Our livers are currently not impressed as they cannot remember the last day they didn’t have to process alcohol.. It has also been 2 weeks since our last hot shower. Although the weather is hot (37 degrees today!) and the cold showers feel nice we do miss hot water. Apparently from now on they will be an expensive luxury… However, apart from that (and blowing the budget) things are going pretty well for us. We are currently in Nicaragua and we are loving it! It is cheap, we have made some new friends and we are enjoying the change of scenery. We have spent a few days at a beach, spent some time on Island Ometepe in lake Nicaragua and have visited the colonial cities of Granada and Leon.
It feels good to have left Costa Rica, in hindsight we stayed there too long. Although we saw many beautiful places and had a nice time, it is much more expensive than Nicaragua and by the end of our time there we were over it. We did enjoy our last few Costa Rican days in Monteverde and visiting our friends (Jannie and Kent) in Turrialba .
Monteverde has been one of our favourite places so far, the zip lining was great fun and we did a night hike in the cloud forest and saw lots of animals, including 3 snakes and a tarantula. We even saw a sloth fight which as you can imagine is not too impressive. The guide was going nuts for it though. We also did coffee tasting which we both really enjoyed.
After Costa Rica we went straight to San Juan del Sur which is a lovely beach/party/gringo town on the southern Pacific coast of Nicaragua. We made some new friends and caught up with a Canadian couple (Lisa and Josh) who we have seen in every country so far and are still travelling with! In San Juan del Sur I also successfully completed the Loose Moose (Canadian bar) shot challenge which consisted of doing 5x chile (and mystery alcohol) shots which each get progressively hotter under 15 seconds! I did it in 10 seconds so I got the shirt!
From San Juan del Sur we had a very rough and wet boat trip to Island Ometepe. There were a few points where I feared for my life and strategically planned for my survival. The fear did prevent seasickness which I was happy about. Ometepe was a good place to visit, we have rented a quad bike and did some cycling so we have seen a lot of the island. The only problem with the island (and the remote parts of Nicaragua) are all the hungry looking animals, there have not been too many animals I have seen that don’t have most of their bones showing which is sad. I also got stung on my hand by some mystery black insect which hurt like a bitch!
Granada has been the most beautiful city we have been too so far, the colonial buildings were beautiful, we had some good food, lots of rum and swam in a crater lake (Laguna de Apoyo). We also visited Granada’s much poorer neighbour city Masaya, this was an eye opening experience as poverty was so evident. We saw this dirty hungry looking boy at lunch who begged for food, I gave him my left over chicken which he demolished. In return he made me a flower out of a leaf which was sweet.
Our first hiccup of Nicaragua has been Alisdair’s wallet being stolen at the Leon bus terminal yesterday. This teaches us that we cannot get too comfortable with our belonging. So that now makes 2 lost wallets on this trip! Luckily I got mine back but for Ali sadly its long gone! Luckily for us,there has been no cash in the wallets, so a few lost cards are easy to replace (unless you bank with BNZ).
Starting tomorrow we are off to do a 2 day hike to El Hoyo volcano, this trip also includes Volcano boarding! Although, the last few days the surrounding volcanoes have been ‘burping’ so hopefully there are no eruptions! Heres to the next few days of adventure!!
ESCAPINGDUO 