León

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In the morning we woke up at 5.30am and had to go and knock on the señoras door to let us out of the building... the door was padlocked! We took a cab to the bus station and caught the first bus to León. León is a very pretty town. We arrived at around 8.20am and nowhere was open, but a few hostels with restaurants. We hadnt eaten yet so had breakfast at Via Via, a belgian owns it so the food was excellent! They had dorms and rooms, but we had to wait until 10am so they would know what was available, same with a hostel called Bigfoot across the road. Unfortuantely their rooms were $17US each and we thought that was way too expensive so we settled with a small hotel called Casa Vieja one block away. We had stayed at Via Via to use the wifi until midday and then dumped our things at the hotel and wandered the city seeing the old churches, buildings and some of the many museums, including an art museum that has some Picassos. It was pretty hot and we both went and had a refreshing cold shower. We booked a tour for the next day through Quetzaltrekkers, a non-profit place that is run by volunteers, they do hikes of up to 3 days but we chose to go sandboarding down a volcano! The money they raise goes to an organisation called Las Tias (the aunties) which was started by women in a poor market area in the 1980´s to help those children who were addicted to glue sniffing and worse things, and it also concentrates on helping younger children stop falling into those habits. ç
We found a pizza and lebanese place for dinner, we were pretty hungry by then and had a very decent sized pizza between us and a large serve of fresh hommus with hot bread! so good! we also tried our first Nicaraguan beers, Toña and Imperial, both very nice beers I have to say. We went back to the room and watched some tv (the room had cable tv with some english channels) and went to bed after killing some of the many ants that live in the room!
Next morning after cereal and milk we headed to the tour office at 8am and off we went with a bunch of others, in the back of a truck to Cerro Negro (black volcano). After an hours drive through the countryside we came to the rangers hut for the region and signed our names etc, used the bathroom and read the sign that said ´do not pass, this area is dangerous and there is a risk of volcanic eruption!´ so naturally the tour continued on past the sign and up we hiked with little backpacks and sand boards on our backs to the top of a very black volcano. It doesnt have visible lava or anything but there is always hot steam and gases coming from part of it. It is a very young volcano and it was nice to hear from our guide (Connor, from New Zealand) that it erupts on average every 7 years, but hasnt erupted since 1999 so we were due for one... We all felt a little uneasy, but apparently there is lots of monitoring and so theres nothing to worry about. The 45 min hike to the top was ok, just annoying coz the sand and rock is very loose under foot. The view was amazing. You can see for hundreds of km´s the many volcanoes that are part of the strip that Cerro Negro is in. Some of them you can see smoking in the distance. After 20 mins running around on top taking pics we opened our little backpacked and put on bright limegreen safetly suits, gloves and goggles and headed for the launch area to sand board down the volcano! We went 2 at a time and raced, Dario just beat me, but both boards went pretty fast to begin with but slowed a lot at the end. It was fun and worth it!
We walked back to the truck and they gave us the option of doing it again, only Dario went up again. Most of the people went back with me and 2 others to the ranger station to wait, the majority of them were going on a 2 day hike from then on and left with a different guide so left 3 of us to wait for Dario and Connor... about an hour later they arrived and we had torillas for lunch before heading back to the city. The couple I hung out with were Charlotte and Nico from Belgium on a short holiday. We ended up meeting them later that night for dinner.
On the way back Dario had organised a date with Connor that afternoon to go and make some designs in the workshop for faster boards. So i picked up our clean laundry, sewed a few things and watched tv until her was already an hour late and I went to find him at the workshop! (we had arranged to meet Charlotte and Nico for dinner and he promised to be back at 7.30... by 8.30 I was hungry too!). Dinner was really good, at Via Via, but it took a long time to get to us. Another couple they knew joined us aswell. By 11.30 everyone was knackered so we all headed to bed after organising to meet at 8am for brekky and to take the bus together to Granada the next day.

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Photos

Volcano reserve
the sign says ´do not pass, risk of volcanic eruption´but the tour kept going and we climbed Cerro Negro, the volcano behind me.

Ruben Dario´s burial place
inside the Cathedral in Leon