El Salvador and Nicaragua

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First of all, an apology: no pictures in this post. I’m standing in my hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica after a very long day travelling. It takes quite a bit of time (and a USB port) to back pictures up and I have neither tonight! Today I intended – and failed - to make a difficult journey from San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua to Monteverde, Costa Rica, using no less than six local buses and crossing one (apparently difficult) border. It was also my first day travelling alone in about three weeks so a good chance to see if any of the Spanish had stuck.

At 12pm, having cleared the Nicaragua/ Costa Rica border with ease and heading for my final connection I was in good spirits. Unfortunately I missed the bus from Tilaran by 20 minutes (I had been wrongly informed there was a later service) and would have to wait until 12.30pm tomorrow for the next transport heading to Monterverde. Not having this time, I decided to go the capital and transport hub of Costa Rica, San Jose where I can get a direct bus early tomorrow morning. That meant a lot of backtracking in order to return to the bus route I had left a few hours before - very frustrating.

I’m therefore, somehow, in my final Central America destination, San Jose, a week before my flight. It’s a funny sort of place, full of big highways and fast food joints – it kind of looks like downtown Los Angeles.

After my last post we spent three nights in El Tunco, El Salvador enjoying the (black sand) beach and making poor attempts at learning to surf. The pace then quickened as myself, Amber and Rob were all conscious of our flight from San Jose to Rio on the 14th.

We left El Tunco for San Salvador where we stayed for one night near the 'Tica Bus' terminal with some Americans from Washington state. El Salvador's capital contains a large amount of people and an apparently vibrant music scene but also a fair bit of street crime and lots and lots and lots of guns. We were staying in one of the worst areas near the centre, so it was a case of getting into the hotel before dark and having an early night.

The next day we took the 'Tica Bus' to Managua, Nicaragua, spending a grand total of three hours in Honduras on the way. In Managua we nearly missed the 'Chicken Bus' to Leon as I was caught trying to buy a pot noodle with US dollars as the bus arrived. We had now met up with two other Aussies, Dennis and Stacey from Melbourne.

Leon was a trip highlight, a colonial town a bit like Antigua but less touristy. We were only really there for one reason however: to surf the Volcano Cerro Negro. This involved hiking for 45 minutes up the volcano and sledging down on a plank of wood. Some lunatics even do it standing up. It's apparently the only place in the world you can do it and it's a hell of a lot of fun, as well as being a little bit terrifying.

Granada, our next stop, was a little bit more tranquil and we spent a night here before crossing Lago Nicaragua to Isla de Ometepe, an island on the lake formed by two volcanos. It was an excellent place that, if had more time, I could have easily spent a week exploring. Generally I regret not having more time to see Nicaragua. The Carribbean coast especially is meant to be an untouched wilderness and you could definitely spend a month here. In a few years I can see Nicaragua becoming a very big tourist destination.

After climbing the Volcan Maderas on the island - very muddy but a good opportunity to see monkeys - we left the island to hit the Pacific coast in San Juan del Sur. We spent an afternoon on the beach, sheltering from a storm, before I left the others early this morning for Costa Rica

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