So I’ve only just now gotten back from my second trip into Nicaragua. It wasn’t exactly time for my visa trip out of the country, but Mark was absolutely miserable without me, so I decided to throw him a bone and travel with him on his spring break to San Juan del Sur. Some people think that I might have missed him too, but those people are know-it-alls who should not be trusted.
Since I had already traveled to the border once, I was immediately happy that this time would be much easier. This happiness lasted right up until the point when Mark told me that he was flying into Liberia. He said it was to save on tons of money, but I am conviced it is because he secretly hates me. My easy, nothing out of the ordinary trip got a tiny bit more complicated. There are zero buses from Monteverde to Liberia. Instead, you have to catch a bus from Monteverde to a stop along the main road, and then catch a bus from there to Liberia. This sounds incredibly simple, especially when the ticos are all explaining this as though it is the easiest thing in the world.
In reality, the result is some white kid standing on the side of the road for two and a half hours. If that person is a defeatist, as I am, he soon gets convinced that he will not only not make it to Liberia, but he will die right there were he stands. Let me explain my problem with catching buses on the side of the road. Locals often know what the buses look like. They know to wave down the blue and white bus for city A and the green bus for city B. Not being local, I did not have that going for me. Fortunately, all the buses have signs on them for where they are going. Unfortunately, all those signs are tiny. By the time you can read them, the bus is already passing you.
Thirty minutes after my defeatist attitude had me praying for a swift death, I saw a bus that was headed to Liberia pull into a gas station. What the bus catching system lacks in…the catching portion, it makes up for with its knowledgeable and friendly bus drivers. Half of my travels are only successful because of these guys. The bus driver told me that they were passing right in front of the airport, and he could drop me off there.
After getting to the airport, the rest of the travel to San Juan del Sur went smoothly. Waited for the first hottie to get off the plane (luckily for Mark, he was the most attractive person there), took a bus to the border, ignored everyone trying to “help” us, and then took a taxi the the beach town of San Juan del Sur.
Since there weren’t really too many pictures taken on the way, here is a picture of me feeling the beach life:
grodyphil 