Border Crossing

This past weekend we headed north to Granada, Nicaragua. Since we live in Costa Rica on a tourist visa, we have to leave the country every 90 days, in order to get a new visa. This is part of our life here in Costa Rica, and will be as well when we get to Honduras.

Looking down a main street in Granada.

Our drive to Granada took us about 10 hours. This included an hour long stop for dinner as well as a 2.5 hour stop in order to leave Costa Rica / enter Nicaragua. The trip back on Sunday was about a half hour shorter since the border crossing process only took about 2 hours. I tell you this not to complain, but to share about some realities of Central America. It was somewhat of a joke that it took this long and the border officials barely looked at each person with their passport.

Ashley on the 'beach' of Lake Nicaragua.

Granada is a beautiful and interesting city. It was the first city set up in the new world way back in the 1500s. Much of the architecture is still the same as it was when the Spanish settled there so long ago. We really enjoyed to atmosphere of the city and also had a chance to relax!

Really old church across the street from our hotel.

The only somewhat annoying part of the trip was having 3 types of currency (US Dollars, Costa Rica Colones, and Nicaragua Cordobas) in my wallet and remembering what the conversion factor should be in order to know how much I was really spending for something.

A volcano with Lake Nicaragua in front.