Nicaragua

I know we said we were heading to El Salvador from Honduras which we did do. But once we got to San Salvador we decided to just check into a hotel and leave for Nicaragua the next day. There was nothing wrong with San Salvador but I had made another miscalculation with our schedule so that we are actually missing 50 days!! Yes I am very bad at Maths but I had to work out this schedule in the tiny bit of time I had on my last day of work, trying to book flights, hotels, car hire, travel insurance, finish all my work and clear up my desk so I didn´t have a lot of time. Anyway I now understand why Greg doesn´t let me near our budget.

Onto Nicaragua... we arrived by bus into the Capital Managua - not a great looking place, we decided to head straight out to Leon which was kinda in the direction we had just come into the country in. We qued (sp?) with the locals on a Friday afternoon of a long weekend to catch our HI-Ace taxi to Leon. The lines were long with a lot of pushing and shoving so I can sympathise with a lot of the South Africans having to do this everyday. (did you know you can fit 23 adults and their luggage in a Hi-Ace?)

Anyway we stayed in a beautiful place in Leon with a pool and just swam and wondered round the town for the next 4 days. We checked out the revolution museum, old palaces and churches etc.

From Leon we went to Granada which is a beautiful town set on Lake Nicaragua (10th largest lake in the world). There are something like 365 islands on the lake. We went on a boat around some of them. Some islands are entirely owned by 1 family and have huge mansions on them - seems beer and rum is the industry to be in in Nicaragua with them having the biggest ´holiday homes´. We also took a canopy tour (zip line)over some of Granada´s coffee plantations. There were 17 platforms some of them over 100m apart. I loved it, Greg screamed like a girl!

From Granada we decided to take a ´weekend break´ to Laguna de Apoyo which is a crater lake near Masaya. Because it is a crater lake no rivers flow into it and the water is the clearest fresh water lake I have ever seen. We spent 2 days there floating on tubes and kayaking around.

From there we headed to Isla de Ometepe - the Lonely Planet explains this island as ´a sort of place that belongs in fairytale or fantasy novels, an island formed by twin volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua´. Well we arrived and it was pitch dark and pouring with rain, the next day it was still chucking it down and we were starting to wonder what the LP was talking about. The rain did clear though and the island is exactly like they described once you go looking. We did some hectic hiking to some beautiful natural springs and waterfalls.

Finally we ended up in San Juan del Sur on the Pacific Coast just before the boarder to Costa Rica where we have been practising our surfing and beer drinking.

Another beautiful country....