Rivas City and Hacienda Amayo, Nicaragua
Our one and only day in Nicaragua had a lot of surprises for us. This morning we arrived at the San Juan del Sur port in order to go visit the city of Rivas, a small city not too far from the border of Costa Rica, also known as the “city of mangoes”. We were greeted by a three-man-band on the dock and got on our twenty-four-seater city-van in the company of our Nicaraguan hosts, our guides and drivers. After a ride through a scenic road, we entered the colorful and busy city of Rivas where we visited the city’s museum and were welcomed by a committee of dancing children and smiling adults. Here we had the chance to exchange presents with the local children and ride the city taxis called pepanos, which are basically a three-tire cycle with a rider and enough space for two commuters. That means that we had at our disposal around twenty-five of them. We rode on the pepanos for about fifteen minutes, out of which five were under pouring rain, but as it is typical of the tropics it left as fast as it came. The pepanos took us to the San Pedro Church after which we had ice cream to cool off.
After the ice cream we took the buses towards our afternoon destination: Hacienda Amayo. This Hacienda belongs to the Barrios family, a prominent Nicaraguan family who received the full 56 of us into their summer home so that we could have a great Nicaraguan dinner, play soccer and baseball, and hit a piñata full of local candy. Back on board before 6 p.m., we speculated about what the next day would offer us while eating our dinner.
Our one and only day in Nicaragua had a lot of surprises for us. This morning we arrived at the San Juan del Sur port in order to go visit the city of Rivas, a small city not too far from the border of Costa Rica, also known as the “city of mangoes”. We were greeted by a three-man-band on the dock and got on our twenty-four-seater city-van in the company of our Nicaraguan hosts, our guides and drivers. After a ride through a scenic road, we entered the colorful and busy city of Rivas where we visited the city’s museum and were welcomed by a committee of dancing children and smiling adults. Here we had the chance to exchange presents with the local children and ride the city taxis called pepanos, which are basically a three-tire cycle with a rider and enough space for two commuters. That means that we had at our disposal around twenty-five of them. We rode on the pepanos for about fifteen minutes, out of which five were under pouring rain, but as it is typical of the tropics it left as fast as it came. The pepanos took us to the San Pedro Church after which we had ice cream to cool off.
After the ice cream we took the buses towards our afternoon destination: Hacienda Amayo. This Hacienda belongs to the Barrios family, a prominent Nicaraguan family who received the full 56 of us into their summer home so that we could have a great Nicaraguan dinner, play soccer and baseball, and hit a piñata full of local candy. Back on board before 6 p.m., we speculated about what the next day would offer us while eating our dinner.
