Justin Vacula of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast shares a full Calala Island trip report from one of the most exclusive Hilton redemptions in the world.
This private ultra all-inclusive island resort in Nicaragua was booked with four Hilton Free Night Certificates from American Express Hilton cards, and Justin also received a $2,510 wire bonus in under a week.
In this episode, Justin and guest James break down the full experience, including how to book Calala Island, complicated transfer logistics through Managua, Bluefields, and multiple boat rides, and what it’s really like staying at this luxury private island resort.
They discuss the WhatsApp concierge, standout seafood-focused dining, the upgraded master suite, no air conditioning, fans for sleeping, no-see-ums and other bugs, and memorable activities like a boat tour, cooking class, live music, crab race, and picnic basket setup.
Justin also shares the downsides of the trip, including heat, sunburn, getting sick near the end of the stay, and an early rainy departure, plus thoughts on the value of Hilton Free Night Certificates, how hard Calala Island is to book, and why award availability is so limited.
If you’ve ever wondered whether Calala Island is worth it, how to use Hilton Free Night Rewards for an aspirational stay, or what the experience is really like on this private island resort in Nicaragua, this episode covers it all.
Timestamps:
00:00 Points and miles intro
00:44 Calala Island big win
02:13 Getting paid
03:43 How to get there
06:00 Boat ride and wildlife
06:59 Pre-arrival info call
08:22 WhatsApp concierge service
09:42 Rooms and master suite
11:49 Sleep tips
13:23 Bugs and no-see-ums
15:02 Food, lobster, and value
18:50 Picnic basket setup
20:50 Excursions and sunburn
22:41 Sunscreen recommendation
23:37 Why there are show ads
24:07 Where to follow
24:32 Meetups and conferences
25:27 Affiliate tools
26:13 Guest podcast plug
26:56 Island activities
29:50 Spa and gift cards
30:11 How many nights
32:19 Extend your stay
34:54 Getting sick and leaving
37:04 Airport and Wi-Fi
38:18 Listener Q&A
39:48 Hilton certificate strategy
43:30 Wrap-up and wire talk
46:40 Final thanks and outro
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Rough Transcript:
[00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula, here to help you make money, save money, and travel the world at low cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. I’m back in the United States following one of my biggest points and Miles adventures yet. I stayed four nights on Calala Island, a private island resort in Nicaragua, and got paid $2,510 on my stay Booked with Hilton Free Night [00:01:00] Certificates.
A plane ride, a taxi, two boat rides. Quite an adventure to arrive and a great time there. I had great food, cool experiences, and a trip I’ll hopefully never forget. On With today’s episode recorded, April 2nd, 2026. No, April Fools today. Welcome back to the show, James. Hey Justin. Thanks for having me back. I feel like it was very fitting that I be your co-host for this episode because I was the one that was on when we covered this deal and we had a lot of laughs about how ridiculous it sounded. But I’m happy to know that you survived your trip to Calala Island. You’re back to report on it and excited to hear about all of it for sure.
And not only survived but thrived. It had a lot of good things going for it. It was way different than what I’ve done before. This was a private island my first time on a private island, and not just [00:02:00] all inclusive, but ultra all inclusive with all the food, drinks, and activities included.
And a rare opportunity to get paid for travel using Hilton free night certificates. Yeah. As we’re gonna get into the most unique thing about this by far, and it’s really saying something was the wire back as a refund.
Yes, and I already got paid. I’m just a few days back. They said the money would be received about 20 days after the stay, and they made good on it in under one week. It showed up as pending, went to processed, and I have the money. That was with four Hilton free night certificates through the American Express Hilton credit cards.
There were some other guests on the island. They used Hilton points. Everybody was from Europe, and they were knowledgeable, or at least somewhat knowledgeable about the American credit card opportunity. They said, oh we can’t get aspire [00:03:00] surpass. We got some points from our stays and they booked it using 600,000 Hilton points about a year ago is what one of the guests said, but as far as I know, they weren’t entitled to receive the $2,510 rebate, which was one of the driving factors to get me to go to this island.
Yeah, that’s interesting. I always hear different versions of what kind of guests are at this place. Some people accuse it of being a points factory. I’ve also heard there’s a lot of foreigners who will stay here ’cause they won the stay in like a charity auction yeah. That’s a possibility.
A lot of points people at this property, but maybe for good reason. I think so. I had to arrive the night before. That was part of the journey. I flew from Philadelphia to Miami to Managua. There was a slight delay in Miami. But eventually I got to Managua. I stayed at the Best Western right across the street, and before [00:04:00] that, Calala communicated with me through email saying that a Calala or Hilton representative would meet me at the airport, which is exactly what happened.
He greeted me, walked me to the hotel. There was a very busy street. This man, his name was Nestor, explained that the drivers, the bikers and so on don’t really respect the crosswalk area. So you’re at a wait that the traffic is completely gone and then cross the road to the hotel.
So that was a good tip, and he pointed me to an area I needed to be in the morning because part of getting to the island was a local transfer. There was a small plane that would go from outside of the airport to a place called Blue Fields, and then there would be a boat ride or two boat rides from blue Fields to a place called Pearl Lagoon and then Pearl Lagoon to the island.
I got a few messages, Justin and the big concern a lot of ’em had was how [00:05:00] really do I get here? How long is the boat ride? How sketchy are some of these transfers?
But it sounds like you didn’t have any issues. Were there any hiccups in the transfer process with the boat and blue fields and all of that? It went really smoothly. There was some waiting as security, you had to wait to get your bag. Then there was a taxi ride.
For lack of a better term, I had a chaperone with me at all times. I didn’t need to navigate through these local places. I didn’t need to just walk by myself. I was accompanied at all times. Tracked, even they said that they keep a close eye on me throughout this, I don’t know Spanish. They were speaking Spanish to the locals, the security, the officials.
I got in a taxi ride. It was quite raucous as the community was what they said, underdeveloped or growing. There were a lot of broken down buildings, trash on the side of the street. At one point there was a big goat that almost jumped in front of the taxi. There was a woman who was trying to stop the taxi, who tried [00:06:00] to go in front of it.
The taxi driver swerved and it was about a 15 minute ride, but eventually landed in this boat Depot that was very busy and hopped in a boat, put a life jacket on. It was a bumpy ride at times, but I found it fun. I think for this you have to really be open to experience and try to have a fun time with it.
Some people might be used to, oh, I get to the airport, I take a quick ride to get to the hotel. But this was more involved, but that allowed for more of an experience as the boat ride went through a mangrove area where there were many trees and a river. I saw monkeys hanging from a tree, howler monkeys.
There were many different types of birds. There was a crocodile or an alligator at one point, and it was a very scenic route. You’re the first person I’ve heard mention that I was under the impression that the boat ride was boring, almost like just out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean.
So that’s nice to hear. And Justin, [00:07:00] you mentioned you got a Zoom call from the manager of this place before you arrived. What was that? Yes. When I was at the Best Western, they wanted to call and talk about what to expect during the journey. There was some history, there was talk about what to expect when on the island.
Talk about the staff is from local villages. The island is sustainable. It was a big, what we call in RPGs, role-playing games, an info dump. There are times where I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons, you get some kind of quest or adventure and they tell you for maybe 10 minutes about what you can expect, what the adventure is.
But this went on for about 40 minutes, maybe even longer. They really mean well. They wanted to give a lot of information to help to maybe lower expectations of people that thought it would be this luxurious journey. It was a bit gritty at times, but I liked it. It was just a lot of information that probably could have been consolidated, but I [00:08:00] appreciate at least a heads up before a lot of these steps.
Yeah, it’s weird. It’s like a good sign that they have someone who’s taking sounds like multiple hours a day to onboard. Yes, but also sounds like it could have just been sent in an email, as they say in corporate speak. Yeah. That could have happened. But it was nice and I got to ask my questions. It was good that there was that two-way communication and that remained a theme when on the island, they had two WhatsApp groups.
There was one where you were directly in contact with the GM’s: husband and wife. Claudia, who was most responsive, was the wife. And you can ask some questions throughout. You can request things for your room. They would check in on me, how is everything going? Can we bring you some food? Can we bring you some water?
And the second was for food and beverages between meals, if you wanted to request a pizza, request some drinks. At one point, they even brought me electrolyte drinks when I [00:09:00] said I wasn’t feeling too well. That was very nice of them. They asked, oh, do you want some lighter food? Would you like some toast, some rice, or maybe you would just like something from the main menu and they would give a heads up, oh, there’s gonna be a group dinner tonight at eight.
You can come by at 7:30 for some pre-dinner drinks. And they rotated that dinner menu throughout. It was a lot better than regular chat services through even luxury hotels where mostly it would be, oh, I’m your Hilton assistant. Yeah, and let us know if you need any towels or a wake up call or so on.
This was much more involved. People will say, oh, this place had good service. But I think Calala Island had really good service. You said there were 11 other guests on the island with you. But another question, what do you think roughly the amount of staff were on the island?
11 total, including me. There were six rooms on the island. How about that? Five rooms on one side, [00:10:00] and I had my own room on my own side of the island. I got lucky, or perhaps Hilton Diamond status helped to get an upgrade to the master suite. That was really nice. The staff on the island, there were the bartenders, there were the chefs, there were the groundskeepers, for lack of a better word.
So maybe about 25 to 30 staff on the island for the 11 guests that were there at the time. You sent me a lot of photos while you were on this trip. It was much appreciated. You mentioned you got the master suite. Do you wanna quickly explain all that entailed. You walk up to the room and you see a very big porch. There was a table on there, which ended up being the table for the morning coffee service, which was a thing. They would bring you coffee, biscuits, and whatever you’d like before breakfast.
They brought this around the time of sunrise. The birds woke me up every day, even before my alarm went off, so it was [00:11:00] nice to have those morning items outside of the room, even though the birds would try to get to the biscuits, they had a little bit of a netting over that. There were some bean bags outside, a hammock, and you go up on the porch, which is overlooking a beach.
You have your own beach area. Get inside the room, a very large king bed. In this upgraded suite, there was a big area with a coffee table and some seating. You have a big desk and it brings over to a nice sink area with two sinks, and then a separate room where the toilet was a separate room for the shower and a bathtub included, extremely spacious.
There were three ceiling fans putting air down into the room, and you can open the very large doors to have a breeze come inside. I say this about the air and the breeze because the island does not have air conditioning, which was a negative thing. Some people didn’t like to hear that and said, oh, I wouldn’t go to a [00:12:00] place without air conditioning.
But throughout, I think the outdoor breeze was really nice. It made it easier to sleep. The ceiling fans helped and there were two extra fans inside of the closet that I plugged into both sides of my bed. I had one fan on one side, one on the other. And that helped with the sleep. The sleep was still erratic.
I would sleep for a few hours, wake up and then go back to sleep. I think it was that heat during the day was just adjusting to this lack of air conditioning that I’m so spoiled to get at almost every other hotel. What temperature roughly does it get at night when you’re trying to sleep? Night was pretty decent. It would get cool. There would be that big breeze. The morning would also be cool, but walking around during the day, it could easily be in the eighties or nineties Fahrenheit, but I think at night it would cool down.
It would be a more reasonable temperature, but sleeping during the day or the afternoon, that was pretty difficult. I don’t think there was a lot of circulation at that point. It was [00:13:00] harder to take a nap. I’m not sure of the exact temperature, but it was a little bit of a challenge at time to go to sleep.
I would bring some sleep aids with me in the future. I didn’t think about that. Maybe bringing some liquid medicine or having the other types of sleep aids, whether it be melatonin or something else. I think that would be helpful. Interesting. Yeah, that would’ve been my huge concern.
What was the bug situation like? Like in the room? Out of the room? Was it an issue at all? The GM recommended to reapply bug spray every few hours, maybe even faster than that.
During the day, you would put sunscreen on and have the bug spray do it at the same time. You have the privacy of your own room. I did it in the bathroom area. There wasn’t sunscreen in the room initially. I asked for sunscreen. They brought it, but they said that most guests would apply the sunscreen when they were outdoors, but I’d rather apply it in my room.
I find that a lot easier. They were nice to bring the sunscreen over. I did [00:14:00] bring extra sunscreen with me, but I figured to use theirs. Apply the bug spray, the sunscreen. There weren’t mosquitoes. This was a common thing. And ChatGPT was thinking even that there were mosquitoes, but there weren’t, there were just very small, more annoying bugs, what they called no seeums.
That would bite you. There I didn’t feel much of the bites, much of annoyance at all. But after I got back, I would wake up and I would be a little bit itchy. Very minor on the bug front. And this is, I believe, the case on most islands that you’re just going to have bugs in this tropical setting.
My theory on this is that it’s actually seasonal. If you look at the reviews, there seems to be people who have really bad issues with bugs here, and then people who say, I don’t even understand what people are talking about.
There’s no bugs at all. What’s the deal? In my experience when you read stuff like that at resorts like this, it’s ’cause it’s probably very seasonal. Look at the month people stayed when they complained. [00:15:00] Yeah, I was okay in March, right? I didn’t have a problem, although I did miss the turtles as this was a feature of the island, the hawk or hawks bill, turtles that were formerly endangered.
The GM talked about how the turtles became endangered because people were eating the turtles. They would eat shrimp and lobster, and eventually they got sick of that. This is a big wake up call, a cultural wake up call that people in the states so highly value lobster, they’re willing to spend
50, $60 or more for a lobster tail. But the locals in Nicaragua don’t really care that they just didn’t eat lobster because they had so much of it. They got sick of the lobster. Lobster being very overrated. On the menu, there were lobster sandwiches. They had lobster added to salads.
There was lobster made in all kinds of different ways along with the shrimp, and I think the food was a big highlight of the stay in addition to the room. And they had so much that at times I was very full. [00:16:00] Even the starter portions they had that as an option on a lunch menu were very big. And I was just saying, don’t bring more.
They would have meals with multiple courses and they even had a buffet for us. That was the taste of the Caribbean or the NiCaribbean, Nicaragua and Caribbean. They brought food to the table in addition to the buffet, and I told them at times, okay, this is good. I don’t want anymore. They were being extremely generous with the food.
At one point there was a meal that had lobster, once again with some veggies, and then also spaghetti baked potato, and I was thinking, oh, I probably could have just passed on the spaghetti and the baked potato. I just told him not even to bring the baked potato, but the flavor was very good and I’m usually not one to praise food.
I’m mostly looking for value in food and not spending money just looking at food as mainly fuel. But I could tell the taste of the food was much different than the regular food that I’ve had. Even little things like the sour cream, the pico de gallo, the guacamole was [00:17:00] very flavorful. The salads even had some sort of lime dressing to go with them.
That had a really good taste. Definitely getting a lot of value out of the food here. Yeah. Looking through all your photos of the food it’s all really a few things pop out to me very well plated. I would say with a side of there’s an island rustic vibe to some of it, but it’s like a very fancy version of that.
I would say if you’re the type of person who’s not a very adventurous eater or you don’t like seafood.
Justin, is it fair to say that people in those categories might run into some maybe less desirable food situations here if they’re not big seafood lovers or are very picky? The meals were personalized and they even had my name on the menu, and I did ask, what about vegan diners? People that don’t eat seafood at all.
They said that they had options for them too, but they were just more limited, but they could accommodate that. If necessary, they would [00:18:00] even accommodate gluten-free. They said they had some Indian vegetarian, no seafood people, so they did have the veggies, but they did talk about how they liked the seafood because they would keep it fresh.
They wouldn’t freeze it. It was so common in the area. That’s what the cooks would know, that all the people here hired, they explained were from local villages. And they were known as good chefs in their areas. It’s really nice that they do that. They support the local communities. And the staff was very friendly throughout.
It was really good service. They kept coming, asking how I was doing, asking for more refills, the drinks before and during the meals. They were really attentive. It was really good service. Yeah, I would not complain about this food at all. And I’ll eat anything like you it’s like for you is food is fuel, but man, this all looks really great.
Now tell you gotta tell me. About this picnic basket because we were talking about this, I think we saw it as an option when we looked over the list of [00:19:00] stuff a few weeks ago. But what is the deal with this picnic basket? I asked about it as they had a list of activities. There was snorkeling, paddle boarding.
You could star gaze. There was a cooking class and much more. This was in there that you can get a picnic basket, and they talked about having your own private area away from everyone else, which just happened to be in front of my room. And they made this great presentation where they didn’t just come with a basket.
They came before and they said that there’d be set up and they had a sunshade or a tarp that they put up. They had five people or so that came with a ladder. They hung this up in the trees outside of my room. They put this mat on the ground and then a blanket over it, and a big picnic basket that I believe you said was quite a gift basket.
There were all kinds of snacks, chips, chocolates, and a cheese tray at the bottom that was inside of foil with some ice. They brought this in addition to lunch. They said, oh, we just [00:20:00] bring the picnic basket with lunch. The lunch, I had a salad. I had fish tacos, and then they brought this picnic basket, so I think I ordered too much
to go with it. Maybe just ordering the salad next time. Again, this theme of too much food or more than I thought. So I didn’t eat most of the picnic basket stuff. I kept the snacks for a later time. They even had the Calala jam, which was a sort of passion fruit, some candies, like little gummy worms inside of a glass jar, a lot of crackers or some kind of wafers. It was really nice, really cool presentation on the picnic basket, and I’m going to put that up as a video on my YouTube channel, but I also have some photos up there too on the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, YouTube channel. That’s pretty interesting. Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna save your audience, the Yogi Bear jokes and.
Say that’s very nice and move on to ask you what were other activities you did while you were on the island. Four days is a [00:21:00] decently long amount of time at a place like this where you’re just lazing around and having a nice time. I thought a boat tour was interesting.
They had that as one of the excursions. You hopped in a boat similar to the boat you came to the island on. And got to see many of the islands, they talked about how a hurricane came through, damaged some of the trees, damaged some of the islands, some of the places were flooded, but there were also places where there were other locals.
People even had pots and pans as they would just stay on the island for a few days and you could see some of the structures, some of the buildings. It was really cool and I really liked the boat ride as some people were down about it. Maybe motion sickness, bumpy boat ride. But I had fun. One mistake I made early on is that didn’t apply sunscreen throughout.
They gave me goggles because the boat ride would get windy and they would say that the goggles would help against the wind blowing at your face. But I didn’t put sunscreen around that area, so I got a little bit of a sunburn around the goggle area and then I didn’t get the [00:22:00] area around my smartwatch from Dell.
So thanks Dell. A little bit of a sunburn. Ah, throughout, even in my room, tour video, I showed something. I was holding a map and you could see the sunburn around the watch area. I thought that was pretty funny. Nothing serious. Just some annoyance and mostly recovered now, a few days later. Yeah, I mean it’s little sunburns gonna be a non-negotiable at a place like this.
Yeah, I wore shorts as well and I didn’t get the area around my knees, so I’m encouraging everyone to just be extra careful and apply that sunscreen throughout. I suppose while I was on the boat, the shorts were going up and down around the knees and the sun hit that area, so that was a minus. Shout out to anybody listening, I’m gonna plug a product really quickly for sunscreen.
There’s a Japanese version of a Nivea brand. It’s called Super Water Gel. It’s like SPF 50, but the reason I’m [00:23:00] plugging it. I have long tried to find a sunscreen I could travel with that after you put it on, you don’t feel like you’re wearing sunscreen. ’cause nobody wants that oily, like greasy feeling.
Whether you’re at the beach or you’re out exploring the city. That is the only sunscreen I’ve found that truly disappears after you apply it. So yeah, Nivea Super Water gel. Nivea Japan, they don’t support the show, but the show for listeners that don’t know it’s like a job for me. I don’t have a traditional job, so this is a big part of what I do. I make this free to listeners.
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returning to the show today with james talking about my experience at Calala Island, but first, if you could plug your socials and your podcast.
Yeah. Maybe if I plug my podcast more or had a good sponsor, it would be more successful. Justin, maybe I should contact Nivea about sponsoring the Churn and Burn podcast. No. Sadly, I have no affiliation with Nivea, but yes, thank you. I do host the Churn and Burn podcast. You can find it on Spotify or Apple. I’m also on Instagram. It’s the account is Churn and Burn podcast. If you’re into Justin’s content, I’m sure you’ll enjoy mine as well.
What were some of the other activities they had on offer [00:27:00] there? They had music entertainment. There were many times where some of the staff would play local songs. They would do covers of songs. I’ve tried to upload some reels with one that was a cover of the gambler, but that was blocked on copyright grounds, even as a cover played with a guitar and some tambourines.
We can’t get that to you on YouTube, but it was cool. The local music, they had English and other languages to that. They had an impromptu event that was a crab race. There were crabs in a bucket. They dug a hole, put the crabs inside of the bucket, or covered them with a bucket, and the crabs raced to the outer edges.
They had room numbers on each of the shells. And it was first to three, I believe that won. I did not win. I did not get the special gift, but there were many other gifts, and I have these at my desk right now. There’s a [00:28:00] handcrafted mask, which I believe is made of clay. It says, Calala Island, Nicaragua, and this was the devil or the diabloito, if I’m saying that correctly, where it represents good and bad, a balance in life.
I got a toucan and a turtle, a hawk bill or hawks bill turtle with a magnet that’s now on my fridge. Also a box of cigars that I will gift to someone at some point. They had a cooking class where they showed you how to make a stew, a Ron Don Stew, I believe it was called. And they had patties that were similar to Pierogis.
They had us roll the dough that was made of some local materials and then fill it. They had a meat filling and a veggie filling, and they served those later. They were a starter before dinner that accompanied the drinks at the bar, all the food, really [00:29:00] good tasting throughout. They had other events like snorkeling, paddle boarding, kayaking, I believe I mentioned.
There was a lot to do. You could even just stay in your room, do your own thing, and make it your own day. There was an infinity pool. By infinity, I think they meant that there was a waterfall on one end where the water would recycle back into the other side as they had their water system throughout the island.
There were solar panels that powered the island. They had a tower for internet service. You could talk to the staff. You could sit at the island bar. You would swim up to the bar from the infinity pool, or just be dry on the outside exercise equipment, yoga mats, a volleyball net.
Many books you could lounge in a hammock or on one of the beach chairs, and there was a spa. This was one of the only things that wasn’t included, that you can get a massage. Maybe I could have brought my Hilton gift cards with me, but honestly I didn’t think [00:30:00] about it. I didn’t think the Hilton gift cards would be usable.
But that actually might be the case. Someone mentioned me while I was on the island and said, did you try to use Hilton gift cards? Oh, I didn’t think about doing that. My mistake there.
You stayed here four nights and I don’t think I have to ask you if you felt like
you had a great time, obviously it was spectacular and we can talk about the downsides later, but it was an amazing trip. But my question is, what do you think would be the amount of nights here where somebody might start to say, all right, it’s getting a little stale, ready to go home or go somewhere else? I think four was right, but maybe you can also get a fifth night. If you book with points, you get the fifth night for free.
But beyond that, I’m thinking that you would have to use a lot more resources to stay. It’s probably not gonna be common that listeners have something like five or six free night certificates and the thought of using a million points for five nights, maybe people wouldn’t want to do that with Hilton points, [00:31:00] it’s a lot per night.
Or if you were to combine certs and points, that could be a lot too. Maybe if you had three certs and had one night for the four night stay with points, maybe that wouldn’t be too bad, but that is a limiting factor for sure. When we’re talking about places like Las Vegas if we can get comp nights or low rates at 20 or 30 a night, then I guess that really doesn’t matter.
And there’s still a lot to do, but here, there were also other activities. You can go back to Pearl Lagoon and get a village tour. You could spend more time at night looking at the stars. Learn more about swimming and maybe go out to the reef area. As they mentioned, that was an option.
You could swim around the reefs, see the reefs, and not get bit by stingrays, hopefully, as that was a thing in that area too. And the island tour, you can even take the boat to different sections. I’m sure there’s a lot to do. Yeah. I guess I could see an argument for doing the fifth night free [00:32:00] blowing the million points. There’s always gonna be the type of person that can justify it. But yeah I think you’re right. Maybe the way to do this obviously is with the Hilton Free night certs and maybe string together just the four you need.
You’re not gonna feel like you didn’t spend enough time there. You could have also extended by staying in Miami, as many of the attendees said that they stayed in Miami. Oh, I stayed in Miami for two nights, three nights before Nicaragua. There you don’t have to worry about the heat, the bugs, and you could have also stayed in Managua, where I only stayed in Managua for one night.
I didn’t go anywhere. I didn’t do anything. I just stayed at the hotel and I arrived a little bit later too, especially with some of the delays. But Nestor, as I mentioned, was the Hilton rep, and they did say that Nestor could coordinate legitimate taxis, bring you to legitimate places. I mentioned legitimate taxis and legitimate places because there is some concern of people pretending to be authority, [00:33:00] trying to hustle you for money, claiming that you broke some kind of law and needed to pay, or some scams that might go on.
But having the taxis coordinated with the Hilton rep would probably keep you away from that. You could see places in Managua if you’d like, and you could visit some better hotels than where I stayed at the Best Western. But the idea with the Best Western was just to be close to the airport and be there quick for the morning transfer.
Absolutely. And I should probably mention this for people who are potentially looking at this place I know of at least one data point of somebody who they had like a three or a four night stay here. And this especially applies to points, people who are flexible because this person, they were about to check out, or it was the night before checkout and the manager comes up to ’em and says, Hey, we’ve got somebody who, they had a flight delay and they’re not gonna be able to make it.
So we’ve got an extra [00:34:00] room essentially. Do you just wanna stay an extra night? They essentially offered them a heavily discounted rate, right? And obviously they took ’em up on it. They had to shuffle some flights around.
But if you’re a points and miles person, that’s not some kind of herculean task for a lot of people. If you’re about to check outta this place and you’re flexible, there’s no harm going to talk to the manager and saying, Hey, you haven’t had any there’s not a vacancy or anything because my guess, Justin, is if they’ve got one of these rooms that’s just sitting empty for a night they’re not expecting somebody.
This isn’t the Hyatt Regency St. Louis. No one is coming off the street to occupy that room, and so they probably would offer you something generous to just fill a room out for the night. It’s no skin off their back.
One negative is I got sick towards the end. It was very psychologically difficult to get out of bed. I [00:35:00] felt exhausted. I don’t know whether I got dehydrated. The travel just caught up with me, but the last day I mostly stayed in my room. I didn’t have much of appetite. I had a little bit of a temperature, so I got sick towards the end.
It could have been nice to extend, but I wanted to just get out. I felt better as the day went on. I got some more rest. I slept in as much as I could, and they brought me those electroltye drinks as I mentioned. That’s a possibility of getting sick. You’re going from one climate to another. It’s a big travel experience that probably had something to do with it.
And another negative was the final day. Had to wake up around four in the morning for the morning breakfast service and getting in the boat to make your way back to the Managua airport. It was very wet in the morning. They had us all put rain gear on and the boat was a bit bumpy. I was able, and I was surprised about this, I fell [00:36:00] asleep on the boat ride, so it didn’t make it as much of a thing and couldn’t really see much because it was dark, it was foggy, it was rainy, and the waves were crashing up.
And even with the rain gear on, some of the water got inside and I was a little bit wet. The back of my T-shirt that I had on the top of my shorts was a bit wet, but after the boat ride eventually got to land and dried off there. It was some waiting for the plane ride and on the way back it was a smaller plane.
There were maybe 10, 12 people in the plane to get back to the main airport from Blue Fields. You didn’t have any serious issues, like with the boat ride, not feeling too hot. Was that. No, I was okay on the way back. Yeah, it was just me tired and just a little exhausted on the way out, but it wasn’t too bad.
I’m glad I had the speedy recovery. Otherwise, it would’ve felt a lot worse for sure. Man, I’m glad you’re glad you got back. All [00:37:00] right. Without any like crazy incidents. I definitely have been there before. Downtime in the airport as well. We got there a little bit ahead of schedule. Where originally we were arriving around noon, but we got there around 11, and my flight was around three.
It was sometimes sitting in the food court and there was no wifi of the airport, and I was trying to get the wifi from the cafe area, but I suppose there was a hard time communicating, or they just weren’t giving the wifi. I couldn’t work on my laptop. I wanted to work on some video editing and transferring and uploading, but I wasn’t able to do that, so I was stuck to
my phone and using mobile data. Yeah. I have the highest package with Verizon, so I have the international data, and that was good enough throughout the trip, especially at the airport. The wifi in the room was actually really good, even for uploading files. On several cruise ships,
the upload and download speed would be pretty bad. But here it was surprisingly good. [00:38:00] Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot. And it’s always, I don’t know why, I’m always so surprised to hear this, that the wifi there is amazing. But yeah, it, it is really interesting that they’re able to do that. I don’t know, maybe they’re, they got Skynet or something.
Maybe starlink I’m not too sure. But let’s move on to some listener comments. If you subscribe to my Subscribe Star page, you can go to subscribe star.com, search Hurdy Gurdy Travel, and one of the subscriber perks is asking questions for podcast episodes. We have the first one from Michael Trager.
Thanks for your support. Michael, who says, I think for this, since audience-wise, they’re more focused on using free night awards or points, how to plan towards that. I highly doubt most would want to pay the cash rate. Even with a convincing argument about the experience. I think that’s right. The cash rate was really high.
You’re talking thousands of dollars USD per night. So the way would be using the free night [00:39:00] awards. I looked before we recorded, and it seems to be completely booked through 2027 even. So in the future, if you wanna plan for this, you’ll have to have the free night awards from the Hilton cards with American Express, sometimes they’re part of the welcome offer when they heighten the welcome offers.
Or on cards like the Surpass and the Aspire, you can spend your way to get free night certificates. Otherwise, the points rate a million points for five nights. That’s a lot of Hilton points. The signup bonuses are typically around a hundred to 150,000. Yeah. It’s really becoming the case that the free night certs are
more and more valuable as they become more scarce and, the signup bonuses with the lifetime language and what have you are getting harder to come by.
And another listener, Mario, wanted to know, what are some of your favorite ways to earn the certificates? For me, it’s been spending on the Amex surpass card. Getting six [00:40:00] X Hilton points at grocery stores. That’s buying gift cards, prepaid cards, and again, sometimes getting them through signup bonuses when they have the no lifetime language.
You can get the multiple signup bonuses, multiple of the same card. Usually it’s one signup bonus per Amex card, but occasionally they put out these special offers. And this is a question back to you, James. How would you use Hilton Certs in 2026? Calalas sold out, so what else would you choose? Yeah. This is such a hotly debated idea, because there’s always gonna be the school of thought that you get on rooms.aero or I think maybe Max FHR can help you do this.
You find the Hilton property that has either the largest cash rate or the largest points rate. And you victoriously wave around your free night certs and tell everybody about your huge, massive cents per point.
The way I see the [00:41:00] free night certs is it’s totally aspirational. People should look at the global portfolio of all the Hilton properties. Really just ask yourself what are the places that you really want to go to? And whether it’s a hundred thousand points a night or double that, whatever.
I think that’s less important than the place being somewhere you actually wanna stay. I’m just speaking for myself, and we talked about this on the last episode where we discussed the deal. Calala is just not really my scene. There’s people who think Japan is the greatest tourist country on earth, and there’s people who just don’t understand and never will. Just go for your aspirational properties and basically don’t pay attention to the points price at all.
A lot of people have been talking good things about Hermitage Bay. I know podcast listener Gene, past podcast guest Beth really [00:42:00] liked Hermitage Bay and Antigua, an all inclusive to my understanding. And maybe you’re not dealing with the heat and the bugs as much.
This is the hot property of 2026. I started hearing some kind of buzz about it in a lot of my groups, a lot of people with potential bookings and everybody I know who has been has said it’s amazing, nice for east coaster people that it’s not a crazy long journey to get there. I’ll be honest, I’m looking at it now.
They’ve even got cats on property. Justin, who can complain? This place definitely gives Calala vibes, but definitely more built up, a little more refined, not so rough around the edges. But yeah, that would be a great property.
Especially for cat lovers. Some people really like Hawaii using their Hilton certs in Hawaii as well. Yeah. And I think that’s a good use of ’em, because cash rates in Hawaii are so unreasonable [00:43:00] just because of the aspirational. You get outsized value there by nature of how crazy the cash prices are and the points prices. Very good. And listeners, if you have thoughts about Calala Island questions or how you want to use Hilton Free Night Certificates in 2026 or beyond, feel free to comment on YouTube.
And I’d also like to hear from you info@HurdyGurdyTravelPodcast.com. Any questions, comments. Feedback. Any other thoughts from you, James, before we close? It’s a bummer that when we were talking off mic earlier, Justin, basically all the rooms are sold out through the year here, so this isn’t really a deal that people can still jump on.
But I have a feeling that there’s more than a couple of your listeners who have bookings here, and hopefully this was a good primer for people who are going here in the next nine to 10 months. Yeah. Good luck guys. Hope you all enjoy it. Yes. No [00:44:00] double dipping. I was curious as to, okay, maybe I’ll make a decision about a second stay and then I look and all the rooms were already booked.
Yeah. Shock shocker. I’m not sure they would allow a double dip though. I didn’t see anything in the terms. It didn’t say one per person one time in 2026 or anything like that. Maybe it would be possible to get the $2,510 wire. A second time, but we can’t see that data point at the moment. And I was charged a $15 wire fee by my, of course, bank.
Perhaps that was one reason they added the $10 to offset some of the wire fee. I was thinking about this a lot during the visit and maybe another reason they added the $10 was because it was the 10th anniversary of the property.
I think that should honestly be the headline of the episode, Justin for everybody who’s sitting on one of these bookings right now. And I had a discussion with more than one person about them being somewhat nervous about this wire. It’s really awesome to see how quick you got paid.
Yes. And I needed to provide my [00:45:00] swift code, so perhaps that was the swift wire transfer. Yeah. I never even knew what a SWIFT code was until I started asking questions about wires, and I told them, I promise this is legitimate. It’s like when I go into stores to buy gift cards and they say, oh, is this just for your purposes?
Has anyone asked you to buy these? And I can imagine them at the bank. You’re getting money from Nicaragua. Are you really sure about that? Seriously? Yeah. I’m sure a few people are gonna get some eye rolls from some banks. Just a one time wire. That’s all one time, at least for this month, we never know what wire opportunities might exist in the future.
Yeah. That’s true. People listening to this show are probably not strangers to them. But yeah, man I really enjoyed hearing your trip report and hopefully a lot of people enjoy their trips to Calala this year. Well done Calala. Well done. The million dollar man, Ted DiBiase said, everyone has a price, and for me it was [00:46:00] 2,510, but I had a really good experience.
It wasn’t like, oh, I just want to go home. Oh, I hate being here. The food, the entertainment was nice. It was nice to chat with the GMs, the staff, they were really friendly. The excursions were fun. The picnic basket was really generous. It was a really good time overall. Yeah, it sounds like it. Man, enjoy your 2,500.
I’ve gotten sick during other trips, even in Las Vegas and some occasions I would just be a hermit in my room for a day or so. It just happens. I don’t think it was a unique thing to the island, unless it was the heat that eventually got to me. But overall, a nice trip for sure.
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