Volcano Trail Day 17: San Jose, Costa Rica The final stop on our trip through Central America. (If you want to read all the volcano tour entries, start with the Guatemala one down the page...) Before arriving in San Jose we stopped off in the town of San Ramon where our tour leader Christy lives. We stopped in, checked out the diggs and headed on to San Jose. San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica, and is nestled in the central valley in the highlands which makes the temperature quite nice - but it felt downright cold to us, since [View Full Entry]

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Volcano Trail Day 15: La Fortuna, Costa Rica We left Monteverde for La Fortuna. After an hour of driving we arrived at Arenal Lake. This is a man-made lake formed by a hydro-electric dam/plant. It was a quick 20 min boat ride across to the other side and the town of La Fortuna. La Fortuna is at the base of the very active Arenal Volcano. It is also a huge tourist town. Gringos are everywhere. Many foreigners own homes in the area and prices are very high for everything. On the first day I chilled out, read the newspaper in Spanish, [View Full Entry]

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Volcano Trail Day 13: Monteverde, Costa Rica We left Ometepe early in the morning, this time catching a proper ferry to the mainland. Crossed with ease into Costa Rica. As soon as you enter Costa Rica the differences in standard of living are profound - nicely paved roads, better built homes, cars in better condition, better clothing... it is apparent that Costa Rica is indeed the wealthiest of the Central American nations. We passed numerous volcanoes and had some great views. Monteverde was originally founded by American Quakers who wanted to start up a new life away from the issues [View Full Entry]

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Volcano Trail, Day 11: Aug 4, 2009 Ometepe Island, Nicaragua We left Granada around 9 to catch the "chicken bus" to Rivas, Nicaragua. Chicken buses usually do not have chickens on them (except maybe in Guatemala) but are the main form of transport for the locals of Central America. They are almost always old American school buses. They are decked out with spoilers, funky rims, stainless steel exhausts and pipes, racing stripes you name it. It seems to be a competition between chicken bus drivers to see who has the "coolest" bus. Inside there are endless pictures of Jesus and other [View Full Entry]

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Day 8: August 1, 2009 Honduras - Nicaragua Border We left Playa Cuco around 5am and entered into Honduras for a quick 2 hour drive. You have to pass through Honduras to get to Nicaragua, as it stretches from the Caribbean to the Pacific. Due to the political problems we had been avoiding Honduras. A few months back the Honduran army performed a coup on the government. This was supported by the judiciary and the business community. The Honduran president Zelaya was put on a plane in the middle of the night and flown to Costa Rica. Many Hondurans feared that [View Full Entry]

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Volcano Trail Day 6: July 30, 2009 Playa Cuco, El Salvador After driving through most of El Salvador and passing some awesome volcanoes, we arrived in the small beach town of Playa Cuco. Lonely Planet, says that the beaches in this area are not worth visiting. Well, I hope they keep writing this, because it is SO worth coming here. You have the entire beach to yourself, aside from a few locals pushing their fishing boats out and the vulture type birds eating fish. The water is warm and clean, and the waves are good enough for beginner surfers. Sun shines [View Full Entry]

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Day 4: July 28 Awoke early and left Honduras via Guatemala to cross into El Salvador. El Salvador was never in the plans until we arrived in Central America, so visiting here was unexpected. The political problems in Honduras meant we needed to make up 4 nights, so why not hit up El Salvador. One of the ladies on our tour got very ill and threw up on the bus. Poor lady. After a long day of buses, we arrived in the small town of Suchitoto. Not to many years back, El Salvador was in the midst of a bloody civil [View Full Entry]

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Volcano Tour Day 3: July 27, 2009 Copan Honduras We left early in the morning from Guatemala for Honduras. Originally we were to spend 5 days in Honduras, but due to the political problems, we were advised not to go to Honduras at all. Our tour leader heard that it was still OK to go to Copan, which is only 1/2 hour into Honduras from the Guatemala border. (I'll write more about the Honduras situation in my Nicaragua entry) The border was really nothing. I was thinking that I would see a lot of soldiers on the Honduras side, but there [View Full Entry]

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Volcano Trail, here I come! Day 1: July 25, 2009 Lisa and I left Toronto very early on a rainy morning, off to Guatemala. Arrived into the sunshine of Guatemala City. Quickly got out of the city and arrived in the UNESCO heritage town of Antigua. This colourful colonial town was the capital of all of central America until an earthquake leveled it centuries back. Today it retains the charm of colonial Guatemala. It has 3 volcanoes surrounding it. One is quite active and you can climb it. Unfortunately we did not have the time to do this. But it does [View Full Entry]

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I used my aeroplan miles from my trip to New Zealand and headed off to Ottawa to visit some friends from university and to check out Ottawa... a place I hadn't been to and explored since I was a kid... alright I was there in university for a day, but I was bombed most of the time! Spent most of the time with friends in Carleton Place, but did a trip into the city and walked around the Parliament buildings. What surprised me the most up here was a cat shelter. We spend $6,000 a year to feed and house a [View Full Entry]

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