I shot though El Salvador and Honduras, barely stopping to breath. In the former I did get find time to experience the best street food I've ever had. A plate piled high with amongst other things finger size prawns.


18/11/08

Once in Nicaragua, I was welcomed with a bang! The revolutionary party, the Sandinistas were demonstrating on the streets after a recent election controversially ended with half the votes being found in a bin. Their colours of red and black were splashed everywhere. Fireworks and flares were firing, flags were flying. People crammed onto car roofs (both stationary and moving) and milled in large groups, taking over much of Managua (the capital).

As I headed towards the smaller city of Granada I noticed another thing taking over Nicaragua, nature. Through every crack, gap and hole in the walls, pavements and roads was bursting with grassy weeds. Vines strangled and hung from every telephone wire. Branches buffeted the passing cars as they reached out into the road.

I checked into a hostel on the basis that it had the best name in my book, 'The bearded Monkey'. Got talking to some other travellers and wasted away the rest of the evening exchanging stories and suggestions.

One suggeation was the hostel's sister lodge, 'The Monkey Hut', which is on the edge of a lake inside a old volcanic crater. A group of us headed out the next morning. The crater lake was vast with the steep crater walls surrounding it like a panoramic mountain range. It took me and a guy named Simon an hour of continuous paddling in kayaks to reach the other side. Once there we found large rocks, which led to much plunging into the deep water.

That night back in Granada we all found a Music bar where the salsa was in full swing. A small group of us, Emily, Mikel, Trevour and I talked about a plan to head to the Island of Ometepe the following morning.

After a bus to the tiny port town San Jorge, we crossed lake Nicaragua by ferry to reach the Island. Ometepe is the biggest fresh water Island in the world with much of it taken up by two volcanoes. It's engulfed by the enormous lake Nicaragua which is so big it produces surfable waves and is the only lake in the world home to fresh water sharks. Darkness had closed in by the time we reached a place to stay so I went for a night walk, lit only by the night sky and accompanied by unidentified sounds piercing through the continuous rustling of the wind swept trees.

The next day we hired bikes. Mine had around one a half gears, brakes that worked intermittently and when did, wouldn't release and a buckled back wheel that rubbed against the frame. All in all it didn't live up to it's name of 'Torpedo'. Every bike we came across was equally poor. This really reflects the state Nicaragua's in, it's slowly running down with most of the people living in poverty, bike parts are low on their list of essentials.

On a small dirt track road I bumped into Guy and Ruth again cycling the other way. After the obligatory 'small world' comment, we had a quick catch up and said we'd try and meet in Panama at some point.

Upon returning from the ride, we saw people clearing streets and setting up a huge wall of speakers in the middle of the road. Word had reached the Island that the results of the election recount were in and the Sandinistas had won. After eating in darkness due to all street lights being turned off to accommodate the power needed for the party, we joined the celebrations. The energy and pace of the revelers went unchanged for hours with a somewhat eclectic DJ, playing everything from Traditional Nicaraguan music to the Venga Boys!

Next day was our last on the Island and we decided we wanted to go right around the south section, seeing as much as we could. We decided the best way to do this would be to hitch hike as far as drivers would take us. We managed to get three rides in all, the first being a pick up truck that dropped us at a small intersection. We had to walk for an hour till the next came but it was worth it. It was a large truck of banana farmers. We climbed in the back and held onto the metal frame. The driver then proceeded to thunder down the bumpy road at around 60mph, sending us all in the air each time he hit one of the violent ditches. With white faces we waved goodbye and walked off, shaken and quite stirred by the experience. The last was another truck but we had to hold on the outside. With no room on the back, I took one side where I was battered buy branches brushing past. The vibrations shook our breakfast pineapple from it's bag and we helplessly watched it bounce of into the dust.

After catching a ferry back we all went our separate ways. I found a cheap hotel in Rivas and planned to head for the southern boarder to cross into Costa Rica.

25/11/08

After a day looking round the North West town of Liberia, Costa Rica, I booked to go on a jungle trek in Rincon national park which boasts one of the most varied eco systems in the country. A small group of us were dropped at a meeting point and were told we'd be picked up in 8 hours. As each of us had a map I decided to go off alone to find the biggest waterfall in the area. The trek took me through varying terrain, from dense jungle, to open grassy plane. White faced monkeys swung from the trees and mongoose like animals (that might have been mongooses) ran across my path. On reaching the 80ft waterfall that fiercely cascaded into a turquoise blue plunge pool, I decided the only thing to do was to go for a refreshing skinny-dip. I can tell you now it was more refreshing than flipping over the pillow to the cold side on a Sunday morning. After trekking some more and seeing mud-bubbling, volcanic gazers, the driver fulfilled his promise of picking us up.

28/11/08

I caught the bus to Panama which felt like an escape from the Costa Rican capital, San Jose where I had the misfortune of spending a night and can safely say is the armpit of the Earth. I'd arranged to stay with another couch surfer, 'Benny' (Who I called 'Pueblo' for the first 5 hours, until realising this was the first line of his address!). Benny told me he was a bird watcher. Now I don't usually prescribe to stereotypes but Benny, a 200lb black guy with braided hair and a healthy appetite for loud, basey ragga music didn't quite fit with my idea of your average bird watcher. So the next day I agreed to join Benny and some bird watching buddies for my first taste of the niche pastime. We went deep into the jungles north of the city that run parallel with the Panama canal. With a pair of binoculars and an army of trained eyes and ears at my aid, I was able experience wildlife I'd have never known was there. Sloths draped over branches, monkeys passing overhead and rivers of leaf cutter ants were just some of the things that accompanied the many colourfully exotic birds I saw that day.

03/12/08

After realising the only job opportunities in Panama seemed to be in the city and the weight of South America pulling me towards it like a tug of war team, I decided to book a flight to Lima, Peru.

Preferring the local bus to the far more expensive taxi option, I headed for the airport. The driver saw I was more weighed down by bags than a single Mum after her monthly shop for her family of 5 but I still let him know I was stopping at the airport. With no road signs and no sign of an airport, I waited. After a couple of hours the drivers eyes widened and the bus screeched to the side of the road. Telling me we'd passed the airport, he let me off on a long stretch of open road. Luckily as fears of being stranded started to manifest, so did the earlier avoided taxi option. After the flurry of checking in I boarded just in time for my plane food to turn cold.

04/12/08

I spent a day in Lima then jumped on a 24 hour bus to Cuzco (the oldest city in South America and once capital of the Inca empire). I was sat next to the only other English person on the bus, Nick. As the bus company attempted to easy away the 24 hours with bus bingo (the prize being another bus journey!) and a DVD of Pavarotti and friends, we talked about the must-do trek to the lost city of the Incas Machu Picchu.