Rancho Los Alpes

Layne found a campground near the city of Leon. Hooray! We got our laundry done which was a huge weight off our minds and showed up at Ecolodge Rancho Los Alpes. The owner met us and said she used to work for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in Tallahassee and now has a house on St George’s Island on the Gulf Coast. Well, there you are…

We plugged in right away as it was blazing hot and humid and within 5 minutes we blew the fuse and melted the plug running our rooftop air conditioner. In our defense it was rusted out pretty badly before we got here.

Now we plug into the house and only charge our batteries. When we run the air conditioning we unplug and use our battery bank to avoid any more fuse box mishaps.

It is hot and humid with frequent afternoon downpours adding to the moisture. I rub down my calves and feet with insect repellent cloths to keep the no see’ums at bay. Our main relief is bursts of air conditioning and cold showers. The swimming pool is drained and the owner says until they figure out an affordable pumping system they can’t fill it. Electricity rates in Nicaragua are apparently very high. 

We pay $20 a day with $5 extra for electricity. We can at least keep our 600 amp lithium battery back charged but much of the time we live with fans and await the cool night air. 

Our plan such as it is will involve a drive south toward Costa Rica with some stops hopefully on a beach or two before for ing inland and crossing to Costa Rica. 

The situation in Panama remains uncertain with many roadblocks which police have promised to clear no matter what. The Supreme Court has taken the mining law under advisement with a public comment period closing November 23rd. A decision on whether or not the open faced mine contract is unconstitutional will come any time after that. Until then some roads will presumably stay blocked. 

We looked into shipping from Costa Rica and the ships agent quoted us $9500 for an open container (“flat rack”) for our over sized van to Colombia. Thanks but no thanks. He could ship our van back to Florida for $3500! 

All we can do now is monitor Panama and see if the road closures ease up. The country is in a terrible state with the north provinces out of all basic commodities, in this third week of the general strike. 

Hopefully next week we’ll be in Costa Rica and can keep a closer eye on the situation in Panama. 

Meanwhile we sweat and wait and see what happens next. And wish the rainy season would end! 

Lost In Northern Nicaragua

We’ve been trying to adapt to traveling in a poor Central American country as we tour the highlands, but I will admit some days are hard.

Our difficulties are pretty small beer compared to the 19th century hoops local have to jump through as they keep their daily lives going; they may have electricity and even a TV (if a family member is in the US sending back money) but the conveniences we assume are mandatory are way out of reach.  

In the United States we are taught to think of people south of the border as “Latin Americans,” an amorphous mass but on the ground Mexico is as different socially and economically from Guatemala as the US is from Mexico. Mexico has 170 million inhabitants and an economy that would be the envy of the smaller countries to the south. 

Nicaragua is a poor country by contrast to Mexico and the services we take for granted in Mexico (never mind the US!) are almost completely absent here. No full service campgrounds and no real understanding of travel by RV at the of our list at the moment.  Take laundry for instance, simple enough you’d think. Yet here I am down to my last clean pair of shorts and we’re still looking. 

Nicaraguans do their own washing. They can’t afford cash money to do what their wives can do at home (even if they also work outside the home…). We scoured Esteli and Jinotega, two of the larger towns and found no laundry. Matagalpa had one and we only found it as I had to walk the blocks around where Google maps put it and I had to ask. In Spanish I had to ask of course and they pointed to a nondescript back door, the one with the motorcycle parked in front. Yes she said after I called out “Anyone home?” adding she does laundry but has no drier. Your clothes will be ready after lunch tomorrow if it doesn’t rain…With that we were back in the traffic looking for a place to spend the night. 

As I navigated the motorcycles pedestrians and darting cars, smoke spewing trucks and the potholes Layne checked potential overnight spots. Matagalpa is a big city claiming 430,000 inhabitants ( two laundries, the one with the driers closed on weekends) and zero campsites. We checked iOverlander our favorite travel app and all we saw was street parking suggestions. Until Layne came up with a truly bizarre idea. 

“It says here people have stayed at the fire department.” I scoffed, we can’t ask the fire department to spend the night…What I meant was I didn’t have the nerve to ask. For Layne it was no problem.

We got a tour of the fire station, a locker room, a kitchen, a billiard table (in use) and the clerk/dispatcher ready to take calls. Not me thanks, not any more. In a country that outlaws right hand drive cars they have two trucks from

Japan where they drive on the left! I didn’t bring this up as I do have some manners! Just don’t try to bring a car with the steering wheel on the right into El Salvador, Nicaragua or Costa Rica as they are illegal. British overlanders have to ship from Veracruz Mexico to Colombia. 

The captain said they really need firefighters’s gloves. His wife lives in Indianapolis (I didn’t ask for details) and she sees the quality gear of the firefighters there. He’s been to training in Spain and Holland and what he wants at home is proper firefighter gloves. We gave him  a hundred bucks which took him aback but I’d love to get them all some newer gear. We’re pondering how to do that. 

Their Sprinter ambulance from Germany: 

They also do fire prevention around town and they have an electrical board to show how to make a safe electrical system for your home or shop. 

We spent a quiet night parked in the rear lot of the fire station but of course shortly after we got up the heavens opened and down it poured. So much for dry laundry. 

So my intrepid partner worked up a new plan. We’ll go to an isolated farm out in the country. We’ll hang our laundry to dry and we’ll rest a few days. Rusty will have a great time as he shears does in these kinds of spots. We had a destination two hours away. First we got our bag of wet clothing, paid two bucks for the work done and drove out of town. 

Nicaragua is beautiful all right, rolling hills and volcanic peaks and miles of uninterrupted green. But as we drove I said out loud “I wish there were some public lands we could park on right now.” You know how in the US we have Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management camping areas and you just park somewhere lovely and there you are. No fees no bureaucracy no fuss and you get 14 days to rest. That would be lovely right now. 

But the plan fell apart. Eventually we turned off the main paved road towards the Hidden Jungle. But first we spent a couple of hours winding our lovely away across Nicaragua. Dreaming of a camp ground. 

All that driving can make a chauffeur hungry. 

Gallo pinto is a famous Nicaraguan dish and it just means rice and red beans. Then you get delicious smelly cheese and sour sour cream. Add a tortilla and some scrambled eggs and you have a classic dish. 

And if cattle freak you out take a lesson from Rusty. He used to bark madly now he’s seen so many he just looks worried. Cows pop up everywhere around here. 

We had three miles of bouncy rocky dirt road to get to a paradise of quiet rural parking, showers and clothes lines. We crossed one sketchy cement bridge dinging our  skid plate loudly as we went over the lip. 

Less than a mile from the promised land we hit an impassable gap. I waded out into the stream which came over my knees. The rocks underwater were slippery like stone footballs and the opposite bank was a steep dirt step. No way out Promaster was going to make that. We turned around. 

It was no less than a wasted day. We turned around and drove back for two more hours the way we came. We planned to get to the city of Leon, a former national  capital, a university town and center of intellectual opposition to the dictators who ruled Nicaragua. It also boasts two laundries with driers. One open on a Sunday. 

We weren’t going to make it before dark so when we saw an open space we simply stopped. After a while a local dude happened to stroll by curious about our vehicle. We chatted and soon it became obvious we were being checked out as he admitted he lived nearby. We passed the test and he expressed the usual amazed fascination at our retirement plans, our driving from Florida, our microwave and fridge and our dog on his bed. 

Have a good night he said in parting. And we did. Wild camping for free by the PanAmerican Highway in the middle of Nicaragua. Zucchini pasta for dinner to the tune of rain falling on our tin roof. An unexpected end to a very unsatisfactory day. At least it ended well!

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!