Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Day 10-11: Popoyo

Breakfast was included with our room so we went to the attached Bario Restaurant. I showed the waitress our breakfast coupons and she brought us menus. We both ordered typico nica breakfasts but when it came time to pay the bill the waitress said the coupons were only good for a different breakfast that wasn't indicated on the menu. Since my Spanish is somewhat poor and nobody else in the restaurant spoke much English we grudgingly paid for our "free" breakfast.

Next we walked up to Pelican Eyes hotel tom pick up our rental car, a a Toyota Yaris, from Budget. We next loaded up the car, got some snacks at Pali and headed out of town to Rivas where we took the turn off to Tola. The road to Tola was in good shape but then turned to a decent gravel road with a few stream crossings. Not a problem for a regular car in the dry season but I'm sure in the rainy season you would need something with high clearance. Along the way we stopped at Playa Gigante which looked gorgeous. Once we got to Popoyo the road became really bad requiring some careful maneuvers. We didn't have any reservations but satopped at the first hotel we found, Hotel Popoyo. They had some plain rooms for $45/night and some super plush nice rooms for $62/night with hot water, a/c, wifi, and free breakfast - we treated ourselves to one of the plush rooms. Oh yeah they also had a nice swimming pool on the property.

Nicaragua 12_13_2010 Popoyo - 101

Popoyo is a one street town with a few hotels, surf shops, and summer homes lining the 1km road along the beach. There is an estuary at the end of the road that fills up at high tide and the surfing waves seemed to be just south of there. On the north side of the estuary the waves were fairly gentle for swimming and there wasn't much of a rip current.

El Rancho is a good restaurant at the end of the road and had ice cold beers, decent food, an immaculate garden, and a great view of the waves. They were only open for lunch when we were there.
There is also a comidor at the end of the road - we had chicken burgers with fries and shared a liter of beer for only $7.
The best meal in town is the pizza at Rana Roja - a really sophisticated place next to Hotel Popoyo. We had a 750ml bottle of 7year Flor De Cana with diet coke, a garlic bread appitizer, salami pizza, and home made chocolate ice cream for dessert for $35

Hotel Popoyo also has a restaurant but we only had our free breaksts there which were delicious.

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