San Juan Del Sur

San Juan del Sur is a surfing town on the southern pacific coast of Nicaragua. There are quite a few nice places to get food at drink and it seemed like a really nice place to hangout for a couple of days, though we only stopped for a night. For us it was a good place to stop before making the crossing to Costa Rica.

View over San Juan del Sur with Cristo de la Misericordia overlooking the town

Getting There

To get to San Juan del Sur you can get a chicken bus from Rivas for about 10-15 Cordobas. You can get a taxi too but you're almost certainly going to get ripped off.

Where we stayed

We stayed at the Surfing Donkey - it was a private room with an en-suite, relatively clean and the hostel had a pool and bar. Was definitely on the party hostel side of things.

Food and Drink

• San Juan Brewery - A great place for a Nicaraguan craft beer
• Sabores Yessy - Cheap place for local food opposite the brewery
• Salud Kitchen - A well priced cafe selling really great food - one of our favourites.

Journal

Arrival

After Isla Ometepe we were hoping to head to Costa Rica, after looking through bits of disperate information around the internet we decided it would be better to try and stay on the mainland and go from there. We were staying in Balgue on the opposite side of the island to the ferry ports so we'd need to get to the bus stop, get the bus, go to the ferry, get the ferry, then get a couple of buses to get to San Juan which is the nearest town to the border, that isn't just a port or travel hub.

We woke up around 7ish as the light began to brighten the room. We were glad to have made it through another night and did a quick body check to make sure we hadn't been bitten by all the scary insects during the night; All clear. We packed our bags and headed for breakfast which was just a choice of contiental or pancakes on this particular day. Possibly it's only a buffet when there are enough people. After breakfast we checked out and double checked with reception whether there was an easy way down the hill. They said we could pay 8USD for a taxi to the bottom of the hill which we thought was an absolute rip-off. We decided to walk.

The walk was hard, but it wasn't as hot as it had been on the way up, plus most of it was down hill. At the bottom we waited at the bus stop, which was just opposite the entrance. We'd waited there for about fifteen minutes with no luck, we'd tried hailing a few pick-ups for a ride (hitchhiking is pretty good around Ometepe as there is only one road!) but none of them stopped. Eventually I saw a shuttle bus coming towards us which stopped beside us. It was the same guy who dropped us off! We asked if we could have a ride to Moyogalpe (one of the ferry terminals) and he said he's do it for 500 Cordobas, we had it for 300 on the way over however it was only us going this time so it was bound to be more expensive. We asked if he'd do it for 400 and we had a deal.

To get to Moyogalpe by bus would have involved two buses. One to Altagracia to get to the Northside of the island, then another bus coming back on yourself towards Moyogalpe. It would have taken another couple of hours going by bus so we were happy to pay a little more for the shuttle for convienience. It was about forty minutes in the shuttle and we got dropped off with about five minutes to make it on to the 12:30pm Lancha. It was at this point I realised I no longer was in possesion of my hat that I'd got in Leon! I must have dropped it either on the walk down from the lodge or at the bus stop. I'd had it less than a week and it had taken ages to find one that I liked so I was pretty dissapointed. The boat was 35 Cordobas again though at least this time it was a lot less crowded so we got a seat easily and were a lot more comfortable.

We got to the dock and grabbed our things, now we needed to work out how to get to San Juan. We knew to get to San Juan you could get a bus to Rivas, then from there another bus to San Juan. The problem is that as you walk to the bus stops there are any number of taxi drivers trying to get you in their taxis, giving you mis-information and trying to confuse you so you miss the bus and don't have any other option. Being confident helps with this and usually just ignoring them is the best option. As we were walking though we go the offer off a dollar each to get to Rivas, it wasn't that far but it was nice to just get to Rivas. We agreed, though in hindsight the bus would have got us there in exactly the same time. At least it wasn't as much of a rip-off as when we went to Isla Ometepe when the driver pretty much doubled his price (150 Cordobas) by claiming our taxi suddenly became an "express" taxi when he failed to pick anyone else up...

We pulled into Rivas and by this point were determined to get the bus and save some cash. We asked for the bus to San Juan and were put on to a chicken bus, we put our bags on top, which we don't like doing but is pretty normal. We got some seats and were soon on our way. It's about forty minutes to San Jan del Sur so before long we were pulling in to the town and getting off ready to find our hostel. The bus drops you off at the main street as there isn't really a bus terminal so everything is easy to find.

The Chicken Bus from Rivas to San Juan del Sur

Day 1

The hostel we had booked (the surfing donkey) was about 5 minutes walk from where we were dropped off, we walked up and checked in, though the guy at reception seemed have trouble with finding our room. He first opened one room which wasn't ready, then another which already had people in. He eventually said that he would need forty minutes to clean up and sort out a room for us. We didn't have much choice in the matter and we were very hungry so we stowed our big bags and went for a walk.

We found a really nice cafe called "Salud Kitchen" that wasn't too expensive I got a hotdog and Kate got Avocado on Toast, both were really good. Afterwards we grabbed an ice cream and walked down to the beach to have a look. Despite skirting very nearby a lot during the trip this was actually our first glimpse of the Pacific!

Great food at Salud Kitchen

The San Juan area is a real surfing area, apparently the best beaches are just out of town and the surf shops put on shuttles though you can also surf at the main beach too. We didn't have time to have a surf and also the waves didn't look particularly good that day but we walked briefly along the beach which definitely looked more like a surf beach with a long stretch of sand very different from the Caribbean, palm tree laden beaches we'd become accustomed to.

Our first view of the Pacific

We walked back to the hostel where our room was finally waiting for us, we had a quick change and got ready to grab our free drinks at the bar. The drinks were just a vodka and coke and as Kate doesn't like coke I got two drinks! I was very pleased. I drank the drinks on the terrace of the hostel which has nice views over the town. In the distance you can see a large statue of Jesus on a hill side very reminiscent of Christ the Redeemer, and apparently it's actually the 2nd largest in the world, of course to it's Brazilian counterpart. We did a bit more research on how to get to Costa Rica and decided our best bet was to not book anywhere and see how far we got. Decision made we decided we needed another drink to Celebrate.

Kate found it the book that San Juan has it's own microbrewery so we decided to go and check it out. It's actually in the centre of town, and you could probably walk past it if you weren't paying attention as it kind of just looks like a normal bar. If you look up however you can see the brewing equipment up in a room above. I grabbed a pint (a very weirdly sized pint) of their main beer, and Kate went for the mango beer. Both were delicious though, they came with a hefty price-tag so we only got one round.

Grabbing a drink at the San Juan Brewery

We'd had a late lunch but decided we should still get some dinner so we went to the cheap local place opposite the brewery called Sabores Yessy. We got some chicken and beef with rice which really filled us up. Afterwards we headed down to the seafront to see if we could find a place for a drink. There wasn't quite as many bars down at the beach as we thought we'd find but we found a nice place called the beach house. It was a little more expensive but was done out really nicely and we had a couple of beers there before heading back to the hostel to get a good nights sleep. We needed to be up early to make it to Costa Rica.

Day 2

To make sure we had enough time to get to Costa Rica we were up at 5am in the hope of catching the 6am bus towards Rivas. We had to wake up the night porter in order to checkout so we ended up being a little late and were worried we'd missed the bus. When we reached the bus stop we found a big group of people still waiting though and it was another 15 minutes before the bus appeared. Then we were saying goodbye to Nicaragua and hello to Costa Rica.