Whew! Today was quite the long day. But it was worth it because Nicaragua was just awesome. The tour bus came and picked us up about 5:30am. The immigration and border experience in Nicaragua was quite the ordeal. It was only about 1 hour and 45 minutes or so to the border, and we slept most of the drive since it was so early. We had a nice sized bus with AC, so that was nice. Right before the border, we stopped at a restaurant for breakfast. Then we headed to the border. We had to stop at the Costa Rica side to get our passports stamped, and that took like 20 minutes, even with our big group, the line was not too long. But at the Nicaraguan border, there were 3 checkpoints. An officer first came on the bus to look at everybody's passport, then we had to park at the main place and all get out of the bus. Our guide took all of our passports in to get inspected and stamped, and meanwhile, another office came in and searched the bus. That took a bit of time, but there were some little stands with handicrafts and whatnot so there was a lot to look around at. But it was pretty hot. After our passports were stamped, the officer came to our bus, and handed our passports back out to us while checking our face to the photo. Then we all got back on the bus, and then there was one more final checkpoint where yet another office got on the bus and checked our passports one more time. The whole border crossing process took about 2 hours maybe. Then we had even more driving once in Nicaragua, but everything was awesome.
We first stopped at this little spot to get a great view of Lake Nicaragua which is so huge, it looks like an ocean. We were able to grab some snacks for the bus, and then we headed to our next spot. It was a giant crater that was formed from a volcano erupting many years ago. It is called the Santiago Crater, and it was beautiful.
From there we went to the Masaya Volcano. We went to a view point and got to see an actual Lava Lake, which was so cool! It was super hot from the viewpoint, which makes sense seeing as though it is an active Volcano.
And then we headed into Granada for some lunch and shopping. There was an awesome marketplace with crafts and souvenirs, which of course we took advantage of. We got to walk around Granada for a while, then we headed to the last part of our tour - a boat ride on the lake.
The boat ride was my favorite part. We were taken around the lake and apparently a volcano erupted many years ago, and formed a bunch of little islands. People have since bought those islands and built houses on them. We also went to an island where a bunch of Spider Monkeys live. A local vet bought and set up that island to protect them and he goes there to take care of them and feed them. That was my favorite part.
We learned that to buy one of those islands and build a house on it would cost roughly $250,000 to $300,000. Since that is a fraction of the housing prices where we live in California, we were pretty tempted to invest in some property there in Nicaragua. ;)
We then boarded the bus and headed back to Costa Rica. The border crossing process was pretty much the same, but coming back took less than half the time. Even with the quick border crossing process, the drive was so long we did not get back to our resort until 10pm. We were so ready to get some sleep.
Overall it was a long exhausting day, but totally worth it. Nicaragua was beautiful and we had just the best guide. Tomorrow will be another day of just relaxing at the resort. We booked our couples massage, and that is pretty much all we have to do.