5th of august

arriving in managua was hectic. there are a lot of people, everyone tries to drag you somewhere, sell you something or cheat you. once we got off that bus from granada the first thing we were told was not to grab just any taxi because taxis are dangerous in managua. a very assuring start.

managed to take ourselves to the hotel mentioned in lonely planet. since streets have no names in this town it is rather challenging to locate any place. while driving about in the taxi asking everyone for the hotel "casa vanegas" we suddenly got a guide in a form of a young guy who promissed to take us there. the driver was sceptic, we were just clueless as to what to do. got to the hotel that had no name on it. in fact we were not even sure it was the hotel we were looking for but since our bags were dragged in the "only" available room for some insane 40 dollars/night price, we just had to follow. it was already back then that we got this slight hunch that maybe we were being cheated. anyway once got the key to the room, the next question was if we were interested in buying something that is considered illegal in all the coutries except holland and jamaica (i presume). we were honestly just baffled but it was curious how the same guy that led us to the hotel was very much insisting on selling us his stuff anyway. all that time we tried to say that the only thing we needed was a taxi and well in 10 min time (a bit too fast actually) there was a taxi at the door ready to take us anywhere.

the driver don bayardo was just all a big smile, overly friendly and of course offered us a whole route around town with him being a guide for a mere sum of 12 dollars/hour. once again that feeling of paying tripple the amount the locals would pay creeped in our minds. the problem was that don bayardo was just way too friendly and i did encourage marianne to have a look at the clock when we left the hotel in order to keep the track of time, because somehow it was quite evident from the beginning that our "friend" was going to make us pay 3 times more than what we should pay. my hunch didn´t let me down. we were driven to quite a few touristic places that happened to be closed just then, took a 30min lunch break and what not and ended up in a heated discussion with the driver regarding the final sum of money we were suppose to pay him. can´t say that this was not typical, but well it still feeled pretty damn unpleasant to be sitting there knowing that you are being cheated and not being able to switch to another option, because of the non-existance of this other option. a day spent in managua was extremely expensive and not very productive but quite entertaining in terms of socializing with the hotel staff. the same guy i mentioned earlier (his name was luis if i´m not completely wrong) was of course around once again when we got back to the hotel and promissed to get his reliable taxi driver friend to take us at 5 am the next day to the bus station on the other side of the town. we negotiated one price, but however once we got to the bus station the next day at 5.30 am the price suddenly rose by some 30% due to some unexpected costs and in the end we got ripped off once again. the taxi did drop us off though right at the bus door because driving to the main entrance and leaving 3 girls with backpacks at 5am to walk some 20m alone is too dangerous in managua. funny how taxi drivers make their profit from the general insecurity of the city. i don´t think anyone wants to take his/her chance in this situation and empirically try to prove the taxi driver wrong. hence, accept to be ripped off.

now it was time to lay back and not even think of when we might get to the town of el rama, situated virtually on the other side of nicaragua. the journey was going to be long. well, the actual journey is only 300km but taking in account the condition of the roads and the type of bus we jumped on, it took us 7,5h. we had plenty of time to listen to every kind of music from cumbia to the world famous rock hits of the 80´s performed in spanish. no one probably even doubted they were not originally written in spanish. we did though and that is why earplugs were put to use at some poing. buying snacks from the sides of the roads every hour also made the travelling quite ok. it was very interesting to notice how the landscape was changing as we were approaching the carribean coast.

once in el rama the next chunk of our journey consisted of taking a motorboat down the river to the town of bluefield. obviously timetables don´t exist for motorboats and we were told to sit back and watch tv until the boat would get full. it was 1.30 pm. first we watched some crazy movie about mexicans in USA, yawning from time to time, then we were an object of interest of little shoepolishing boys that found it particularly odd to watch us sticking contact lenses in the eyes. there were still not enough people for the motorboat to leave. then we started watching another movie, this time french about moliere and i believe it was close to the end of the movie that we were told that the motorboat was going to leave. we got to the boat....in order to figure out that there were 21 passengers and 20 seats on the boat. as a matter of fact i was that 21st passenger who didn´t have a place to sit on the boat!that was when the captain started first encouraging the person without a ticket to stand up and give himself in and then just plainly started verifying everyone´s ID with the data they have about passengers on the paper. it took forever. questions were like "sir, how old are you?wait, you put here that you are 50 but you look much younger!". rediculous business. i was sitting on the pier all that time as the 21st extra passenger wearing the life-jacket. since the captain could not figure out who that extra person was, coast guards appeared and thought we 3 looked particularly dangerous. hence our passports were meticulously examined, questions were made and at some point it seriously looked like they were going to make us get off the boat because of those such suspicious european passports. i was afraid our passports would get dropped in the water or some papers would fly out or something since the coastguard was standing on another boat. eventually after all that half an hour passport control he disappeared in the office. the whole boat was still waiting. now we didn´t even have our passports. (btw i had to dig out that passport literally in front of everyone from my secret pocket inside the pants) some 10 min later that man of an extremely high IQ level appeared and said to us that we only could stay in nicaragua for 7 days. at that point it was our 8th day so according to him we were in nicaragua illegally. amazing. i thanked god that at that point the captain of the motorboat interfered and pointed out that EU citizens were allowed to stay in central america for 90 days without a visa. he then also pointed out that the paper the coastguard was holding and from which he was reading 7 days in fact said 7 dollars and not 7 days. 7 dollars is what we paid at the border with nicaragua when we came from honduras. unbelievable. efficiency at its best. at 5pm we finally got to leave el rama. finally!i was sitting almost in camille´s lap but i was sitting in that boat!in fact we even made an extra stop on the way to bluefields to pick up one more person, so max 20 people/boat is a flexible perception.

so, with our hair looking completely mad after that 1,5h boatride we finally were in bluefields. hurray!exhausted we dragged ourselves to the hotel we checked out from lonely planet. naturally the hotel was full. they guided us to the next hotel nearby. such a damp i´ve never seen in my hole entire life. i thought it was not possible to have a hotel like this: shady people, spider nets on the walls, wallpaint falling off and a strong smell of urine in the corridor. bluefields sweet at your service. a place lonely planet classifies as "definitely stay out of there". it was dark, we were tired and so sleeping was our only desire at that point. i sprayed bug spray on the windows hoping it would keep the cockroaches away. hopefully the mosquitos also stayed away, bluefields is experiencing a wave of dengue fever at the moment. we spent less than 12h in bluefields i think and it seemed like it was way too much.