Schmid Adventures: Nicaragua

Granada and Lago Nicaragua

Chris's fishing buddies on Lago Nicaragua

enjoying the sun at Laguna Apoyo

Okay, here goes my rant about UPS and Granada - we have been in this lovely city for 8 days now - about 5 days longer then I would have liked. I thought it went 'stranded in Honduras'.... I suppose there are worse places to be stranded, but enough is enough and I am ready to get back on the road. After Chris dumped his camera and lens in a mangrove swamp in Honduras, we set about replacing it. (He has been hard on cameras this trip!) Thank you Terisa for sending us down his old camera body via DHL - 3 days later it is here. Another story for the lens Chris ordered from Leo's Camera in Vancouver- supposed to DHL it down too, but in their infinite wisdom sent it UPS instead. Eight days later it is still not here. Starting with holding the camera for 3 days in Richmond, and now it has finally landed in Managua, Nicaragua, but we are in Granada. It is to be here tonight at 7:00 - keep your fingers crossed. To add insult to injury, there are $110 worth of brokerage and duty charges on top of the $175 cost to expedite ship it here.... At this point, we would be happy just to see it. Possibly able to blast off tomorrow morning..
Have been to Isla de Ometepe and Laguna Apoyo while we've been here - would have been nice to spend most of the time at Apoyo, but needed to be here because the lens was coming at any time (so said our 20 phone calls back and forth to UPS in Managua)- enough about that. Heading to San Juan Del Sur tomorrow hopefully, then on to Costa Rica. San Juan Del Sur was a nice break from the dry arid areas around Lago Nicaragua and we had a great time exploring some local beaches and enjoying the cool ocean water. We decided to try to take a back road to the border crossing into Costa Rica but with crappy maps (that none of the locals could read) and even worse Espanol we ended up lost and had to backtrack to the border. The winds off Lago Nicaragua were insane and thousands of swallows were feeding on bugs (that made a cook pizza on our goggles) and it was neat riding through a solid mass of birds (didn't get one!) The border crossing was easy but I think we found a new record for having to check in with different offices etc. as it took 13 stops to get out of Nic and into Costa Rica! No problem!