San Juan Del Sur...F

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San Juan Del Sur.

What a stark contrast to the jungle isolation of Ometepe! A small town on the Pacific coast, this town and the surrounding coastline is renound for its excellent surfing and warm Pacific waters...Mi Gusta Mucho!

We arrived and checked in to our little hotel and quickly headed to a surf shop to get a lesson sorted for the following day.

That night we spied out a little place that did fish and chips!!! Admittedly it wasnt the same as at home but it was a fair effort and was very greatly appreciated by us!

The following morning we hopped on the truck with all our boards etc and bounced along a dirt road for about an hour until we arrived at the beach. Our instructor was a Peruvian surfer in his late 50´s called Alfredo and was the colour of rich mahogony from a life in the ocean and the sun. Looks aside, this man was a legend! He guaranteed that everyone would be stood up on their first wave - I was skeptical of this due to the fact that I had tried surfing before and it is not in any way easy!

After an hour and a half on the land going through the processes we needed to surf, we finally picked up our boards and headed for the water. Lo and behold, as Alfredo had assured us, each and every one of us was standing from our first wave onwards...what a great feeling it is too...to be sitting in the warm waters and the next moment to be surging forward on the crest of a wave - its amazing! The following day however our hands were so sore from the boards we were using (literally bleeding knees, palms, fingertips etc) that we had to have a rest. The day after, and partially recovered, we got ourselves back out in the water for another day of great surfing.

Yet another activity to add to the ´to do´list upon our return to the UK!

After a week of chilling, surfing, sunning etc we decided it was time to head on - Costa Rica was the next country, however, with the pricetag attached to the country, and after the beauty of Nicaragua and Guatemala, we decided that it was simply too expensive to stay for any period of time. To save even more money, we decided to Couchsurf for the first time to break up the journey. One of the best decisions of the trip so far without a doubt!

We sent a request to a couple of people with a view to staying for a night or two in San Jose (the capital) to break up the journey and get used to Couch Surfing...the one who accepted was a Welsh guy named Matt who was living and working there...we were so excited to have been accepted and promptly booked our ticket for the following day.

We said our goodbyes to San Juan Del Sur and got an early night (Sarah developed a rather heavy case of travellers sickness however so it was a quick trip to the pharmacy to try and get it sorted prior to the 12 hour bus journey the following day!).

The following morning Sarah was feeling well enough to travel so we hopped on a chicken bus back to the main bus terminal where we got dropped off and waited for the Tikabus to Costa Rica...

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