Areas of Nicaragua Archives - the 1 less traveled by

February 22, 2018 By Jenna Reid 54 Views

Trip to the Women’s Jicaro Artisan Cooperative

I had the pleasure of chaperoning my daughters class trip to Cooperativa de Producción Artesanal de Mujeres Jicareras. Located about 40 minutes from San Juan del Sur Day School in a small town next to Rivas called Buenos Aires. The artists there gave a great presentation of the process of creating beautifully hand crafted cups, ornaments, and beverages out of the jicaro gourd.

We arrived by bus to a store where they sell & showcase the handmade jicaro products

We were given a short presentation about the process of making jicaro products

The kids got to color after the presentation for a little bit

We then went to a home nearby where we were given a full demonstration of the process, starting with the jicaro tree.

Azalea was very happy with her tiny jicaro that she got to pull off the tree herself.

We were shown how at first they boil the jicaro in water with ash.

Then it is cut open at the top and the inside mulch is scooped out with a small metal spoon.

Finished product - beautifully handcrafted cups

Delicious jicaro drink made with the mulch inside, sugar, and cinnamon..

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February 7, 2018 By Jenna Reid 12 Views

Accidents in Nicaragua

Here’s an article I wrote for CentralAmerica.com

Driving In Nicaragua – My First Accident

February 24, 2017 By Jenna Reid 156 Views

6 Day Southern Nicaraguan Itinerary

I’m not travel agent, but after 2 years of living in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua I’ve had my fair share of friends and family come visit. My husband and I blundered the itineraries of the first couple visitors by planning extraordinary adventures for them to conquer while on their 1 week vacation away from grind of North America. Turns out, people go on vacation to mostly relax! Lesson learned, we now have perfected the best course of action to crush Nicaragua from an San Juan del Sur base.

Day 1: Take in paradise

We’ve learned that when coming to San Juan del Sur, what everyone really wants to see is a beautiful beach. The most beautiful beach, maybe in all of Nicaragua is arguably, Playa Hermosa. For a $3 entrance fee, this beach comes with palapas equipped with hammocks and tables & chairs, bathrooms, fresh water showers, surfboard or boogie board rentals, spa services, horseback riding, and of course a restaurant and bar. It’s easy to spend the day on this massive white sandy beach and soak in the tranquility you came for.

For Dinner we usually opt for something more lively and take our visitors to the only brewery in town, Cerveceria. Here you can sip on strong beer, order from a American-Style menu, and listen to live music.

Day 2: Enjoy town

San Juan del Sur has a lot of offer and it’s nice to devote a whole day to enjoying downtown. For Breakfast we like to take our friends to our favorite spot, El Gato Negro. The house roasted Nicaraguan coffee always hits the spot. It’s easy to get lost in the mouth watering food descriptions, but you really can’t go wrong with what you order.

After breakfast a stroll on the bay or walk around the shops is a good way to work off your meal. This day is all about leisure and spontaneity, so do what you want. If shopping is what you crave, do it! If having a cocktail excites you, go for it!

We love Villas de Palermo pool & restaurant, so if our visitors are not staying someplace with a pool or feel like going out, then this is the first place we suggest. The food is good, so it’s a great place to soak up some sun and enjoy some lunch with an ocean view.

Happy Hour is a big part of our life and our new favorite spot is The Beach House. Sunsets are always spectacular in San Juan del Sur and this nautical-inspired restaurant is the perfect place to end the day.

Day 3: Get some culture – Granada

Start your day early and grab a quesillo for breakfast on the way, just outside of Catrina. Quesillos are a corn tortilla wrapped around a soft white cheese with cream. If you want, they will add an onion & vinegar based chili. You eat them by ripping a hole in the plastic sandwich bag and chewing pieces out of it, so it’s a great food for on-the-go.

First stop is Isletas de Granada. Drive East through town until you reach the lake, then South until you come to where all the boat tours leave from. There’s a restaurant connected to the boat dock, so if you’re interested in a full meal or a drink before or after your ride, they’ve got you covered. An hour boat ride through the Islets should be no more than $20 for the whole boat. They take you around the small, individually owned islands while you admire the homes. Last stop before you return is Monkey Island where they feed a few bananas to the inhabitants and then you weave your way through the other side of the islands. There’s longer tours where you stop at an island restaurant, but I’ve only done the hour long.

Depending on your mood, Granada has a lot to offer. Horse & buggy tour around the town, tour of the cathedral, Chocolate Museum, A butterfly sanctuary, hanging in the park, or just leisurely strolling through town, stopping in on whatever you fancy.

Our favorite place for lunch The Garden Cafe, not only because it has delicious food, but because they devote 2 whole rooms to the workmanship of local craftspeople and non profits.

We usually head home before dinner because we don’t enjoy driving at night out of town. If you do stay for dinner, Restaurante El Zaguan is a great choice. If you’re too tired to go out or cook, Don Monchis Pizzeria delivers all over San Juan del Sur.

Day 4: Action thriller

Start with a delicious culture experience at the Mercado in town. There are 4 different restaurants to choose from. All are good, so choose the one that has seats available.

Zip Lining, or Canopy Tour as they call it in Central America, if fun and relatively cheap in Nicaragua. Parque de Adventura is our favorite to take visitors because the Polaris ride up the narrow trail is an experience of its own. Once at the top there is a huge platform where you can buy a sandwich and drinks and take in the massive views. There is also a little park for the kids and an iguana sanctuary.

For happy hour, get to the beach between 4pm & 6pm and go to El Timon for $1 appetizers. This place gets over priced outside of happy hour, so walk over to G&G Gourmet for an outstanding meal at affordable prices.

Day 5: Volcano Day

Get a breakfast bagel to-go from Dale Pues and start at Mombacho Volcano where you can take a tour to the top and walk the perimeter or do the coffee tour. The views from here are out of a fairyland, so prepare yourself to be astonished.

Get to Laguna de Apoyo no later than lunch time. All the resorts there charge about $6 to use their facility for the day. They seem to all have kayaks, floating docks, SUP boards, and restaurant with servers. We usually go to Laguna Beach Club, but we hear Monkey Hut and Paradiso Hostel are great as well. Relax, swim, and enjoy the spectacular view of an imploded volcano.

Give yourself at least an hour travel time to get to Volcano Masaya by 5pm. There might be a wait, but you’ll be one of first groups for the night tour and be able to watch the sunset over the active, glowing volcano.

Day 6: Hermosa again

It’s your last day before back to the grind, so why not enjoy a relaxing day on the beach again. Start with a smoothie, or maybe a piña colada and chill. For dinner, the new mediterranean restaurant, Jicaro Garden is a great way to end your vacation. Leave full, happy, and relaxed.

There’s so much to do in Nicaragua beyond what is reachable in a few hours from San Juan del Sur, but most of our friends & family don’t have the ability to take more than a week away. You are still able to get a taste of what Nicaragua has to offer without having to explore the whole country. This itinerary has been tried and true with just enough relaxation, culture, and action to keep you talking about Nicaragua for years to come.

January 20, 2017 By Jenna Reid 1141 Views

Pica Pica

Why am I so itchy?

Its January and the windy season has begun and with the initial winds comes random itchiness from the Pica Pica. Translated to mean Itch Itch, this irritation is is due to vine called Mucuna Pruriens that is prevalent on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and other tropical countries. Used in some itching powders, the course hairs on the pods contain the proteolytic enzyme mucunain which causes itchiness.When the rain stops and the pods of this vine begin to dry out, the tiny fibrous hairs catch wind and sail throughout those countries.

The fairly intense itch lasts only a couple minutes, but the more you itch, the more you spread the invisible hairs around and drive them deeper into your skin. Once a spot has shown some relief, it is usually not long before another spot on your body is ready to be itched. These tiny fibers get everywhere! Clothing I haven’t worn since the winds started will be covered in them. My bed sheets, car seats, bras, and yes, even underwear!

While the fibers dusts swirling about San Juan del Sur can be highly irritating, I hear that to actually touch the dried bean pod is excruciating and lasts considerably longer. No thank you!

January 12, 2017 By Jenna Reid 314 Views

Dinosaur Park in Nindiri

Azalea’s school, San Juan del Sur Day School, has been studying prehistoric times. They’ve learned about cavemen, fossils, and dinosaurs. The teachers of the classes for kids ages 3-5 decided to take a trip to Parquesaurio de Nindirí to see the local park that had 5 dinosaur statues in the grounds. I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer to chaperone.

We took the one and a half hour trip in a rented big, air conditioned van. It was a great field trip! This community park is open to the public with no entrance fees, and has the added bonus of these giant dinosaur statues. It is situated about 30 minutes outside Managua, so a great stop if you are making the trip to and from Managua to San Juan del Sur or other more Southern towns. I also hear that the dinosaurs light up at night!

January 10, 2017 By Jenna Reid 1 comment 130 Views

Digging a Well in Nicaragua

My husband has been annoyingly videoing every part of the process of digging our well on the property we bought in San Juan del Sur. After finding water he made this amazing video documenting the journey in reverse order. He is now forgiven for my irritation.

November 17, 2016 By Jenna Reid 35 Views

Transportation between San Juan del Sur and Rivas

A few months ago we learned that there is a cheap taxi service option between San Juan del Sur & Rivas. Its called the “collectivo.” For only $C50 (less than $2) you can catch a ride from in town San Juan del Sur to the market in Rivas and visa versa. The reason this is such a good deal is because the Rivas taxis need to get back to Rivas & the San Juan del Sur taxis need to get back to San Juan, so they wait until they are full with 4 passengers and you’re on your way… fast! In San Juan del Sur you pick it up outside of the delicious pizza place, Don Monchis. Typically the wait is no more than 15 minutes, but if you happen to be the 4th person then you can be on your way in a matter of in minutes.

November 11, 2016 By Jenna Reid 260 Views

Buying a Car in Nicaragua

Our Worst Investment

We planned to arrive in Nicaragua sight unseen with a baby, a toddler, 7 suitcases, and 2 dogs. We knew that we needed to have a car immediately. Luckily, one of Kharron’s friend’s fathers, Joe already lived on the Atlantic side of Nicaragua and offered to help us get a car purchased before we moved. He seemed to know what he was talking about and convinced us to spend over our $4k budget so that we would have less problems. He advised us to spend at a minimum $10k, but that was not financially possible, so we agreed that he’d look in the $5k-$6k range.

After test driving a few SUVs he found one that needed a clutch, but he could get that fixed and all said and done it would be $6k. We agreed and wired him the money to purchase our 2007 Mitsubishi Montero. When Joe picked us up at the airport he had our car waiting for us at the hotel in Managua. It was really great to immediately have wheels and a way to get around town. We had a list of items we wanted to purchase before we moved to San Juan del Sur a week later.

getting-tires — Getting new tires put on

Since that day, we have made many repairs on our vehicle. It turns out Mitsubishi’s have computerized engines so when something goes wrong, the mechanic needs a diagnostic computer to tell what that problem is. This is super easy in North America, but we only found one mechanic in San Juan del Sur who has that computer. The abundance of bumpy dirt roads in San Juan del Sur is rough on cars. It is common to replace bushings annually and hoses come loose often. One of our sensors needs to be cleaned every so often or our car doesn’t start. This is always fun when you have everyone loaded in the car in the morning for school.

We found a mechanic we really like, but he is located in Rivas which is 30km from San Juan del Sur, so depending on the issue, it is sometimes hard to get our car to him. Slowly we’ve been ticking off a list of fixes our car needed, but then on our way home from Matagalpa our car finally took a dive. There was a hole in a water tube that caused the engine to overheat. A nice Nicaraguan towed us the 9km to our mechanic.

Over the last 2 1/2 weeks we’ve been having our engine rebuilt and got it back yesterday. Thank you to the “collectivo” for being a cheap was to get to Rivas to pick it up. We are hoping this major rebuild will solve most of the issues and we can finally feel confident in our car.

November 9, 2016 By Jenna Reid 60 Views

Buying Real Estate in Nicaragua – Part 2

The day finally arrived when we could sign the paperwork and take ownership of our piece of land. We had already found & measured our lot and had been waiting for the surveyors to complete the required map. We did this crazy thing to pay the fee to get it approved & expedited. We put the needed $120 in an envelope, paid a “collectivo” taxi the $2 fair to Rivas, and sent the envelope of cash in a taxi to be delivered to surveyor’s office. I guess this is done all the time, but the process was very strange, and took some faith on our part.

We met at the attorney’s office at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. Both parties did not fully trust the other. We were skeptical to wire the money before the seller signed and the seller didn’t want to sign before he received the wire. We worked it out that we wired at the attorney’s office and showed him the confirmation. We had previously wired a chunk of the money in our Solo 401k account to our personal bank account so that we could easily send a wire over the internet the day of. There were a couple hiccups like needing to have a SafePass account to wire an amount larger than $1k & not having a USA phone number, but a quick call to a responsible friend to see if I could use her number and she could send me the code made the process work out easily.

After a few minutes we showed a confirmation to the seller and then we stepped into the conference room where we were all read the whole real estate contract out loud. While in that room the seller and I received confirmation emails that the wire was sent, and the mood became much lighter. We paid a reasonable $520 attorney fee and drove back to San Juan del Sur with nervous & hopeful smiles.

The next day we quickly got to work clearing the property and looking for someone to start digging the well.

Family Photo with Cascada Blanca in the background

November 4, 2016 By Jenna Reid 33 Views

Trip to Matagalpa

Azalea’s school had a “rainy season break” so we decided to make the best of it and took a long weekend trip to see Matagalpa and the famous coffee plantation & hotel, Selva Negra. We invited some new friends who seemed to have like minds, the same slightly twisted sense of humor, and kids with similar ages.

We left San Juan del Sur at 6am on Saturday, hoping to have a full day The 4 1/2 hour drive North was a little long, but breathtakingly beautiful. Rolling green hills and the sight of coffee beans drying.

We reached Selva Negra at 11am and decided to see if we could get an early check-in. With no problem at all we paid for our 2 nights upfront and were given 1 key to the 3 bedroom “bungalow” Grethel. We quickly unpacked and headed to the restaurant for lunch and some running around. We were all pleasantly surprised – the food was not only delicious, but also a reasonable price and there was a huge playground next to it that the kids loved!

For dinner we went into the town of Matagalpa and as suggested by a friend, we ate at the restaurant California Happy. It was really delicious! I think I’ll dream of my taco salad for the rest of my time in Nicaragua. We then went to Kiss Me for ice cream dessert. The decorations are insanely cute, but to be honest, we weren’t impressed with the ice cream or the service. Plus, our 4 year olds ordered “chocolate” but we were not told that it was actually chocolate cafe. I realized this only after licking a little off my daughters cone before it melted onto the floor. Luckily the coffee did not have an affect on our tired travelers and they went to bed with ease.

The next day both families went on a 30 minute horseback ride through some of the coffee bushes. It was a little scary with the little one’s because the horses loved to trot, but for some reason I couldn’t stop laughing. 30 minutes was the perfect amount of time.

Once back we quickly packed to go see Cascada Blanca. I read that there was an on-site restaurant, a cave, and place to swim, so we packed accordingly. Someone with kids had suggested it, and after doing some research it seemed doable with little ones. It was about a 30 minute drive from Selva Negra and was so worth it! We had a great afternoon exploring and could have definitely stayed longer if the toddlers didn’t need naps.

When we got back to Selva Negra we were all in need of a shower, but the water pressure in our bungalow was non existent in the shower. Our friend, Jason went up to the reception to ask if we could use another bungalow’s showers. The offer for us to move to another cabin and after checking out the 5 bedroom, 3 bath kid paradise, we decided it was worth the effort to move. Casa Bosche has a long hallway that the kids loved running up & down.

While moving our car loaded with all our stuff, my husband miscalculated the width of the driveway in the dark and one of the wheels of our car went off the edge. The men try to fix it that night, but decided it was a task better done in the daylight. With the help of a few Selva Negra employees and the winch on Jason’s SUV, our car made it to four wheel on ground safely.

After freeing our car and breakfast our friends got on the road to take advantage of their littlest’s nap time. Kharron used the Wifi in the restaurant to get some work done and after we did one last walk around the property to get some of the kids energy out. Selva Negra is truly beautiful and we look forward to another trip to the chilly mountains.

The Road Not Taken

the 1 less traveled by

A move to Nicaragua