Nicaragua
Adventures
Nicaragua
“Nica Vows"
Nica Vows
“For Better or for Worse”
Nicaragua was the first international destination that Leah and I visited together and it’s also the country that we returned to get married. So it has a special place in our heart. However, each of these trips was relatively short so we were looking forward to spending more time in the country during our overland expedition from Colorado to Argentina.
The 2018 Protests
Unfortunately, a few months before we were planning on leaving on our first Panamerican trip in 2018, Nicaragua experienced a violent wave of protests triggered by a government proposal to reduce social security benefits.
The country’s dictator, Manual Ortega, responded to the protests with a violent crackdown, using security forces and pro-government militias to detain, kill and torture thousands of Nicaraguans, including many students who were leading the protests. As we prepared for our trip, we spent a significant amount of time thinking about how we could hire a local to get us safely through the country, including around the checkpoints manned by the government, pro-government militias, and protestors.
Fortunately or unfortunately, by the time we had started our trip, the government had defeated the uprising, killing hundreds of protestors and imprisoning thousands more. As a result, we figured that we could get through the country safely. Little did we know, however, that the Nicaragua uprising would be the first of a wave of political and social uprisings that we would experience during our trip. Collectively, these uprisings became known as the “Latin American Spring”, a name used to draw parallels to the Arab Spring in the Middle East and Northern Africa in the early 2010s.
Guardia De Fronteras
The border crossing into Nicaragua was a bit unnerving.
Not only were drones banned (and we had one) but we didn’t know if they would give us a hard time for bringing Oz into the country. Fortunately by that point in our journey we had crossed numerous borders in Central America so we had developed a few strategies to prevent close looks at the contents of our vehicle and to get Oz from country to country. So after Leah had gotten her passport stamped, she grabbed Oz and walked him across the bridge into Costa Rica (dog problem solved) and left me to get our vehicle inspected. At that point, our primary strategy to prevent vehicle inspections was to leave the stairs to our vehicle up. So to get into the vehicle, the guardia de fronteras had to take off their shoes (which we insisted on), step on the tire with their socks and haul themselves into our camper using a railing on the side of the camper. Most of the time, they chose not to do that. But in Nicaragua, a scary looking policía wanted to take a closer look so I joined him in our camper where he proceeded to attempt to solicit a bribe in return for giving us a temporary import permit. I quickly refused but told him that I’d be happy to pay a fine in the immigration building (which was another strategy we had learned). After an unnerving standoff, he gave up and after picking Leah up on the other side of the border we were on our way south to reconnect with our friends in San Juan Del Sur.
San Juan Del Sur
San Juan Del Sur is a small town on the Pacific Coast and one of our favorite regions of Nicaragua.
Not only is the town interesting, but there is also world class surfing on the coast that can be reached via a 45 minute drive down a rough dirt road from the town. Our return to Mango Rosa was a bit bittersweet. The resort, like most tourism related businesses in Nicaragua, had been negatively impacted by the 2018 uprising. But we nevertheless had a nostalgic return to the place where we had been married about 2 years earlier before heading south.
For Better or For Worse
As we crossed the border into Costa Rica leaving the political unrest of Nicaragua behind us, we took a deep breath. Little did we know that our journey through Nicaragua would be the first of many uprisings that would have an impact on our trip.
Here are a few of Our Nicaragua Favorite Adventures.
