Driving Nicaragua’s Mountains

I like driving pavement. Dirt roads annoy me and wear me out especially when they remind me of hard days sailing. I used to call big square waves bouncing into the bow of sailboat “refrigerators” as that was what they felt like pounding into us hour after hour. These days on land I drive dirt when I have to, but not for fun. Driving bumpy dirt roads reminds me of “refrigerators” at sea. 

Which is just as well really, as we live in a heavy comfortable van that sinks into rain softened mud far too easily. Recently in El Salvador we sank into some wet grass which lay in wait for us on an otherwise firm lawn. 

So when we arrived at our destination at a cool 2200 feet in the northern Nicaraguan mountains I made sure to keep our heavy van on the gravel track.

Finca Forestal San Nicolas is a tree farm which also offers an event space for groups or families with camping or sleeping in cabins on offer as well. We confused the staff  slightly on arrival as there were only two of us and we wanted to sleep in our van! But for $20 a night we got a place to park, cold showers, flush toilets (bring your own paper) and a tiki hut where we could sit out safe from the rain and even hang our hammock alongside  a dish washing sink and a barbecue fire place as well. Pretty slick! 

Cell service sucks up here but it’s nothing Starlink can’t handle so we settled in for two days of reading, cooking, dog walking and listening to the occasional rumble of traffic nearby. It felt very snug to be still and sitting in a silent pine forest. 

The drive up from our canyon tour spot was beautiful. Rainy season ends next month and all the moisture is a pain but the countryside is so green it’s incredible.

We stopped in the town of Ocotal to buy some groceries at a really smart modern grocery.

They had everything even horseradish, which we didn’t need but were astonished to see on a shelf. 

A Nicaraguan was surprised to see us in the store chatting in English  and asked where we were from. He told us he spent 38 years driving a tow truck in Miami and he’s come home at age 58 to retire and live on his farm. He said he used to drive down to Key West regularly to deliver cars. 

It feels very odd to have such encounters so far from home but he was utterly stunned that we had driven to Ocotal from Key West. “But” he said “Mexico is so dangerous!”  I laughed and told him how Americans tell us Mexico is dangerous and Mexicans tell us Guatemala is dangerous and so forth…He got the point and started laughing with us. Of course, he said there are just bad people everywhere. It was a lovely encounter. 

This is the land that supports the party in power, the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional which was the group that led the civil war in the 1970s against the Somoza family dictatorship. The irony nowadays is that President Daniel Ortega the ardent revolutionary  has become entrenched as the new strong man of Nicaragua imprisoning opponents and forgetting about all those irritating democratic ideals he used to fight for. 

But around here the red and black stripes of the party are on every road sign and light pole. 

The main road into the mountains was paved with classic tiles which make a reasonable surface and despite a little rumbling from the spacing they last much longer than asphalt. 

This part of Nicaragua is old fashioned with chicken buses, old you’d school buses that haul you and any luggage you might have including live chickens. 

Check the driver’s assistant out moving luggage with the bus not stopping for anything:

First the impatient driver of the Kia “Morning,” a model I’ve never heard of, has to get by…on a corner. 

Out climbs the assistant, swings round on the ladder, opens the back door and shuts the crate with his foot. 

Why? I have no idea but we were doing thirty miles per hour the whole time even across the narrow bridge. 

We were warned Nicaraguan police are corrupt and vicious. We’ve had one police check and they were polite cheerful and professional as they checked our temporary import permit. 

It took a couple of hours to get to the tree farm but it was a lovely drive through green mountains on a very decent roadway. 

With the occasional distraction. 



This delivery rider has a bull horn to attract customers: 

And so to our resting place for a couple of days we leave the roads to the locals!