Nicaragua by the Numbers

Hello loyal readers from sunny Costa Rica!!! We have arrived in the land of friendly American retirees, pristine golf courses, and sandy beaches. Needless to say we have completely blown the budget and all we did was cook spaghetti for dinner. A quick update on the math behind Nicaragua. Looks like we left the country with $68 after entering with $90, so we spent $22 there. We also withdrew $723 from various ATMs. Total spend $745 across 16 days. This averages out to $46.56 per day, a bit below estimates, although so far we spent about $90 today and we are not living well. Hopefully we can live off wild nuts and berries for a bit to save on costs as Costa Rica appears to be quite expensive. Anyways, back to the continuing adventure, this morning we shared a taxi with a couple from Canada to the border with Costa Rica. This border crossing is a joke, it's overrun with "helpers" charging anywhere from $2 to $50 for help with paperwork, etc. Basically, there are two forms to fill out and mysteriously nobody in the actual office has the forms, only the "helpers". So we ended up giving one of these fellows a little less than a dollar for the forms and we filles them out on our own. We had heard of people having to wait 3-5 hours to cross this border, however we managed to cross in about an hour, although it was clear that neither side was especially organized and we probably could have just walked across, although that may have lead to some issues upon exit. We got on a bus to Liberia where we had a quick and very expensive lunch and then caught the bus to Tamarindo beach. On the way there had been an accident involving a bus and three vehicles coming the other way. It didn't look very serious, but the bus was blocking the road and there were some pretty steep gutters on the sides. Our daring bus driver decided to risk it, and a few passengers felt it was too dangerous and got off. We managed to make it to the beach and found a place to stay. So here we are, tired after a day of travel, luckily there's a pool here so if we can't make the three minute walk to the beach we can hang out at the pool. ¡Hasta Luego!