On November 19th, it was time to renew my passport visa for the second time since I arrived in Costa Rica. I wasn't actually required to leave the country until December 4th, but some friends of mine had to renew their visa also, so we all decided to go to Nicaragua together.

I woke at 6am and knew I was in for a long day. I had some last minute packing to do before I met my friends Kenny & Dennis downtown for breakfast at 7:30am. After a quick meal of bacon & eggs at a local soda stand, we caught the 8am bus to Liberia, Costa Rica.

For as early as it was, the buses were surprisingly full. When we arrived at the central bus station in Liberia, it was nearing pandemonium. Most ticos where going to work, some ticas where just headed home, and the gringos just didn't know where they were going.

We found our bus, which was headed for a small border town called Peñas Blancas. This is the main crossing between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones who needed to cross the border this morning. From what I was told, commercial truckers must wait in line for up to three days before finally crossing into Nicaragua. Some trucks had hammocks slung underneath their containers, a perfect spot to take a nap.

You can't see it from the picture, but this is only a two lane road, one lane in each direction. When our bus hit the back of the truck line, we simply pulled into oncoming traffic, and continued on. A few times we had to squeeze past a semi-truck which was headed away from the border. As you can imagine, after waiting for three days, these trucks were not in the mood to wait any longer for some tourist bus.

After getting stuck behind a police barricade for a short while in a little town called San Dimas, we finally reached the border and were allowed to disembark. Dennis had just been through this way a few weeks before, and thankfully knew exactly where to go. Whether or not we were allowed to, we went in the exit...

The line to enter the customs building reached far around the corner from the entrance. It was estimated to take a few hours before we could get our exit visa from Costa Rica, and officially enter Nicaragua. However, we snuck around the back, and walked in through the exit doors and straight past a security guard. We were standing in front of a customs agent within five minutes.

Costa Rica has an exit tax of US$26 at the airport, which I had to pay when leaving for Panama a few months before. When walking across the border into Nicaragua however, it was only US$12, a welcomed discount. We all paid our taxes, got our stamps, and headed down a quarter mile strip of dirt to the entrance of Nicaragua.

Some friends of ours work at the border, and met us in no-man's-land to help guide us through the chaos. There is the weird gap between countries where you're not sure which one you're in, or exactly where to go. Had we not had help, this would have been a nightmare.

Our friends took our passports & paperwork, and politely filled everything out for us. As we approached Nicaragua, the turmoil started to increase. Huge trucks were driving every which way, in no apparent order. Helpers and street vendors were approaching us every few feet. To top it all off, there were no signs giving any direction as to where we needed to go. We were lucky to have our friend Marta and her sisters helping us at this point.

We were shown a small window, and instructed to slide our passports through a skinny horizontal opening, where someone on the other side would presumably finish our customs process and let us enter the country. This made me extremely uncomfortable, since I could not see into the building. However, I trusted Marta, complied, and to my relief all went smoothly.

Kenny, Dennis, Marta & myself all walked over to the taxi line, hoping to strike a deal and save some money. We were immediately stopped by a police officer, who was mumbling something in Spanish and pointing to a small hut behind him. Marta said that we now needed to pay a tax to the city mayor of US$1. Something about this didn't seem right, but when a cop tells you to pay a dollar to some guy in a booth, you just pay it.

Without any further interruptions, we found a cab, and started our second half of the day with a final destination of San Juan del Sur on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. There was only one quick stop we wanted to make first, and that was to Marta's house in Sapoa. She lives there with her grandmother and five sisters, in a modest structure on the shore of Lake Nicaragua.

Lake Nicaragua is a fresh water lake with 3,191 square miles of surface area, making it the 9th largest lake in the Americas. What's really special about this lake, however, is the twin pair of volcanoes stuck right in the middle on an island called Ometepe, meaning two mountains.

The volcanoes are named Concepción and Maderas, with Concepción being the taller of the two at just over a mile high, 5,282 feet to be exact. Only one of the volcanoes, Concepción, is still considered active. After a long silent period, Concepción exploded back to life during a massive eruption in December of 1880. Today, the island has a population of 42,000, who, when the volcano last erupted in 2010, refused to follow a government order to vacate the island. Marta's house backs right up to this view... Not a bad place to live, as long as the volcanoes remain in repose.

We sat around on the shore for a while, admiring the island. At some point, Marta's little cousin jumped in the water and swam around for a while. It was very windy, and quite cold for Central American weather, but that didn't stop him. Nor did the presence of bull sharks, which are reported to live in Lake Nicaragua. Needless to say, none of us were considering a swim.