Crossing the border, Rivas and San Juan del Sur

06/07/09-08/07/09

So the time has come for us to say farewell to Costa Rica, where we have spent the past five weeks and a bit, and move onwards and upwards to Nicaragua. We had our final breakfast in Nicoya in Cafe Daniela, where he had many of our meals and where I was finally able to try another Costa Rican speciality called pan de yuca (yuca bread). Yuca is a crop native to Costa Rica and other countries in this region of the world. To make the bread, they use flour made from the roots of the crop, and other ingredients, which I'm not too sure of, but it's delicious and I took the opportunity of eating it whenever I could :)

From Nicoya we had to take a bus back to the capital, Liberia, from where we could get a bus direct to the border at Peñas Blancas. The processing of crossing the border was chaotic and confusing to say the least and took at least 2 1/2 hours (we take for granted in Europe how freely we are able to move between countries). First there was a queue to leave Costa Rica and everyone seemed to be filling in forms of various different colours. We didn't know which forms we needed, but Vic finally managed to get two white ones, which we hoped would be ok. There were some cheeky people charging a fee to go and get the forms for you and help you fill them in, which we found ridiculous. Surprisingly enough though, some people do actually pay for this service. There were also several men offering to change your unwanted colones into cordobas (the Nicaraguan currency), which we decided to do as we still had a fair amount of colones, although afterwards we were worried that the cordobas might be fake. Luckily they weren't :)

With our passports stamped, we were finally able to make our way to the border on foot. When we reached the Nicaraguan side, we were surprised to find it even more disorganised than in Costa Rica. Again there were more forms to be filled in, and this time we had to queue up twice. One queue was to get a stamp confirming you had been checked for swine flu (although no medical examination is actually performed) and the other was to get your passport stamped and pay your $7 entry fee. We had met a mother and daughter from Canada earlier on in Liberia who were also heading to Nicaragua (they have been living in Costa Rica for eight years, and in spite of trying they have not yet been granted residential status so every 90 days they have to leave Costa Rica for a day in order to be able to spend another 90 days there - what a pain!) We had decided to share a cab with them to Rivas, 36km from the border, and they had already arranged a cab with a young boy, who was now helping them with the forms and queues. As we were sharing the cab, he helped us too, and although it still took quite a while to get everything paid, signed and stamped, I think he saved us a lot of time, and so we were finally on our way.

Rivas did not make a good first impression on us, and for the couple of days we were there, I really missed Costa Rica and wanted to go back. The good thing about backpacking, however, is that you don't have to stay anywhere for long, and so we soon left Rivas behind us, and headed to the beach of San Juan del Sur. It's a small, clean town with a nice church, a small port where people go fishing, a lovely beach and beautiful sunsets (apparently). The port is at one end of the beach, and at the other end there is a tall cliff, from where a statue of San Juan overlooks the town (we assume it is San Juan but we don't know for sure). Walking along the beach towards evening, we bumped into Alan, the American we met in Montezuma. It seemed surreal to be seeing him again two weeks later in a different country :) We really like it here and would like to stay for longer, but we have already arranged to go to Tortuga tomorrow, where we will be spending the next month as volunteer English teachers, but more about that in the next post! I am sure we will be back in San Juan most weekends, as there is no internet access in Tortuga, and we can't leave you without updates for a whole month can we now? :)
(P.S. All photos were taken in San Juan del Sur)