New year in a new country

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On 31st December we caught the bus from Tegucigalpa in Honduras to Leon in Nicaragua so had a border crossing ahead of us - great way to end the year! We got on the bus prepared for another spanish dubbed movie when The Mask came on.... in English! Lorna got very excited as is her second favourite movie. Now what many of you may not know is there was a second mask movie made called Son of the Mask, which was nearly as bad as the S Club movie we watched on the Mexican bus. Very close to call though. But we still watched it cos it was in English but there is a good reason it isn´t well known. The border crossing was nothing really, because of the agreement. Just have to pay $10 to enter Nicaragua but one of the bus people collected your passports and money and you just waited for it back. We were somewhere in Nicaragua when there was a big bang and the bus pulled over, with a flat tyre. Luckily it happened right beside a tyre place that had a resteraunt next door so we got a feed of more fried chicken while the men fixed the tyre. You´d think a flat tyre would be enough of a drama for one bus ride but no, about an hour out of Leon the bus broke completely and after about 20mins we got told it would be at least another hour until someone could come and look at the bus, but it might not actually get fixed then it was just someone coming to see what the problem was! The place it broke had shuttles to Leon every few minutes so the three of us got a taxi round to the bus station and paid like a dollar to get to Leon. Was a mini van that had no boot so our big bags were shoved in amongst us and the locals who all had no luggage. Was a hot sticky ride but at least we got to Leon! We´d picked a hostel from the guide book that had a swimming pool and it was great! Hammocks, free internet, the swimming pool and lots of sun. Though got a lot of new insect bites which I hadn´t had in Honduras.

We went out for a wander round, which didn´t take long, but got a street food feed of fried food and when got back to the hostel Jemima was there. She was in Leon for a volunteer project so wanted a familiar face while she got used to Leon and ended up changing hostels the next day cos we´re that great! : ) We went round to another hostel for a cheap mojito, since it was New Year´s Eve and all, watched some early fireworks. I felt really tired and had a sore head from the heat and sore tummy duno what from so went for a sleep and woke up at midnight to the firecrackers going off outside the hostel and then went back to sleep! So was a bit of a nana but apparently at midnight there was no countdown, no celebration or hugging etc - not by the locals anyway, someone said it was like being in a crowd of zombies and you could tel the tourists cos they were jumping up and down and hugging each other.

On the 1st most things were closed except the supermarket which we ended up visiting like three times! And I got to buy NZ chesdale cheese slices! They also had Nz butter but not NZ kiwifruit. And wandered round not a lot more of Leon, we had wanted to do a tour of some sort that day but the only tour place open didn´t have one that fitted into our schedule so we spent most of the day in or beside the pool in the sun was great! Watched a DVD that night with some english people who had been drinking most of that day and the day before since it was one of the guys birthdays. Jemima joined our hostel that day as well since her one wasn´t backpacker friendly so much.

On the 2nd we went to the tour company round the corner and decided to do the Volcano Cerro Negro climb and I opted to sandboard down it instead of walking, Lorna went for the walking option. We just mucked around until 2pm and went back to the tour place where Lorna took much persuasion and decided to sandboard down as well (she said do you think I should board down instead of walking, I said I duno yes, and she said ok I will and that was that). The drive out was very scenic and bumpy, it was a dirt road that had been cut through the hilly fields so not the widest. We got stuck when a tractor had broken down across the road and had to wait for it to be pulled out the way by another tractor, then later a big farmy truck thing and then later a few horses and then a calf that had got out of it´s paddock and ended up jumping through a barbed wire fence into a totally different paddock so it could get out of the way.

The climb wasn´t too hard, comapred to the first volcano we´d done but carrying a wooden board up made it a bit more of a work out. We got to stop in the middle of a sulphurus gas area which stunk worse than Rotorua! Were yellow patches all over the ground and gas / steam coming out of places that you could just walk over. We carried on to the top and got some amazing views over the valley and some good photos. The sandboarding wasn´t the easiet thing to do. The way down was very much straight down and I think we were all bricking it when we saw the route down. And all we had in the way of safety equipment were some gardening gloves if you were sitting down. But turns out the boards didn´t go that fast since they were wood so you could enjoy going down. I had one of the boards where you could stand or sit so gave standing a go first. Was quite hard cos couldn´t turn the board like if you were snowboarding so ended up sitting on it to go the rest of the way down and you could go much faster then was cool. Got covered in dust again and stones everywere but not as bad as if had fallen down it!

We met up with Jemima again that night in the hostel and were talking about the travels we´d done in the area and were talking about market shopping and Lorna brought up the time when we were in Campeche, that I forgot to mention in my blog, where we had walked past a market stall and she goes oh they look good and went over to find out the price and I felt it was my duty to let her know that those were in fact dog biscuits she was eyeing up! Still makes us laugh now.

Our next journey was over to Granada on the shore of Lake Nicaragua and one of the oldest cities in Latin America. We got a mini van over to Managua, the capital, and the van hadn´t even stopped when the doors were opened by guys trying to get us to go on their bus to Granada and trying to take our bags so we´d have to go with them. A quick NO, tengo mi mochila (no I have my bag) and they let go of mine but Lorna had a tug of war over her one. We settled on another mini van to go there as didn´t fancy the chicken bus option and off we went, with the guys still trying to get us to change buses. Was quite funny and they were having a laugh about it. There were two japenese tourists standing on a corner and both buses stopped beside them yelling Granada, Granada, Granada as they do and they girls go really annoyed with them and yelled back NO. The other bus guy was saying how our bus didn´t go into the centre but would only go to the outside of town but we´d been told it would drop us in the centre so I just said I didn´t speak Spanish which for some reason they found funny. An english couple from the Leon hostel were going to be making the journey to Granada later in the day along with a canadian dude staying in the hostel and they ended up arriving at the same hostel we´d picked but it was the sister hostel of the Leon hostel and still had a swimming pool though not as good as the Leon hostel (how many times can I say hostel in one sentence!).

We went out for a wander and some food for a very late lunch / early dinner and went to the Plaza de Independencia where there were food stalls. I asked in my best spanish what is it and had no idea what she replied so just said yes please and got served vigoron which was fried pork skins aka the crackling, yucca (similar to sweet potato / kumara) and cabbage salad served on a banana leaf. Was so yum. I developed a raspberry fanta addiction in Nicaragua cos have only ever seen it in NZ and felt should make the most of it while could get it. While we out and about ran into the english couple looking for the Irish pub we´d been told about at the last hostel by another english guy who has been living in NZ for the last 18 years. So I went into the kind of tourist info place and asked Donde esta la Irish pub since don´t know how to say Irish pub in spanish! The guy laughed and gave me directions and we found it and they got some grub while I got a very very cheap mojito but it still tasted ok - was about 76p a mojito!

While we were sitting there the Canadian guy walked past and joined us complaining about the bad burger he´d just had at what was meant to be the best burger place in town. he was a very angry man at times, was a bit scarey. He decided he´d give the Irish pub a try since he was still hungry and it still didn´t meet his level of burger satisifaction, was kinda funny how annoyed he got. It was a good thing he didn´t drink cos he could turn into very angry man over the smallest thing and then 5 seconds later be happy again. After dinner we went to a pub to have some Flor de Caña whiskey but I didn´t like it since don´t like any whiskey (that´s the non scottish part of me). That night there was a big kick off in the dorm when some old guy, who didn´t speak english, came in to bed and just turned off the lights even though people were still reading and then decided he was too cold so turned off the fans and the canadian guy was like I don´t think so and turned them back on. This went on a few times. I woke up when it got to the stage the hostel man had been called in to try and work somthing out and this was bout midnight! and woke up to the mattress above me being taken off the bed and swapped with another one so the cold guy could sleep under the fan that didn´t make as much noise - i duno! And the Canadian guy was f´ing and blinding and ready to hit the cold guy and decided he wasn´t putting up with this shite and was gona go stay somewhere else so got out of bed and put his clothes on and collected his stuff until we made him realise it was after midnight and he prob wouldn´t find anywhere and he then goes oh yeah that´s a good point and got back into bed saying he was leaving first thing in the morning. So I ended up with the cold guy above me who then snored so I had to punch the bottom of the mattress to make him stop. He pretty much annoyed everyone in the dorm just by being there!

The next morning I was up at the internet and heared shouting coming from our room so went to see what was going on now. The cold guy had apprently kept going into the room waiting for the english guy to wake up so he could fight him for last night - the English guy was the one who´d offered to swap beds and tried to calm the canadian guy down so we couldn´t understand why the old guy wanted to fight him. He was younger than me and smaller than the old guy so the Canadian guy had got out of bed and said if you want to fight someone you and me outside now. Which is where I then overheard it and came over to see them arguing in two different languages but using the universal sign language and next thing they headed toward reception and outside. The Canadian dude came back in and had scratches on his chest and didn´t see the old guy again. Canadian then left to go to another hostel before the police possibly turned up which they didn´t. I went and spoke to recpetion and asked if the old guy was staying another night cos we didn´t feel safe in the same room as him and they said yes but the canadian guy had left so there should be no problems. I explained how the canadian guy wasn´t the problem and he was sticking up for english and it was old guy that was the problem. They let us change to the other dorm but the old guy wasn´t there that night so I guess he wasn´t allowed to stay. After speaking to others apparently the old guy had tried to stab Canadian at reception with a pen (!!) before they headed outside. Someone saw the old guy after with a really good shiner so he had been hit by Canadian.

After that it was pretty quiet at the hostel! We went and booked our bus tickets to go to Costa Rica for the next day since our flight to Ecuador was from San Jose on the 6th. Got the pork crackling dish again for lunch from a different stall lady and it was even better this time. Lorna made the mistake of eating the yellow chilli! Then went to the Lake, which wasn´t very nice to walk around since there were like a million little sandfly type flies was really annoying cos they just went in your face. Lots of rubbish around as well. Did get a coconut on the way back to the hostel that they had already taken the shell off and just stuck a straw in for you to drink the milk. The coconut itself was so good, lasted me a few days. Watched some of a local baseball game going on as well, but the pitch was kinda small so they weren´t getting many runs was a 3 up 3 out innings most of the time.

Bus trip and border crossing the next day were non eventful which is the best way for it to be! Was so worth paying the extra money for the direct bus as the queues of people waiting to cross from Nicaragua into Costa Rica were really long, but we only had to give the $4 and passport to the bus guy and wait until it was all done for us. Got lunch from the stalls while waiting on the Nicaraguan side, more chicken, banana and some fresh fruit. Then on the 6th of January we flew over to Ecuador and started the South American part of our adventure!

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Photos

Last supper of 2008
Some kind of fried meat pastry, chorizo sausage, rice and tortilla with coleslaw

Hostel hammocks
and me in the sun