Can't get enough of volcanoes and ice-cream!

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Well Nicaragua really surprised us in being such an amazing country with so much to do, with the best beer in central america, the most delicious rum (Flor de caña) and an ice-cream brand called Eskimo that Terry got REALLY fond of. If we couldn't find one of their ice-cream shops we could always follow the familiar sound of the Eskimo jingle bells from the guys with their little freezers on wheels and Terry could get his eskimo fix for the day (usually a 'cono doble' with chocolate and dulce de leche flavour). Another thing that we couldn't avoid in Nicaragua was volcanoes. After our 'epic' hike up telica, we arrived in Granada, another very pretty colonial town at the shore of the huge lago de Nicaragua. Spent a few nice days around Granada, and visited another volcano at Masaya...this was a lot easier as there's actually a road that runs right up to the crater and we got a lift up from one of the park rangers.

We took a trip out to lago de apoyo, a lake inside a dormant volcano crater which is really beautiful and the water's really warm-it was a great place to spend a couple of days. Stayed at a place called the monkey hut which had tyre tubes and kayaks and a platform out on the lake, it was great craic. After that we took a ferry out to a big island called Ometepe on the huge lake next to granada...surprisingly enough the island is made of two volcanoes stuck together. We didn't have the luckiest time out on ometepe, we rented bikes and after cycling 12 km we both got flat tyres and had to walk the whole way home, then we got savaged by some blood-sucking insects and to top it all off Terry got a stomach bug and spent two days on the toilet! Before getting the bug, Terry added volcan conception to his list of volcano climbs, I didn't do it since we were told that it was really steep eight-hour climb and I'm not great with heights...plus apparently it's a volcano 'for the men'. Sounded like tough work anyhows!

After terry got his bug we headed off the island to the pacific coast of Nicaragua to a nice beach town called San Juan del Sur. After recovering, we did some surfing which was good craic, and after a few days at the beach we decided it was time to leave the lovely Nicaragua for Costa Rica....

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Photos

floating on Lago de Apoyo at sunset
View from the monkey hut

Comments

[mark maher]

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