Nicaragua already!

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Well, here we are in Nicaragua and it's steaming hot. Unfortunately, the power and water is pretty intermittent, which means no fans and no showers for most of the day. Mmmm, nice!

It's only been a week since I last updated my blog, but we've covered quite a bit of ground so it's probably easier to do a quick summary to bring things up date and write in more detail when the internet connection is better:

La Fortuna

After collecting another ten people and a new guide in San Jose, we had a pretty easy travel day up to La Fortuna in the interior of the country. It's an absolutely beautiful place dominated by the area's main attraction, Volcan Arenal, about 17km north of the town. It's an active volcano which means if you're lucky, some evenings you can see it spuing lava into the air. Unfortunately, we were unlucky and it was shrouded in cloud on the two nights we were there. Still, I did have some excitment firstly white water rafting on the El Torro river and secondly having two hunky GAP guides help me and my room-mate break into our room when the lock broke!

Monteverde

Next stop, Monteverde, a very bumpy bus ride up one side of a mountain, a boat-ride across lago Arenal and another bumpy hour's bus ride up the side of another mountain. It's a tiny town, established by American mormons in the 1950's so it isn't the first place you'd think of going for a night on the town. Still, we managed to find a pool hall and a nightclub which is why I overslept and didn't make it to the guided hike in the cloud forest Oh well! I redeemed myself slightly by going zip-lining through the canopy instead. For anybody who doesn't know what this is, it's being strapped into a very uncomfortable harness and attached to a series of cables that run through and above the trees, anywhere from 10m to 40m above the ground/forest canopy. It was great fun but completely terrifying at the same time and probably not the best activity to do with a hangover. There was also an option to go on the so-called tarzan swing which consisted of stepping off a 40-foot platform attached to nothing but a rope and swinging out over a cliff. Yeah right! I've conquered a few fears on this trip but smooshing onto the floor from a great height isn't one of them so I chickened out of this option. I'm working my way up to the extreme options for later in my trip!

Ometepe, Nicaragua

A long travel day across the border to Rivas in Nicaragua. From here we caught a boat out to Isla Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. Well, I say a boat, it was more a wooden boat-shaped thing that sort of floated. As we got on they were loading the leaky hold with bags of cement and the woman next to me was holding what turned out to be two live chickens bound at the feet! Ometepe itself is almost two islands, joined by a small isthmus. Each 'island' is dominated by a volcano, one of which is still active. We stayed at a place called Playa Santo Domingo, pretty much on the isthmus. Our hotel was a bit more basic than we've been used to but it was an absolutely beautiful place, even if we did have to share it with the odd snake and some of the biggest ants I've ever seen. There isn't a lot to do on Ometepe so apart from a bit of a bike-ride along the coast, I spent most of my time there lounging around and pretending to read my book. In the evening though a few of us went into Altagracia, the nearest town, to a 'mother's day' festival, basically a big open-air party at which the entire town was merengueing, reggaetoning and drinking the night away.

We're in Grenada at the moment but we've gone two hours without a powercut now so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead and I'll catch up some more and hopefully upload some photos when we get to Roatan in Honduras early next week.

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