Days 71 to 75: Back to San Juan del Sur, NIC

We enjoyed San Juan del Sur so much, that we decided to return for a few more days and spend New Year's Eve there. Finding a hotel was a struggle. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we took a break and pulled up to our favourite ice cream shop (we've been going there twice a day... possibly the best ice cream I've ever had). Only then we realized that there was a hotel upstairs, so we enquired and they had a room left for 25$/night. Sweet. We booked for the next 5 nights, as our plan was to get back on the road only on January 3rd.

View from our balcony. The hotel was shit, but location great.

The next few days were all about the beach and nightlife. It felt like a vacation from the vacation. Partying for a few days straight was fun, but by January 3rd we were pretty worn out and ready to move on.

 

View of the San Juan del Sur bay, from the Jesus statue on top of a nearby mountain.

Pacific coast in Nicaragua

One evening, we tagged along to an organized tour to do some sea turtle birth watching. This actually a rare event, as it is seasonal and occurs only on very few beaches in Nicaragua. The small turtles get active by night. Once out of the egg, they dig their way up in the sand (sometimes up to a few feet deep), and then they start crawling towards the ocean, until they reach the water and swim off. Most off them go solo right from birth. There was hundreds of these little buggers all over, and you had to be real careful not to step on them. It was a pretty interesting thing to see.

 

Turtles crawling out of the sand.

The New Year's Eve celebrations were mayhem. Central America loves fireworks, and they like it LOUD. The tradition in Nicaragua is to put together a human sized rag doll, which is then filled with a whole bunch of fireworks. At midnight on the 31st, everyone lights up their dolls at the same time and the explosions begin. It's a way for Nicaraguans to kick the previous year out the door, and definitely a lot of fun.

Family enjoying the view of their rag going up in smoke.

Explosions and smoke everywhere at midnight. Fun!

We've seen a couple of funny situations in SJDS. One was a cop letting a young kid ride his quad on the beach. In North America, this would never happen. Safety first!! In Central America, everyone just laughs about it.

Cop letting a kid ride his quad...LOL.

The other odd event is shown on the picture below. This kid was riding on the roof of the bus, and lifting up the cables out of the way whenever there were too low for the vehicle to pass. I hope they were only telecom cables...hehe. The next day, some truck ripped out a bunch of these cables off the post while passing underneath, right in front of my eyes.

We've had a good time in SJDS, but were ready to leave as planned on January 3rd. There's only so many days of celebrating you can do in a row, and I was looking forward to get back on the bike. However, this a great place where I will definetely return eventually for a week or two. I highly recommend it to everyone.