Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

It turns out that there's an extra thing to beware of when you're diving in fresh water: without the telltale taste of salt, it's easy to get water in your mouth and not realize it. Both Mona and I had rough nights due to something in the water.

We dallied at the hotel until 2pm (an unusually late checkout time for this country), and decided to head down to the coast and stay at the place that Manolo's dad recommended, Barra de Santiago. Unfortunately, the internet connection at the hotel was down, so we couldn't do any research into places to stay there. There was a brochure in the room that mentioned a place, though, so we at least had somewhere to ask for directions to.

It took us longer than we expected to get there. The turnoff for Barra de Santiago was a dirt road marked by a little sign on a bus stop. We missed it the first time through and had to ask several people for directions. Driving along the dirt road was slow, and since we had practically no information about exactly where the hotel we were looking for was, we had to ask for directions three more times. As dark fell, we found the beach that the hotel fronted, and, based on the assurances of passers-by that the beach was passable, drove out along it.

It turned out that the hotel was asking a jaw-dropping rate for a room, about 4 times the most we'd paid anywhere else in the country. Maybe that would be worth it for a day on a great beach, but since it was already dark it seemed too much to pay for a bed. Driving onto the beach turned out to have been a less-than-stellar idea, despite the assurances. It took a bit of pushing to get us back onto solid ground.

We headed back inland to visit a night market that Mona had been interested in seeing. We arrived a little too late to see it in all of its glory, but we got a feel for it. There were lots of little stalls with corrugated roofs selling various ingredients and cooked food items. They were sold out of iguana, but still had some rabbit on the grill.

We ended up driving five miles on past the night market back to Juayúa, where we were happy to find that the hostal we stayed at last week had rooms for us.