Last week was Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is a week of vacation here in Central America. We had the whole week off, and it was a nice chance to rest a bit after a busy March with Spring Break groups. I spent half the week traveling and the second half of the week at home catching up on sleep, work, and just hanging out with some of my housemates and community members.
To start off our travels, Maggie and I hopped on a bus early Friday morning and headed to a town called San Miguelito, a small town right on Lake Nicaragua. I had found a farm online which did ecotourism, so we planned to spend two nights on the farm and explore the area around there. We were expecting a guest house or some kind of separate building for guests, but it ended up just being a two-night homestay in the house of the family who owns the farm. Eduardo and his family were amazing and made sure we had a good time during our stay. The farm is beautiful, the food was great, and I really enjoyed relaxing and being away from the "real world" for a few days. To get to the farm, it was a 45 minute ride in a wooden canoe (with a small motor) from San Miguelito out to the farm. There was no running water or electricity on Eduardo's farm, so it was pretty primitive but very sufficient. :-)
To start off our travels, Maggie and I hopped on a bus early Friday morning and headed to a town called San Miguelito, a small town right on Lake Nicaragua. I had found a farm online which did ecotourism, so we planned to spend two nights on the farm and explore the area around there. We were expecting a guest house or some kind of separate building for guests, but it ended up just being a two-night homestay in the house of the family who owns the farm. Eduardo and his family were amazing and made sure we had a good time during our stay. The farm is beautiful, the food was great, and I really enjoyed relaxing and being away from the "real world" for a few days. To get to the farm, it was a 45 minute ride in a wooden canoe (with a small motor) from San Miguelito out to the farm. There was no running water or electricity on Eduardo's farm, so it was pretty primitive but very sufficient. :-)
On Sunday morning, we headed further south to San Carlos, a town on the corner of Lake Nicaragua and Rio San Juan. The bus left Sam Miguelito at 6:00AM, so we has to leave Eduardo's at 4:30am in the wooden canoe. The sun obviously was't up yet, and it was an incredibly clear night. For the first half hour or so of the trip, the only lights we could see were the stars in the sky - there were no unnatural lights around. It was amazing, to put it lightly, and incredibly beautiful. After we got to San Carlos, we hopped on a motorboat to take us down Rio San Juan to El Castillo, the town we were staying in. Rio San Juan is a huge river which is the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and it has a lot of beautiful jungles and amazing scenery. During our three days in El Castillo, Maggie and I toured a fortress, went canoeing, saw crocodiles, went for a hike in the jungle, and more.
We then jumped on a 14-seater plane run by Nicaragua's domestic airline to head back to Managua last Wednesday. The airport in San Carlos was literally one room and a semi-paved runway....but the flight was great and we got back just fine!
Pictures below from the trip. :-)
This fortress in El Castillo was built in the 1600s and used to keep pirates from coming up Rio San Juan into Lake Nicaragua.
Maggie and I with the river, from the fortress.
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