguans have it in spades.

The Route Ahead After Perquin

I offer this post as a picture for the reader of what I face in the days ahead.  Managua is about 9 hours from San Miguel by bus and includes two border crossings into Honduras & Nicaragua.  Considering the fact that I prefer to travel 4-5 hours per day at most, that means a two day trip with an overnight in the Honduran town of Choluteca.

Once past the Nicaraguan border formalities I have to decide if I will stop in Leon and/or Managua (probably one or the other but not both).   Then it's onward immediately to my true destination goals of beautiful colonial Granada & the charming Pacific coast town of San Juan del Sur.  Last year I visited both latter two places but was very short on time.  I would like to spend perhaps a week total in that area.

Then there's another border crossing nearby into Costa Rica and one or two days (at my easy-does-it tempo) to the capital San Jose.  A day or two there hanging out with my student's Uncle Marco is sure to be a highlight of this trip.

From San Jose, another day's travel will get me to Tortuguero, famous for its turtle-hatching seasons and its remote beauty (the only way to get there is by air or boat).  This is yet another place that, for me, is worth spending a few days.

At that point, Panama--or at least the Carribean coast of Panama near the Costa Rican border--becomes a viable option.  However, if I go that route, then Merida,Venezuela simply becomes not viable at all--if it ever was, at my meandering rate of speed.

Probably the reader has figured out already that this trip isn't really about getting to Merida, or any other destination, but more about the voyage of getting to several stopping off points along the way.  Budget issues also play an important part in my deliberations.  For example, if it takes me 14 days worth of hotel spending to get to Panama City from here, but I can get a flight for the same amount or less, should I buy the plane ticket?  The answer is, not if that expense puts me wildly above my projected costs for the entire enterprise.

Hard Travel on a Rugged Coast

It didn't take long yesterday to get to the coast from the Salvadorean coffee highlands, but once I was there I discovered a largely undeveloped but beautiful region of high forested cliffs, rocky coves and small isolated beaches with big waves(but possibly dangerous undertows).

This is the back way, or the slow route, from Sonsonate to La Libertad. What I thought might be a simple day trip from the quiet fishing village of Los Cobanos (The Coves) to El Zonte beach turned out to be a half day's hard travel on local buses. In fact, I didn't even reach my destination. After a 90 minute trip the bus went down the coast only so far as La Perla where I would've had to change for another bus, but by the time I arrived in La Perla it was getting late already--I needed to be back "home" well before dark.

By the end of a very hot day (93 degrees Farenheit) I'd decided to give the rest of this coastal area a miss but only because there are almost no hotels to choose from. The dubious room I ended up with in Los Cobanos was perhaps the worst value I've encountered thus far: an overpriced $15 for a hot (and not so clean), mosquito-infested hovel with no windows, AC, TV or any other amenity. The only things this place has going for it is it's right on the beach and the attached restaurant serves an excellent $7 fish dinner.

So I made straight for the capital city San Salvador early this morning to grab what turned out to be the best value so far in a very clean $20 room at the Hotel Villa Florencia (Centro branch). This room is terrifically graced with windows, AC, TV & the other amenities! I'll be here for two days, then it's on to San Miguel in eastern El Salvador, then on to Honduras & Nicaragua.

Since I need to start making miles, I'm seriously considering booking a seat on a Tica bus--the first class airconditioned option--to go, if not to Panama City in one fell swoop, then maybe as far as Managua. I'd like to revisit the grand colonial city of Granada & the quiet little paradise of San Juan del Sur before crossing into Costa Rica.

TicoNica 2009 Blog Link Below

Check out the dormant blog of my Costa Rica/Nicaragua trip from August 2009 which is in many ways a prequel to this current blog. Click the link at the very bottom of this page . . .