Where Have You Been?

Carrie &Jonathon,

I’m confused looking at your site… you guys have traveld a lot looks like… where all have u been?

james

Hey James!

Well, we have done a lot of travel in the past, but since October, we’ve been Read the rest of this entry »

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Podcast #5: The Northern Part of Central America

In this podcast, we cover about 7 weeks of travel, from the time we left Granada, Nicaragua, early in December, through today, January 18.

Download the travel podcast MP3 here
We cover our travels through places and experiences like:

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Tourism Map of Central America: Our Map from 3 months of Travel

In three months, we visited 6 countries, covered over 2,500 land miles (mostly by bus) and saw some really amazing places.
We also met some truly fantastic people – both people who are involved in tourism as tourists and tourist guides, and people who are living their lives in the countries we visited.
This map is not yet 100% complete, but gives you an idea of the places we’ve been and what we’ve been up to.
If you’re looking to ride Ticabus or Tracopa and want to know exact locations, this map should be rather helpful for you.
Also, we’ve tried to put in all our hotel stays (Think we got them all on here) and will be linking from this map to the reviews on our site so that you can easily get to everything in one place.
This should help you know where to stay if you visit these countries.
If you’re going to Central America, we hope that this helps you to both find things you’d like to see and do, as well as to know where exactly those things to see and do are located.
If this map does prove helpful for you, please comment below and let us know!

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Carrie’s Current countries visited

visited 15 states (6.66%)
Create your own visited map of The World
On our trip through Central America, I got to add 6 countries to my map of visited countries. It’s too bad not all of them have a stamp representation in my passport.
I’ve actually been to more countries that this, but I didn’t spend the night, so they don’t count. I’ve been to France numerous times when I lived in Germany, and I also drove through Austria. They’ll be added to the list sometime soon through.

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Geckos, Roosters, Fireworks, Car Alarms, Children, Dogs, Sneezing, Parades and Bells, Doorbells, and Construction

What can you really do about so much noise but laugh?
I’m a relatively light sleeper, and have learned to travel with earplugs. In fact, before departing on this part of our travel/working experience, Carrie and I bought a box of 500+ earplugs on Amazon.
We used some of these at La Tortuga Feliz and haven’t used them too much since. Not that we haven’t had occasion to. With the exception of Hotel Angela (where we had an interior room) and our time in Boquete, Panama, every morning and often in the middle of the night, I’ve been awoken by the sounds of roosters, children, fireworks, children, dogs, parades, or bells. In general, I find North Americans and American culture to be pretty noisy, but I’m finding Central Americans and Central America to be even noisier.
As I’m writing this, Carrie just woke up and asked me (first thing – not “good morning” or anything like that, but) “Is that a dog or a sick frog?”
In general, every city in Central America (and in Argentina) has some stray dogs which seem to do the majority of their barking between 9PM and 3AM. About 2:30 AM and continuing through to about 5:30 or 6:00 AM come the roosters. They continue throughout the day, but this is when the majority of their sounds occur. Roosters are PLENTIFUL in almost every place we’ve been in Central America, most of them sharing their calls LONG before I can see any sign of sunlight.
Then come the fireworks. I like fireworks as much as anyone, but regardless of where we have been (again excepting Boquete), there have been fireworks every day just before 6AM, just before 6PM, and frequently around noon. Sometimes they also get shot off for a few minutes at midnight.
Why so many fireworks? Well, apparently that’s what they do in Central America in December and January to celebrate Christmas. There’s even a saying in nicaragua which goes something along the lines of “a man always has money for beer and fireworks, even if he can’t afford to feed his own family.”
In Granada, Nicaragua, they have 9 days of celebrations for the Immaculate Conception of Jesus in which they revere statues of Mary and parade them through the town to the church. These are fun festivals which include candied apples, trinkets, and of course, fireworks.

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Thoughts From El Salvador

1:30 AM
Hotel Novo Apart
Quick thoughts since I

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Tica Bus takes us from Managua, Nicaragua to San Salvador, El Salvador

Pictures coming soon… still posting on the run.
By this point, we

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Cigars, a Cemetery, and an old Compound

Today Jonathan and I set out to buy our Tica Bus tickets. On the walk there, Jonathan got distracted (which is quite usual). He was peeking into someone`s windows. I didn’t think that this was the best idea, so I kept walking.
It turns out that he was peeking into a cigar rolling facility. One of the workers came out and asked if we would like to look around and have a small tour. We couldn

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Hotel Terrasol in Granada, Nicaragua: a great hotel in Granada

Hotel Terrasol in Granada, Nicaragua
Run by Victor and Kattya, a couple of locals who lived in the United States for over 10 years, Hotel TerraSol has been a great place for us to stay while we’ve been in Granada, Nicaragua.
Terrasol is about 4 blocks walking to the central park in Granada, and just two blocks from the tallest tower on the La Merced church in Granada, where you can overlook the entire city for a measly 20 Cordoba ($1) entry fee.
Despite this close proximity to everything, Hotel Terrasol is quiet in the evenings, and a great place to launch from for touristy activities during the day.
Victor was also a corporate chef during their time in the US (in California) and the meals he cooks in the restaurant downstairs are really delicious (think gourmet) and inexpensive.

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Volcano Masaya, Masaya, Nicaragua

We’ve all heard stories of people who go to see a volcano. Some go to see the vegetation, some go to study it, and some go who are just curious.

If curiosity is what you’re looking for, then Volcano Masaya is the one for you.



The entrance fee is only (US$4).

They’ll even take you up to the crater in a truck.
At Volcano Masaya, you can actually go all the way to the edge of this active volcano.

If you’re (un)lucky, you might even get to see lava as you look down into the crater.
That’s what we did today. Jonathan and I met up with our friend, Martin, for a day at Volcano Masaya.

It was a really great day.
We learned that the most major eruption was in 1772, and it nearly destroyed all the towns at the base of the mountain. But, that’s not the most interesting thing we learned.
Apparently, in the 1500s, the Spanish came to volcano Masaya. During that time, they were able to see the lava in the crater.
They saw so much lava, that they thought that they were looking at the “gates of hell”.

So, they put up a giant cross at the top of the crater to protect themselves. (You can still see the cross today, and even hike up to it.)
We went up to the top. After all, that’s where the best viewing is. We stayed up there for about 20 minutes.
There was a lot of smoke issuing from the crater. It was so thick that we couldn’t see any of the lava at the bottom. In fact, my throat still burns a little from it 9 hours later.
We also hiked the 20 minutes to see the other crater of the volcano. This one is extinct, so it’s covered with vegetation, and is stunningly beautiful.

On the way down, we stopped by the little museum to learn some more about the volcano.
From there we went back into Masaya to check out the artisan’s market that we didn’t get to see yesterday.

It’s in an old fort (supposedly built to protect the people from William Walker and other pirates).

Hello Pirates. (Hey Kevin and Annmarie!)
We were able to find some good things here in this market, but I can’t tell you what they are. Some of you may be seeing them in a few weeks as Christmas gifts, and I gotta keep them a secret.
But, I won’t keep the fantastic artisan’s market (Mercado Viejo) in Masaya, Nicaragua a secret.
In fact, I won’t keep Nicaragua a secret. It’s fabulous here.
Hmmmm…maybe I should keep that secret.

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