Granada, San Juan del Sur to Costa Rica -> Liberia and Monteverde

Granada was wonderful! Our hostel recommendation, however, wasn't the greatest I'd had, but it was marginally cheaper than the rest, plus being too lazy, I ended up staying there for 4 nights. It was pretty far from the main square and it was full of hippies who roam from town to town trying to sell home-made jewelry, who don't shower regularly and who sit around all day drinking. Mmm...

Agustina and I explored the city with our cameras, for as long as we could hold out in the heat - we went to the cathedral, 2 churches and a convent. It was nice and peaceful because this was the 19th of July, the celebration of the start of the revolution in Nicaragua (independence day is a month later). I was originally planning on being in Managua for it and joining in on the celebrations, but on further consideration, and after seeing Managua, we'd decided to give it a miss. And I'm glad we did - we heard some of the cheering and craziness in Granada, and saw the hoards of people on TV listening to some guy's speech that went on and on.

But, lucky for us, it meant a little more quiet on the streets of Granada. I'd also got into the Stiegg Larsson trilogy and after finding the second book I took every opportunity I had to sit down and read. In the evening we had a last dinner with Talei, our friend from lago de yojoa in Honduras and Somoto in Nicaragua. Agustina decided to travel with her to Isla de Ometepe - Granada is right next to a huge lake, and this island is in the middle consisting I'd 2 volcanoes, whereas I was not so interested in hiking for 8 hours just to say I've climbed a volcano. Being on my own for the next 2 days, I decided to do excursions to Mombacho (another volcano close to Granada) and the next day to relax with my book at laguna de apoyo, which is a crater lake north of Granada. Travelling during the rainy season means the temperature is much more pleasant, but it also means mountains and peaks are covered in clouds 80% of the time. And Mombacho was no different. I got up to the start of the hikes by the shuttle, or Eco-taxi, which is well worth the $12 as it's quite steep and would otherwise take you 2-3 hours just to get to the start. I decided to do the short 1.5 hour hike around one of the craters. It was fairly windy and the clouds were hanging low so I enjoyed the temperature more than the views. But walking through a rainforest that is growing on a volcano is cool in itself, plus there was a nice troop of howler monkeys passing overhead. I got to the last viewpoint and waiting for a while managed to get a glimpse of the isletas, little scattered islands near the lake formed by the volcano years and years ago, before the clouds covered it up again.
I did a little retake of the beginning of the track, and this time I was able to see the trees growing inside the crater, which was pretty cool.

That evening I was asked to join a pub quiz team with 2 other people and we won! I'm getting good at those :)

On my last day in Granada it was looking dreary in the morning but it cleared up as I trekked out to laguna de apoyo, which is just north of Granada. I took a local bus there, a taxi to the entrance and then was nicely offered a ride on the back of a pick up down to the lake (saves me another 5km downhill). It's quite beautiful, and I spent the day lazily finishing the 2nd stieg Larsson book at a place called la abuela.

It is now Friday the 22nd, and I made my way to San Juan del Sur in 2 chicken buses, one of which was probably the shabbiest I've been on yet. San Juan is a place where surfers go, and it had a really laid-back but Western vibe. Quite the party town. I had agreed to meet up with Agustina and Talei there, in addition to which I bumped into a new Zealand couple from before, a group of Americans from the corn islands, the Swede from the Corn islands and the couple I did the pub quiz with in Granada! How nice.

On Saturday I went to visit one o the beaches with some of the aforementioned people, though they're not very pretty, mainly good for surfing. That evening I did a sea turtle tour, as it's the perfect time to see olive Ridley turtles coming onto the beach to lay their eggs. It was really interesting to see, though sadly I felt our group was too big. A 1am return led to joining a massive pool party that had been organised for the night...

On Sunday Agustina and I said our goodbyes to Nicaragua and headed onwards to Costa Rica. It was another typical border crossing, doing the walk across (I've never used intercontinental buses on this trip to cross any borders) though this one was more bustling than any of the others before it. In terms of people and in terms of the amount of trucks lined up single file - it just kept going on and on. We got to Liberia relatively harmlessly.

Costa Rica is much more developed than Nicaragua, especially in terms of tourism, and the people seem to be more cocky there. We wanted to go to Liberia because it's the capital of the northern municipality called Guanacaste, and for the past few days they'd been celebrating their independence from Nicaragua some time before.

Liberia is also known as the White city because many of the houses have white-washed walls. It's also a big rodeo and horse-riding town, so on the day we arrived celebrations were in full swing with a horse parade - hundreds of people making their horses do strange steps, with the cowboy hats, chequered shirts and boots to match. Horsepoo smell filled the air. Beer cans strewn around in the gutters. Salsa dancing by live bands. Interesting!

Funnily (and luckily) enough the last day of the celebrations, the one we were aiming for, wasn't nearly as eventful as the day we arrived so I'm vey glad we were able to the the day before's celebrations.

From Liberia we took a morning bus to Puntarenas from where we took a bus to Monteverde, the most visited place in all of Costa Rica. It's basically a big cloudforest reserve (cloudforest being a rainforest above an elevation of about 1500m) and the change of temperature to a cooler climate where you're not sweating 24/7. 3 days here will be followed by 5 more days on the Caribbean coast before heading home. So soon!!!

Leon, the corn islands and Granada

Leon is another one of those beautiful colonial cities where the former splendour and glory is still tangible around the magnificent cathedral next to the main square, the biggest in Central America (Mexico not technically being part of central America), or the yellow-walled iglesia (church). Other than visiting these sites there isnt much to do though, excluding the sandboarding on volcanic ash as a day trip. 
We stayed at a hostel called Sonati, which is an Eco-hostel with lots of other volunteering projects that you can join in if so inclined. The first night the hostel was fully booked, but the second night and third night we were able to get rooms there. 

Most travellers who have done a backpacker route anywhere in the world will know from experience that certain loops have places that everybody visits with usually roughly the same time frame in mind. Therefore you bump in to people again and again. And this, luckily, happened to me. When we (still traveling with my Argentinian friend, the other, Talei, left us in Leon) left Utila, both of had forgotten our bikinis there. In an attempt to get them back we called the dive center and asked them to give it to a couple from New Zealand I though we'd possibly see at some point in Nicaragua, but it was a long shot. Lo and behold, when checking in to the second hostel in Leon, we stumbled across them!! And they still had our bikinis! We stumbled across another friend from before, a Swede a few days later, and upon reaching Granada we saw Talei again. Isn't it fun to travel?

We hung around Leon, but didn't do very much (not that there's much to do in the town itself). I was very excited when I saw a supermarket and a cinema - it'd been over 5 weeks! 

Our next destination was Little Corn Island. The Corn Islands are off the coast of Nicaragua in the Atlantic ocean, and we'd heard nothing but good things about the little one - imagine a beach paradise if you will. The island is only 3km long, and also has superb diving - 4 resident/frequenting hammerheads are in the area. And I didn't want to miss an opportunity to dive with them. They also get dolphins but I never saw any of those. 
We went the cheap was - which took about a day and a half o travel, but a return only amounts to about 40 US dollars whereas a flight, on top of being worse for the environment, is 165. It was, well, interesting. We took a bus at 6am to Managua from Leon, a taxi in Managua to a different bus station, waited for an hour only to take an 8 hour bus journey that nearly killed my ass, to a city called Rama, followed by a 2 hour boat ride (or panga if you wish to use the local word) down a river (quite pleasant actually) to Bluefields. 

Bluefields is not exactly a nice place and we splashed out on Bluefields Bay Hotel, for 40 US for the room but with hot water, air conditioning and a TV! Luxury! 
Bluefields is quite different from the rest of Nicaragua. The majority of the population is Afro-Carribean, with cornrows in their hair and adorned with gold rings on almost every available finger. They speak a mixture of Spanish and Creole English, some claiming that they speak neither English nor Spanish, and basically not trying either. 

We took the Wednesday morning passenger boat to Big corn island, from which we had to take a final boat ride to little corn. Agustina, my argentine companion, was less than amused by the 6 hour journey to Big Corn. We had rain, splashes from the waves as a result of rough seas, and those who occasionally get seasick most likely would do so (thank my lucky stars I dont!), like Agustina who spent the journey going in and out of the toilet. Arriving in Big Corn soaking wet, and hour later we were in the 20 minute boat ride over to little corn, where we saw the aforementioned Swede. 

We loved little corn the minute we arrived, though the weather tried vey hard to discourage us. Out of the 5 days we spent there we had 4 of on and off torrential rain all day long. Saturday, the 4th day, saw occasional breakthroughs of sun, and then Sunday, our final day, we ha the full paradise experience. 

The rain wasn't as big of a problem for me, because rain doesn't change underwater conditions unless it's accompanied by strong winds and currents. I signed up for a 5 dive package (with dolphin dive), of which I did 2 on the dive site for seeing hammerheads (called Tarpon channel), and 3 others which were quite pretty. I've heard another site, blowing rock, is amazing as it's far away, but the weather was too bad to get out there. Strangely, both here and in Utila, I've always seen experienced divers go out with spears to kill lionfish. I was shocked at first, but soon learnt that they're an invasive species in the Caribbean, and were released when a ship carrying a big load sank near Florida, and lack of natural predators in the area means they thrived. They are quite voracious eaters, so it's for the safety of the reef to do it, but they can be very poisonous so it's not a danger-less hunt. 

We met 2 Irish guys and an English guy, so us 2, the Swede and our newer friends spent the next rainy days doing nothing other than wishing for better weather whilst playing Argentinian crd games (when not diving of course!). There was a pub quiz one night, which we won! We also spent our sunny day exploring the Northern beaches of the island with our cameras. 
Agustina and I had by this point decided to splash out on a plane for the way back, which only takes 2 hours compared to a day and a half. 
We went to buy our tickets and were forced to take the morning flight As the afternoon one was full. A smooth and comfy ride back to Managua follow by a taxi and a minibus brought us to Granada, the former cultural epicentre of Central America. And we loved it the second we arrived. The wide parque, beautiful colonial buildings and atmosphere of a place loved by foreigners but not spooky by it has made it one of my favourite cities so far. The next few days will see us exploring before heading to San Juan del Sur and on to Costa Rica. 

Until then!

Honduras

I've tried to upload photos but the internet is pretty slow here so it'll have to wait another week.

Im currently in Nicaragua, so I spent about a week and a half in Honduras. There's not a whole lot to say as a week of that was diving on the bay islands!
One thing that struck me over the course of that time, is that here, and probably further south too, a lot of people are moreno (Latino-like dark-skinned) but there are also many that are so white-skinned they can easily be mistaken for Europeans/americans. And that was rarely-never the case in Guatemala or Belize.

To visit the ruins of Copan, just 12km off the border with Guatemala I stayed in a town called Copan Ruinas, which, despite it's proximity to the ruins, and therefore larger concentration of tourists (which by Western standards of the coast of Spain or the like is still a very small concentration) is still a very charming little town with a lovely square. Mind you - it is little.
The ruins were really cool. They are very different to the ruins of Tikal, because the construction and shape of the temples is distinct from that of those in Tikal where height seems to be the norm and here the ruins are flatter, more pyramid-like with the top chopped off, and the detail lies in the various pillars dotted around. Equally impressive. When I was there, though, the dark clouds where looming overhead and I even saw a lightning bolt right in front of me! Luckily the rain held out until after I finished. There were also tunnels beneath one of the temples, where you could see carvings of macaws and an old toilet-sewer system combo. Definitely worth it.

From there I spent a whole day traveling to San Pedro Sula, to La Ceiba and finally reached the island of Utila for some diving! Being on a boat of which the majority were tourists was a small shock to my system as I'd spent almost 4 weeks being one of the few white people around. Once on Utila I went to visit a friend I'd met in Nagoya, and I stay the night at her dive shop. I was almost going to dive there until I wen shopping around (there's about 15 on the island) and I guiltily went to a different one with cheaper rooms and a beautiful ocean view, and I did the first 2 of my ten dives there. Over the next few days I just hung in the hammocks, made several new friends (both the visitors at Altons -the name o the dive shop - and the dive masters were really friendly). I went for a hike one day to find some random caves, and was going to volunteer for a night with an organisation that is working to protect the turtle breeding ground (called BICA) but the rain stopped us. We had several evenings of rain actually. The diving was pretty good, though I'd say Belize was better. I never managed to see an eagle ray underwater, everyone else did, though there was a group of about 10 that in the evenings was attracted to the light off our dock and would float around in the water beneath - they're magical, imagine a flock of birds in a semi-v formation but underwater! I did see several octopuses (one on a nightdive) many moray eels, spotted drums, lion fish which are hunted as they are invading the reefs, boxfish etc etc.
Utila is quite the party island, with tequila Tuesday and other daily parties, and the food was the best at our dive shop - for the 4th of July the chef made barracuda and filet mignon with red White and blue potato salad (meaning bacon, cream and blue cheese) with coleslaw. All for a mere 5.5 euros!!

7 days of humming around and i forced myself onwards, having picked up 2 travel companions - agustina, from Argentina, and Talei, from the UK. We spent another long day traveling (not out of the ordinary) to reach Lago de Yojoa. This is Honduras' biggest lake, and is often overlooked by travellers, which in my opinion is rather silly. We stayed at a hostel-cum-brewery called D&D brewery, and the location was great, the owners were super friendly (one had just acquired 2 4-week-old kittens which were adorable!) though the beer wasn't to my liking as I dont like beer! The first evening we were subjected to the loudest thunderstorm of my life, we were quite literally in the eye of the storm.
The morning after we arrived we did a boat tour on the lake - which is stunning by the way. It's about 8km wide at its largest point, and apart from one side which is developed for local tourism, is still very unspoilt. Our guide, Malcolm, was this really nice man originally from Ipswich but has spent a lot of time traveling around, especially India. He's nothing less than a connoisseur of birds, and all 3 of us had a great time spotting several cool species, of which I got some great shots. Highly recommended!! In the afternoon we went to visit waterfalls, which were once again extremely well hidden but beautiful to see!

Then we moved on and said our goodbyes to Honduras with a 12 hour journey, a lot of which was on surprisingly comfortable buses, a border crossing at which we had to wait till a huge busload of tourists got their 50 passports checked and finally arrived in Somoto by taxi. Somoto isn't even in the Rough Guides that I'm using, though it is in the lonely planet. It takes so long to get there (even though it's 20km from the border) because it's off a different border crossing from the main one. It was recommended to us by a friend (at this point I'm still with my 2 companions) because there's a beautiful canyon there which was only discovered by foreigners in 2003. We did a half-day excursion with a guide called Henry (super nice!) which entailed clambering over rocks and fighting the currents with a final 7m jump into the water. It was pretty magical, swimming through a canyon that's surrounded by high walls, at the top of which green plants grow up to the light. We even saw a hummingbird fluttering above the water, dipping into the water a few times before heading off. All 3 of agreed it was a lot of hard work, but worth every cordoba (the currency of Honduras).

Honduras is, by far, the hottest out of the countries I've been to. By 8.30am you're already sweating buckets. Some travelers say you have to bank on a 30C minimum, and it's winter!!
From Somoto we traveled a more reasonable 4 hours to Leon, where hostels seem to pack out quickly. Talei has left for a surf camp on the coast, and in a few days I'm traveling with Agustina overland (ouch!) to the Corn Islands, exciting!!

3 weeks of volunteering over

New country, new decisions. It took me 4 minibuses, 5 hours, the slowest driver in the world and ushering away a heard of cows to get to the border with Honduras (which seemed a little devoid of traffic as there was no personnel manning the immigration desks) after which I got to Copan Ruinas in a swift 30 minutes. 

Leaving Guatemala meant that I didn't have to see the election campaigns anymore, which was nice. The elections are coming up on September and vegetate you go there are billboards, painted Walls and even painted rocks. Most people I spoke to re educated enough to know it's all a bunch of lies - to the degree that the current president & his wife split up so that she could run for president for their party, thereby not disobeying the rules. 

I was very sad to leave Cabanas though. The weather seemed to have changed to more regular rains, even some during the day with overcast skies, meaning the temperature was more pleasant. I had started feeling at home in my little room in Lucy's house, and was always extremely grateful for her open-mindedness about my lack of religion (even people who were religious and didn't go to church had a hard time understanding that I didn't believe in God). Two of the three weekends in spent in a little village in the hills called El Arenal with a new friend, Rafita.

They were so great with my stomach situation. I had these cramps and the kept on getting worse. It was pretty painful but Rafita's family went out of their way to try and find different medicine that would make me feel better, which eventually one of them did!! I think it was a simple case of travelers diahrroea and after being careful about my food intake for a little I went back to normal. I bought them all cake the second weekend I was up there! I did, however, come out with a new life skill - being able to tortilla (yes, in Spanish here they use it as a verb). Theyre different from wheat tortillas, mug smaller and thicker, but theres a special clapping technique to make them. I've perfected it by now :). 

Something I've noticed talking to women here is that a) a lot of them suffer from depression, but they're very aware of it being a medical condition that you can get treatment for and are not afraid to be open about it. B) almost everyone has/had several relatives in the US, some with papers and some with not. 

The next week, my first full week, saw me in the recycling center on Monday morning, cooking classes Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and keeping the library open on Wednesday and Friday. All of the afternoons of that week I was teaching a beginners computer class to these cute kids, the oldest of which was 12. It was tough, coming up with what to teach, then coming up with the Spanish for it! But they all seemingly understood all of my instructions, and by the end they were googling all kinds of stuff, and even using it in their free time!! That gave me such satisfaction, especially because they wanted to do it, and if they were still a little insecure they'd just ask me what the website for google was. At the end we had a little ceremony with certificates for the group, and they all hugged me and sad they didn't want me to leave. That really touched me actually. Some of those kids would be great for sponsorship, and id love to help out once I have a steady income again. 
Working in the library and seeing the kids come and reads books made me realize how low the level of reading is. The 11 year old kids still read books for 6-7 year olds and they only learn the alphabet in elementary school. It was a little shocking considering I'm used to kids reading 200 page books by the start of their teens!

The second weekend I was back in El Arenal making a local dish (a little like the way we make burritos) called garnachas, which were really good, and something else called chepes, which is basically fatty corn dough (of course corn!) with black beans (of course!) boiled. I was given a lot of these but I never warmed to the taste. On the sunday morning I headed back to Cabanas as I'd been invited to a family gathering by Annie at a place with a swimming pool, the latter being extremely welcome in the heat. I had a great time especially hanging out with Annie, her husband and her kids, all of whom are just lovely! I don't think anyone could have made me feel more like a member of the family. 

My last week was more irregular than the 2nd. We bought materials for big advertisement signs for the recycling centre and put a base coat on. Tuesday we went to one of the local schools to build a wall with plastic bottles, a technique everyone at asivesca wants to practice so they can make houses and benches out of them in the future! It was very interesting to see the public school and it's resources, or lack of it. The principal couldnt have cared less that we were there, and there wasn't much control around. Teachers teach for the moony rather than the kids, and even up to 15 years of age they finish school at 12.30 in the afternoon. And when a teacher can't make it, the whole class is off for the day. They have uniforms, but it's voluntary up to 12 or 13, and kids who don't have one to wear aren't allowed to participate in some of the activities. I feel bad for those kids, as they seemed pretty nice when we were doing the wall. 

On Wednesday I had a minor heart attack as I'd accidentally formatted my memory card (what camera doesn't WARN you that you're about to erase your photos!!) and spent the rest of the day recovering my photos, successfully luckily enough. Thursday and Friday were excursion days out to two reserves, both with local guides. The first guide was in training and he seemed a bit nervous, me being his first foreigner to guide around but he was very knowledgeable about the area and the reserve had an easy, well-constructed path. I thought it was very enjoyable and would do it as a tourist. The next day we went to do some bird-watching. I was hoping to get a nice photo of a motmot, which is the national bird of Guatemala and has this beautiful tail. We desperately tried to find some for photo ops but no luck. Annie's husband, Yemo, was super nice and he offered to take me out again on Sunday to make sure I'd get a shot and not leave disappointed - we went out in the pouring rain  but it was a successful trip. 

My last few days with asivesca and in Guatemala were coming up so on Saturday morning I went with Annie and her husband to Zacapa, a town bigger than Cabanas, about an hour away with a big market. It was nice to see, though I think preferred Cabanas. But im seeing a trend in Guatemala of having massive churches painted in white in every town. 

And then it was my last day already! How the 3 weeks flew by. In the morning we managed to finish painting one of the 3 signs which turned out really nice in the end. Heading over to Annie's place for my final dinner I was surprised by some other local volunteers, my hosts and Rafita along with Annie and her family with a surprise party! I was so touched by all their lovely words, and occasional tears. it was with a heavy heart that I go on the bus at 6:30 the next morning to head off on my next adventure. But i hope to be back there at some point soon enough.