February 19th: Costa Rica Day 6

So, I guess the name of this one is a bit of a misnomer, because we spent most of the day in Nicaragua, not Costa Rica.

We had to be up at the lobby to catch our bus at 530 in the morning - ugh. Let me tell you, that was an early day! On the way to Nicaragua we stopped at a little restaurant place for breakfast which was pretty tasty - I had the best orange juice I have ever had in my entire life! Now, I am not a huge orange juice fan usually, but if all orange juice tasted like that I would drink it 24/7. I was AMAZING! Anyway, then we hopped back on the bus and went to the border.

At the border we had to get off and we each had to get our passports stamped with an exit stamp on the Costa Rica side, but on the Nicaragua side the tour guide took all our passports and they could stamp them all together and then just verify that we were who we said we were when we got back on the bus. So the time in between we got to just kinda chill out at the border for a while which was odd. We perused the duty-free shops (I bought some yummy candies that were like Starburst, but so much better!) and then we just sat around chatting and getting to know some of the other people on the bus. There were a lot of Canadians and then there were also a lot of British people and a couple people from Ireland as well, so that was interesting. Also, there were a lot of Nicaraguans at the border trying to sell you stuff they made - and most of it was crap. I hate to say that, but it is true.

Our next stop was small little spot on a each with a great view of a couple volcanoes. While we were there we saw a bunch of little, hard, almost coconut looking things that had fallen off a bunch of trees. We asked about them and the guides told us that they were called ??? and that the people would often take the stuff out of the inside and grind it up and mix it with milk to make women more fertile, then they would use the shells as cups and stuff like that. It was beautiful there.

 The next stop was a volcano in Nicaragua that is still active called the Masaysa volcano. It was smoking and everything! It was so sulfury up there that you are only allowed to stay in the area off the bus for 20 mins. There was a giant cross at the top of this giant flight of stairs and they said that a lot of people get confused and think that the cross used to be involved in the human sacrifices they did, but that isn't the case. In fact, they did do human sacrifices in the area because they were placating the gods of the volcano so that it wouldn't erupt and kill them, but then this Christian guy came and said that actually the volcano was full of evil spirits, so he did an exorcism on it and then put up the cross to show that the volcano was 'clean'. And they always had a lot of gold in the area so later some other guys came and thought that the gold was actually what was in the volcano (basically they thought that when lava cooled it turned to gold) and they assumed there was a 'cooling room' somewhere in the area (there are a ton of little caves all around the outside) so they went exploring through all the caves to try to find this mythical 'cooling room'. It is so funny to me what people think sometimes.

Next was a quick stop to go shopping in Masaya square - that was great, I got lots of fun things there. :D Then we went to lunch in Grenada city in this little restaurant. Afterwards we took carriage rides all around Granada city. The guide was so knowledgeable about the area - he had been driving the carriage for like 7 years (since he was 15 years old!) and he told us lots of cool little facts about the things we drove past. It is the oldest city in Nicaragua and so there was a lot of history to tell us about.

 

After that we hopped back on the bus and headed back to Costa Rica. We went through the border again - same drill. Then we headed back to the resort. (I can't remember if we had dinner on the trip or not ... )

That night we went to the bar area and guess who was there? The waiter from the Mexican restaurant! (His name was Oscar just fyi) He was like "there you are! I haven't seen you in a while, I missed you" and we were just like "missed you too". We chatted a bit about what we had been doing and stuff. Then he says "You are really beautiful, do you have a boyfriend?" and I was like "no" and he was all surprised and then he asked "How old are you?" and I said "27" and he was like "me too! marry me?"
I, of course, said yes (jokingly of course - I would never agree to marry someone that I didn't know very well ... unless he could get me a green card! haha jk). This is our engagement pic.

We saw this kid we had met the previous night again named Pablo and chatted with him for a bit. He was interesting to talk to because he was from Costa Rica, just a different part, and he was there on vacay with his family. He had some great stories about snakes and other wildlife so that was pretty entertaining. Then it was off to bed because we were super tired.