Nicaragua for the holidays

Well, I left for Nicaragua two days ago on Sunday. The original plan was to meet at 5 AM in the morning at the bus stop with 3 other teachers - one of whom was the organizer of the trip. I arrived at the expected time and saw only one other teacher there. We waited and waited, got on the bus and the other 2 never showed up. The bus left with me on it, the other teacher, no guidebooks, and no organized plan. We rode 5 hours to Los Chiles which is right on the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The other teacher, Danny, and I decided to call and try to find out what happened. Perhaps they had had an emergency, etc. We called and called and finally got a hold of one them, Lola. Apparently her alarm clock didn´t go off. Okay... After waiting around for an hour we managed to get a hold of the other one only to hear the same story. I'm amazed at how many faulty alarm clocks there are in the world. Clearly quality control is not doing its job. However, the other teacher, Mark, told us he would try to catch the afternoon bus to Los Chiles and meet up with us the next morning in Los Chiles.
So, we got into a riverboat which takes you to San Carlos, which is the port town on the Nicaraguan side of the border. The riverboat ride was fantastic! We managed to push our way onto the boat with Danny near the motor and me at the front. I guess people just aren´t used to seeing Asians because everyone was just staring at me the whole time. Or perhaps it was my dazzling good looks... However, it was really peaceful, the sun was shining, and you could see all kinds of wildlife wandering about. I think I saw a few egrets and herons. After about two hours, we landed in the swampy port town of San Carlos. Not too pretty. After stepping out of immigration, we walked right into the market area full of mud, unpaved streets, and men bugging you to change your money into Cordobas, the Nicaraguan currency, or asking to carry your maletas (bags).
Danny and I wandered about trying to figure out what we were going to do there for the night. I was worried about my stuff getting stolen, and also about finding a place to stay the night while we waited for our friend to arrive in the morning. Apparently there were nicer places ¨up the hill¨ , according to our no-show guide, but even now I´m still not sure what hill and what nice places our friend was talking about. Anyway, we finally decided on a place that was at the bottom of the so-called hill and promptly fell asleep. The room was pretty crappy with dim flourescent lighting, a cama matrimonial, and the shower, toilet, and huge garbage bin filled with dirty looking water all in the same bathroom with no division between the toilet and the shower. Pretty sketchy... Anyway, we woke up later in the evening feeling pretty out of sorts and decided to try to find some food. We headed out of the place realizing that we didn´t really know of anywhere to go and the place looked pretty dodgy at night. I started to talking to what looked like a kindly old lady standing near the front to ask her where the nearest place to eat was. She proceeded to walk with us down the market from earlier and show us to a kind of BBQ type setup and then walked away. Fifteen minutes after we ordered, she showed up again and asked us for money for a bus trip. I didn´t really understand the whole exchange rate, so I naively agreed to help her out - until I realized that she was asking for twenty dollars! Apparently, transportation prices are pretty high in Nicaragua comapred to CR. Naturally, I didn´t want to give her the money. She followed us all the way back to the place and somehow I managed to avoid paying her the money without any problems.