Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica

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Well, we ended our time in Honduras with a little treat after our week of study and food poisoning, a trip to the Copan ruins. It was spectacular and we would love to share our amazing photos of Scarlet Macaw parots and incredible Mayan ruins, however, as a security precaution, we kept our memory card away from our camera and promptly lost it so no photos here!

After that, we took on the epic journey to get to Nicaragua. There was no pleasant way to do it, so we planned our route. 2 days of buses (11 buses in total),3 borders and a stop of in San Vincente in El Salvador. I don't have anything nice to say about El Salvador, so I'll move on!

Nicaragua was really nice, we stayed in the colonial towns of Leon and Granada. Whilst we were in Leon, I spent the day having a ring made by a local jeweller, I got to watch the process, and Stuart went volcano boarding! He literally sat on a home made sledge and launched himself down the side of a volcano. I have a feeling that wasn't included in our insurance policy. In Granada we had a pretty lazy time of it getting ready for the next big bus trip.

From Granada, we took the bus across the border to Costa Rica and the capital San Jose. Costa Rica has a great reputation for good eco-tourism and with our tour today, we certainly weren't disappointed. We started the day with a tour of a coffee plantation and were able to sample some amazing coffee. We then headed up to one of the active volcanoes in the area. The crater was spectacular and constantly billowing out sulphuric clouds of smoke. The crater was filled with a small lake which had a pH of 0.7, the most acidic lake in the world. We were pretty casual about the whole thing until our guide told us that there was an erruption just 4 months earlier!

From the volcano, we moved onto a national park, which seemed to have everything. There were toucans, humming birds, butterflies, a sloth, jaguars, frogs, waterfalls...and loads more. Stuart was enjoying taking a close up of one of the big cats when it put it's claws through the bars and took a pretty good swipe. Stu and cats don't have a great relationship. The hummingbirds were definitely the highlight though. They were free in the park, but they had put out feeders with sugar water in so they kept flying back and to drinking from them. There must have been over 20 species there.

We're back in San Jose now after a spectacular day, ready to move onto the next town.

Love

Lisa and Stu

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Photos

Is it just me...
... or has someone stuck an ice cream cone on that bird?

Tell me...
...what idiot would sit on a home made sledge and launch themselves down a Volcano?

Apparently, the smoke is quite normal...
...by the way, the last erruption was 4 months ago!

Lisa finally visits a waterfall...
...despite her strange waterfall aversion

A close up of a big cat...
...some might say too close