Just about every traveller that we’ve come across who’s been through Costa Rica has had the same thing to say:

Costa Rica was nice, but we only stayed half the time we planned on. It’s really expensive.

It’s not too surprising, as many of the locals we met in Nicaragua had similar things to say:

Costa Rica is beautiful, but it’s expensive, and a bit too dangerous.

Okay, okay. It was starting to sound a lot like what we had heard about Belize before we visited it firsthand. But Belize wasn’t overly expensive. In fact, when all was said and done, it turned out to be cheaper than Mexico, and still well within our daily budget. So I was pretty skeptical about all this price hype.

Sad to say, all the hype was true. Costa Rica is expensive. Dare I say too expensive for us. It all started when we arrived at the border. They have a policy where they do not grant entry visas unless you can prove that you have onward travel tickets. We didn’t have said return tickets, and were stopped at the border on our first attempt through.

Sitting in nomads land, we didn’t have a lot of options. All we had was a Tica bus station selling one way open ended tickets from San Jose, Costa Rica to Managua, Nicaragua for $25 a piece (at least double the price it should have cost using public transportation and without the flexibility of being able to break the trip up over several days and several towns). We bought the tickets because we had no choice, and slipped through the border on our second attempt without issue.

I freely admit it, we didn’t get off to a good start with Costa Rica. But costs kept racking up. Accommodation was a big shock. We had been accustomed to spending somewhat less that $10 a night on average in the rest of Central America. Once we crossed that border, the cheapest accommodations we could find were pushing $30 a night. We may not have minded the hefty accommodation bill so much if it translated into a bit of luxury, but it didn’t. These were the types of places where the showers didn’t work, and there were no toilet seats.

Then the nickle-and-diming started. Every thing you want to do in Costa Rica costs extra. While we were accustomed to spending between $0.50 and $2 to see an art gallery or museum in other countries, the same entrance fee here would be a minimum of $10 per person. That same $10 could buy you entrance to a beach, $18 for entry to a nature reserve for the day, another $10 to see a waterfall, and so on, and so on.

In the end, we limited ourselves a lot, choosing not to pay our entrance fees more often than not. We had originally planned to travel farther south and see more of the country before leaving, but after only 10 days in the country, we decided to cut our losses and use that bus ticket we were forced to buy.

Sunsets were still free at least!

Aside from horseback riding we didn’t really do much on Isla de Ometepe.  Our time on the beach of San Juan del Sur was quite similar… a few days of relaxing and catching up on the blog at each place.

On Isla de Ometepe, we stayed just outside of the town of Merida at a resort with highly overpriced but good food.  The town of Merida is quite small and has only three restaurants of the lowest quality.  It’s easy to surmise that the budget travellers in us ate enough bad cheap food to drive us off the island completely.  That was a mistake.

Merida did have it’s positive points though.  For one, there was the Valentine’s Day festival and rodeo – complete with painted baby chickens, bull riding and Valentine’s Day rice.

San Juan del Sur is a nice beach with strangely cold water.  So cold, it reminded me of swimming in a lake back in Saskatchewan, Canada.  I’m not sure if we were just there at the wrong time and caught a freak current, or if it’s always that cold.  We’ve been in the Pacific Ocean at points both north and south of San Juan del Sur, and it’s definitely the coldest place around.

Regardless of the bad food, or cold oceans, we managed to get out there and take more than a couple of photos.  Here are some of the highlights.  As always, there are more available in our photo album.

Isla de Ometepe

Unloading the ferry.

Valentine’s Day Chicken.

Spectacular Scenery.

And some more.

Really old Petroglyphs.

Sunsets.

San Juan del Sur

Christ watches out over this town.  I’m not quite sure what he’s trying to point out though.

Every day at sunset we would head down to the beach with Ashley’s mom and Terry just to watch.  We were never alone.

Spending a little over a year saving up cash and selling everything we own before this trip taught us several lessons. One of the most important was the value of money, and the rate that its value diminishes when you buy new things. We sold a tonne of stuff before we left home, much of it lightly used, and all of it at prices far lower than we paid for it. To say it was depressing would be an understatement.

We also learned that there is a thriving used goods market back home. Between garage sales, free online classified ads, and eBay you can pretty much find anything you need without paying full price if you have a little patience. Before we left home, we both vowed two things: 1) Never to buy new if we could find what we wanted used, and 2) Never buy more stuff than we absolutely need. Nice to haves are just not worth the money they cost, especially when all they do is collect dust.

Now, Central America has taught me a new lesson. You can fix pretty much everything. There’s no need to throw something out just because it’s old and broken. In pretty much every Central American city, you can find people out on the street who will fix whatever needs fixing at very reasonable prices. Between Granada and León, I tested their skill on several items.

First, my watch strap had started to come apart. This is a classic Timex Ironman watch that Ashley purchased way back in the 20th century. Back home, I probably would have considered a watch that lasted me more than 10 years a good deal, tossed it out, and bought a new one. But we just bought a new watch in Utila (a time piece is required for diving) and it cost $23 dollars. That’s a lot of money in Central America.  So what did it cost me to fix the watch strap and put a new battery in? Only about $5, and it’ll probably last another decade.

Shiny New Watch Strap – Decade Old Watch

The next things to go were my shoes. They are a little over a year old, and have plenty of tread left. Unfortunately, all of our volcano hiking has done a number on them, and the soles were separating from the tops. They looked like they were talking. I was lucky enough to notice a sign in the market of Granada for shoe repairs. Behind the sign sat a gentleman with some thread, a screwdriver, and a sewing machine. He took a quick look, then for a mere $2 sewed them back up right as rain. Even used, it’s hard to find a good pair of shoes for $2, and these ones are already broken in.

My Sewn Up Shoes- Good as New

And the Man Who Fixed ´Em

I needed one more repair before I left Granada. One of the screws that hold my glasses together had rusted through and snapped. My right lens fell out, and there was no way for me to remove or replace the screw with the tools I had. A quick trip to a jewellery store, to make use of a tiny drill press and another to an optical store, and my glasses were good as new for the low low price of $1.50. Actually, I´m lying a bit, they are not quite as good as new because I dropped my lens on the street while walking to the jewellery store and a small chunk of glass chipped out. But they will serve for another year at least.

Broken Glasses- Soon to be Fixed

All in all, I fixed my watch, a pair of shoes, and my glasses for about $8.50. Back home, I would have tossed everything out and spent at least $200 replacing them. Sure, I’ll still need to replace them at some point, but probably not this year. My world just got a whole lot less disposable.

Las Peñitas is one of two beaches located just 20-40 minutes outside of León by chicken bus (if you´ve ever been on a chicken bus, you’ll understand the time variance). I’d have to say that this was the closest thing to an all-inclusive resort that we’ve seen since Cancun, Mexico. The soft black sand beach is rimmed by a lengthy line of hotels, hostels, B&B’s, and restaurants. There’s just one street running on the opposite side of the beach, and no town to speak of.

It’s not really an all-inclusive resort, of course, as it only cost us $6 USD per person per night, including no meals nor drinks. But without a town, you’ll find that you eat all your meals in restaurants, and you’ll probably spend most of your days lazing on the beach, so what’s the real difference?

The swimming is alright, with a low sloping soft sand beach, and gentle waves continuously rolling in off the Pacific. We stayed two nights, relaxing after our all nighter volcano hike. Each night the sunsets at the beach gave us a beautiful view. We hope you enjoy it too!

Hey guys, I need your help.  I’ve entered the 2012 Best Dive Job Competition.  In order to win I need you, my beloved readers, to comment on my entry post found here: Mike Lenzen – Best Dive Job in the World 2012.

Here’s the catch, the competition closes on February 28th, so there’s not much time left.

Thanks so much for your help, feel free to spread this around facebook, twitter, google+, email, telephone, or whatever you’ve got.  It’s all appreciated.

That’s it. Three months after arriving in Utila, it’s time to say goodbye. It’s bittersweet in a way, this is the only time so far in our trip where we’ve had to move on. We are scheduled to meet Ashley’s mom and her mom’s boyfriend in Nicaragua. A plan that was hatched just before we decided to take a trip on the vomit comet… before scuba diving.

But that’s life… if you work, you probably need to book your holidays, and Ashley’s mom was no exception. “Where are you going to be in February?” she asked.
“We have no idea,” was our response, “Does Nicaragua sound good to you?”
“That could work.” And so, we agreed to meet in Nicaragua.

Don’t get us wrong, we are plenty excited to see Ashley’s mom. Overwhelmingly so, in fact… how could we not be? It’s been a whopping seven months since we last saw her, along with everyone else from home. It’s just that saying goodbye can be tough. Leaving Utila is almost as tough as it was to leave home. We know and have become attached to so many wonderful people.

But We Also Had a Reason to Celebrate

Now three months in, we’ve completed the PADI divemaster program. The typical course of action is to invite everyone out to what’s called a snorkel test. The snorkel test is exactly what you are imagining. You sit perched in front of all your friends at the front of a bar while your mentor pours a copious amount of booze into a funnel attached to the top of your snorkel. You sit there and drink until you can’t drink anymore, then you wretch. There’s usually some applauding, followed by some dancing, and occasionally a medical emergency requiring minor first aid.

Shane’s Snorkel Test

We’re too damn old for that nonsense. We’ve become quite tame, living on our little Jewel Cay. We needed a more fitting way to say goodbye, something that suited us a bit better. Where someone that had spent the past 3 months living in the grand metropolis of Utila may have found a visit to Jewel Cay calming and relaxing, that wasn’t an option for us. We needed something else, something smaller, something like… a private island!

Little Cay

Little Cay

Little Cay is a private island for rent. It’s a bit pricey, costing $150 USD a night for up to 6 people, and an additional $10 USD per person after that. I’m not sure what the total capacity is, but I would hazard to guess that it would sleep around 15 if need be.

The house is really really nice. There’s a huge kitchen and common area. Two fridges – one for drinks, the other for food. An electric generator and solar powered lights. The rooms are spacious with their own bathrooms, and there’s even a guest house. The island is covered in soft sand, coconut palms, and hermit crabs.

Little Cay

What Do You Do on a Private Island?

Anything you want. That’s the beauty of it. There’s no one there to tell you no, or give you funny looks. For us, an island full of divemasters, divemasters in training and instructors, we chose to go on a shore dive. It was fun getting out to a new site that we hadn’t seen before. We made the most of it, staying under for about an hour, and saw some critters that are a little bit more rare, like a Spanish Lobster. It was nice, but not the most spectacular diving we’ve seen.

After the dive, it was time for food. We had tuna (purchased filleted on Jewel Cay for about $1.50USD per pound), bread fruit, salad, potato salad, ham and cheese buns, cinnamon buns, and some coconuts to hold our rum.

After the meal things died down considerably, we drank a bit more, and eventually nodded off to sleep. Great time, great food, just the right amount of sleep. Our kind of going away party. We are going to miss you Utila. So much so, that I wouldn’t be surprised if we crossed paths again sooner rather than later.

The House

Hanging Out in the Kitchen

Preparing Breadfruit

Preparing the Fish

Rum in the Coconut

Jewel Cay and Pigeon Cay are located just off the southwest corner of Utila island, about 20 minutes by boat from the town of Utila. The two islands are pleasantly small. In fact, one of their greatest draws is their tiny size and the utter lack of motored vehicles. That’s right, there are no motor vehicles on these islands. There is but a single sidewalk connected by a concrete bridge that spans the distance from one end of Jewel Cay all the way across to the far end of Pigeon Cay. As expected, with a single road no more than 420 meters long, finding your way around doesn’t take long – you can walk the whole length of the place in about 6 minutes.

Jewel Cay

Don’t let the size of the islands fool you though, they are capable of supporting a lot more than you would think. First off, consider the people. These tiny islands boast a population of 500 people (I take this number with a grain of salt, and still consider it a bit of an exaggerated boast). These same 500 people are almost entirely bilingual, speaking their original tongue of English and their second language Spanish. Nope, you read correctly, English is their first language… not Spanish. If you go back far enough in history, it turns out that the Bay Islands were inhabited by the English right up until the mid 19th century. To this day, about five of the original colonizing families occupy the majority of the property on the island and have heavily influenced the culture, making it remarkably different from that of mainland Honduras.

Beyond the people, these islands support seven stores, seven churches, three restaurants, three hotels, a hardware store, a barber, a place to get your laundry done, and plenty of fishermen. We met one store owner who had not left the Cays in over 10 years since there’s so much there! One notable exception is the lack of an ATM machine. If you need cash, you’ll either have to work, beg, or go back to Utila to use the ATM machine.

Of the seven churches, the most famous is arguably “Karaoke Church”. That’s not it’s actual name, but that’s what we liked to call it. They hold service at least twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. To earn their name, they set up a keyboard, drum set, loudspeakers, and a microphone. During service they each take a turn at the microphone with the volume cranked as loud as it goes, completely drowning out the rest of the congregation. The result sounded exactly like really bad karaoke.

Karaoke Church

You may be thinking that 7 stores is way too much for such a little island, and you are probably right. However they each seem to sell out of all of their wares on a weekly basis. The supply boat brings in fresh groceries on Tuesdays around 6:00pm. For the next hour, the whole town goes out to do their week’s worth of shopping, after which the selection of fruits and vegetables dwindles considerably. The first things to go are the avocados, followed by broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce. By Sunday, they would also be out of cheese and meat. If there were any vegetables remaining, their prices would remarkably rise up 50% over and above the levels found on the previous Tuesday. Even though we had our favourite stores, trying to piece together enough to make a meal would often require us to shop at all seven, spreading out our business. So in a way, the seven stores have learned how to share the business between them.

Another important aspect of the Cays were the baked goods. In short, they were cheap and fantastically delicious. Some of my favourites were cinnamon buns, on Cinnamon Bun Monday (a brilliant marketing strategy that ensured a complete sell out by about 7:30 AM every week), homemade doughnuts (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes Saturdays), hot coconut bread, banana tarts, ginger bread, coconut candy, and banana cake. You could find baked goods everywhere including the Captain Morgan’s Hotel, Miss Diana’s house, and most of the grocery stores. The most expensive of these were 10 Lempiras, about $0.50USD, with the cheapest costing half that. By the end, I was eating baked goods 3-4 times each day, and getting fat because of it…

Miss Diana and her homemade pizzas

If you weren’t into baked goods, there was also Pizza Night on Thursdays, where Miss Diana would make pizzas in her house. One pizza was enough to feed two, and they were delicious. Without a doubt, Pizza Night was our favourite night on the Cays. Aside from pizza, there were a good selection of drinks at Myra’s (one of the three restaurants) including natural fruit juices, and my favourite – frozen coconut milk – a deliciously cool ice-cream-like treat for only 5 lempiras or $0.25USD.

Myra, purveyor of the finest coconut milks, and natural juices

What’s There to Do?

Diving. At least that’s what we liked to do when we were not eating baked goods or pizza. If you are not into diving though, there is also good snorkelling, with equipment for rent from the Captain Morgan’s Dive Shop. If you want to keep your head out of the water, there are kayaks for rent from Cay View restaurant costing 100 Lempiras for a single, and 150 Lempiras for a double for the day.

As a day trip you could head over to the beautiful Water Cay, accessible by kayak or chartered boat.

If you are looking for a bit of novelty, there are also 2 private islands for rent, both of which you can spend the night on (more details about this coming soon).

Getting There and Away

Your best bet is to talk to the staff at Captain Morgan’s Dive Shop, just up from the ferry dock in Utila. Their dive boat leaves Utila headed for Jewel Cay daily at 6:50AM. Another option is to catch a ride with Mr. Donald. He lands his boat “Donna Ray” most days (but never on Saturdays) at the same dock that Captain Morgan’s uses, and usually departs by 11:00AM. Aside from that, it’s also possible to charter your own boat, leaving on your schedule, for about 700 Lempiras ($35USD).

Mrs. Janet, and Mr. Donald.  Our lovely landlords.

These little islands were home for 3 months.  Now we are on the lookout for the next place to settle down.  Any suggestions?  The world is our oyster.