Poste Rojo
A second email with Chad at Poste Rojo and he gives me much better directions. When I had emailed him back to say I got completely lost the first time, he wrote, "Wow, sorry man, you are not even close." No shit.
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| bridge connecting over to yoga platform at Poste Rojo |
The road south out of Granada is thru very nice farming and cattle country and the trees are very thick on all sides where it hasn't been cleared. A bouncy drive across a pasture and a soccer field gets me to Poste Rojo (Big Yellow doesn't care...she just got new oil and a steamclean). I'm allowed to park at the bottom of the hill, where the real facility is located. It's a small clearing with barely enough room to open the tent but it's so nice and dark and quiet at night, I love it. Poste Rojo is a dream of Chad, Sybil and Fred, three young expats with limitless energy. What's great about down here (maybe anywhere in the second and third world?) is that if you have a dream you can just go ahead and build it. No planning boards, no bankers, blah, blah, blah. With the considerable help of the locals they have carved out what promises to be a very successful endeavour in just months. Only open two weeks they already have a steady stream of backpackers flocking in. And one car camper. You can check out their colorful website
http://www.posterojo.com/ .
Playa Maderas
I had planned on taking the car ferry over to the volcanic island of Ometepe in Lago Nicaragua. The best info. was that I could expect to pay maybe $40-50 roundtrip to get there, a fair amount of moola, but acceptable. The asshole working that day took one look at my FJ and came up with $80. I really want to go there, but that was too much. I'll try again on the way back north in about two months.
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camping at Playa Maderas...
full room action! |
South to San Juan del Sur. This is turning into one of Nicaragua's growing beach resorts. It's still pretty small and managable, but it sits on a bay. An attractive spot, but I find bays to be ultimately kinda boring. I had read about a beach just to the north called Playa Maderas and a camping spot called Camping Matilda (thankyou, Footprint). The myriad of beach roads lead me hither and yon for over an hour before I reach Matilda's. Another surfing beach, this is a new definition of laid-back. 100 cordobas (~$4.50) gets me a shaded spot just behind the beach with cold shower and latrine. I couldn't be happier. 3 days worth of happy, for 4 in a row. Now we're talking, right? Lots of young surfers stop by over my three days to marvel at the set-up. I've decided I'm some kind of camping rock star. Now if I could only round up a couple of those groupies?
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| Playa Maderas |
There are a number of Canadians here, notably a gregarious guy named Mark who lives in the shack at the left in the picture for, like, 6 months every year. He's a chef/waiter who works the luxury market up in Whistler and Vancouver where you can apparently make some good money selling the rich clientele $5000 bottles of wine. He's also the resident comic and sushi chef, and he invited some of us over on Saturady night for what I think was a parrot fish he speared earlier in the day. There are only two restaurants that I could see in the whole "town" so this was a treat and, stop me if you've heard this one before, but much rum and beer was consumed.
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Mark as sushi chef...
he even dresses the part |
A couple from Australia, Jeremy and Fiona, pull in to the campground in their old LandCruiser. They flew to California, bought and fixed up the car (they sleep in back), and now they are driving to Panama so Jeremy can surf. They plan on selling the car there and going back home. They say they've met two other couples doing the same thing. Learn something every day. Anyway, they are heading into Costa Rica Monday morning so I ask to tag along and that's where I am now, in Tamarindo. We both had a camping beach to the north on our agenda but we found it was currently closed as the road was still impassable after the heavy rains this year, after which we went our separate ways.
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| southern leg thru Nicaragua...click to enlarge |
I'm tired of going into border details. This one took just under two hours and cost about $23. Not bad as borders go, but they all suck as far as I'm concerned. The only real drawback to taking a trip like this is the borders, at least in my mind.
A word on Tamarindo. This was a tiny village some 30 years ago until the surfers discovered it. One guy told me it was featured in the movie Endless Summer II. The great waves are still here, of course, but the town is nothing to get excited about. The growth has been explosive and, to my eye, unchecked. It's crowded and expensive. I'm only here for the night because darkness was falling, ending my camping streak. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't surf actually making this their destination. I hope to find better options south of here.
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