Most of you reading this article are wondering, "What is a Hilux?" I Hilux is a pickup truck (in Spanish, "camioneta") made by Toyota that is not sold in the US. It is larger than a Toyota Takoma and smaller than a Tundra. It is without a doubt the single most popular vehicle in San Juan del Sur... If we walk around our block we will see at least 10.
When we moved here to San Juan del Sur we initially planned on not buying a vehicle but soon we realized that much of what we needed for the house and for living here, could not be bought in SJDS. The nearest larger city, Rivas, is about 35 minutes away. We realized that we probably needed to buy a vehicle, but what vehicle?
Toyotas of all sorts are very popular in Nicaragua and it is easy to have them serviced since parts are readily available. We looked at Corolla and Yaris but after test driving a Corolla around our village we realized that we needed higher ground clearance and four wheel drive for many of the roads. We narrowed our focus to Land Cruiser, RAV4 and Hilux. I wanted diesel if possible, so that ruled out RAV4.
We looked at dozens of vehicles and finally realized that the only relatively new vehicles we could buy used were with high mileage and we would immediately be looking at doing repairs and paying "gringo prices". We eventually decided to just bite the bullet and buy a new Hilux. Our thinking was that because of their popularity, it would hold its value well. We saw many 1-2 year old Hilux trucks were selling used for more than we ultimately paid for ours new.
Although there is typically a six month wait for a new Hilux, I was able to locate a white, diesel, 4x4 Hilux in Managua (3 hours away). Using Google Translate and WhatsApp I negotiated a price and negotiated having it delivered to me here in San Juan del Sur, and I paid by wire transfer from my laptop. Pretty cool experience, actually. My insurance agent sent me the papers by WhatsApp, I paid by credit card, and the next day I walked to the bank to physically sign the insurance papers. Banco Lafise owns Lafise Seguro (insurance).
So I bought the truck on Wednesday, signed the insurance papers on Thursday and by that night our pool contractor had filled the entire yard with the excavation from our pool and left for the weekend, requiring me to park my new truck on the street in front of our house instead of in our fenced compound.
Normally that would not be a big deal, but that Friday was Good Friday. Holy Week is a vacation week for most Nicaraguans and many tourists come to the beach at San Juan del Sur for the long weekend. But not only did the tourists come, but as we learned later, so did professional car thieves from Managua. We walked out our gate on Saturday morning to discover that our new truck was missing its mirrors, tail lights, and hub covers. On our way to breakfast we noticed several other trucks that were missing parts.
Saturday we made a police report and notified our insurance agent and Monday we drove our newly stripped truck to Managua to have our missing parts replaced. Now it is back like new but we learned a valuable lesson: Don't leave your car on the street during Holy Week because some folks are just not that holy.