After much deliberation we decided that Guatemala wasn’t going to be our “forever home”. We only got to see a little of what Guatemala has to offer tourist wise and it’s beautiful. The people are amazing but the land is expensive – especially in the places we would want to live. Honduras was off the list, Costa Rica, Belize & Panama are off the “Dirt Cheap Life” list too due to being too expensive.
Generally we have observed when there are too many wealthy Expats in a certain area – the prices start to skyrocket. We are looking to integrate in to our new home country and not disrupt the social fabric of it!
So after a bit of research in Expat forums and online we thought we would try Nicaragua for size.
Antigua
After catching a ride to Antigua we stayed overnight at Casa Ichik; a perfect location, right in town. We dined out at Fridas Restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed it. Antigua is a Spanish colonial gem, surrounded by volcanoes and in 1979 declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Antigua was once the capital of Guatemala, but due to ongoing earthquake activity, the capital is now Guatemala City.
El Salvador
The following day we were off. We were crammed into a minibus, packed with English Gen Y’s, we set off on our adventure.
We traveled with Rooney Shuttles. Initially, there were some issues with collecting us. It has something to do with the driver being held up, but we were eventually collected. All was well.
About 9 hours later we arrived in El Tunco Beach, El Salvador, and stayed at Eco Del Mar. A great choice and only 30 seconds to the beach.
El Salvador to the Honduran Border, then back to El Salvador
Onward to Nicaragua, so we thought.
Upon arriving at the Honduran border we had our first border rejection experience. It happened like this. We had been in Guatemala for more than 90 days, so in line with visa requirement we had renewed our visas before leaving Guatemala and that’s perfectly OK, in Guatemala.
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are part of a group they call ‘the CA-4’. For some reason, Honduras (well, on this day anyway) wasn’t willing to accept the visa extension granted in Guatemala. The particular border official who we were dealing with seemed to have some personal issues she may have been working through. The bottom line was, we were not allowed to travel through Honduras.
It was quite a funny scene, to be honest. After retrieving our bags off the roof, our Honduran border official friend walked us to the bridge that spans the border with El Salvador. She then barked in a loud, theatrical cry ‘vamos’, and pointed to El Salvador, like you talk to your dog after it has poo’ed on the rug. We had to stop ourselves from laughing at the theatre of it all.
And then we commenced our collective, lonely walk of shame across the bridge, back to El Salvador. It was time to take stock, have a chuckle, and wonder, ‘what had our lives come to’. The Neilsens are now officially ‘rejects of Honduras’.
Back to El Salvador – It Was Like We Had Never Left
Waiting on the other side was an El Salvadorian border official. He looked at us with a kind, pitiful smile, that suggested he had seen this all before. He waved us back through from where we had come.
El Salvadorian people are beautiful souls. They’ve been through a lot, and you can sense they’re just happy to be living peaceful lives, as compared to what the country was like pre-President Bukele.
We caught a bus back to the township of San Miguel and stayed at the aptly named ‘Hotel Shaday Inn’. The following morning, we headed to San Salvador, where we stayed for a few days. We enjoyed our time In San Salvador. We were surprised. It’s a large, modern city, the people are spectacular and we felt completely safe. And yes, that’s a cat in a backpack.
El Salvador to Costa Rica – Nobody Puts These Babies in the Corner
Time for Plan B. We decided that Honduras wasn’t ready for us yet (and we probably don’t ever want to go there!) so we had to basically fly over Honduras & Nicaragua and come back into Nicaragua from Costa Rica via the land border. A visit to Costa Rica also refresh our CA4 visa (Costa Rica is not a CA4 country).
This meant that we would have no entry drama’s on the way in to Nicaragua. We had a clean slate.
Costa Rica
We stayed at the Secret Sabana Apartments, San Jose. As we were only passing through we did not see too much of Costa Rica, however we managed to find a spectacular pizza restaurant, Sabana’s Place.
Costa Rica to Granada, Nicaragua!
The next morning, onto a comfortable big Tica bus, and about 10 hours later we found ourselves in Granada, Nicaragua. Woooohhooooo!
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