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Published: March 7th 2013
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Goodbyes behind us, we were both happy to get back on the road and out of a big City. We woke from our slumber on the bus to a barren volcanic landscape as we crossed the border into Honduras and then not long later into Nicaragua. As we drove past one of the larger volcanos, San Cristobal, we noticed it was smoking heavily, but thought little of it. We later found out that it was on a high level alert and surrounding villages had been evacuated!
Not content with that we decided to get up close to some active volcanoes and our first destination, Leon, was just the place for it. The city centre was colonial style with a huge white Cathedral in the centre, the largest in Nicaragua. Climbing to the top on to the roof of this gave us a great view of city and the number of churches in its boundaries. We booked our volcano tours for the next day and found a rare vegetarian restaurant to satisfy our hunger.
The morning tour took us up an active volcano named Cerro Negro. It was fully covered in black ash on one side
and consequently excellent for our chosen activity of Volcano Boarding. The hike up was rocky and steep and although the views were good it was really windy which didn’t do much for our nerves. At the top we suited up into bright jump suits and (Mark first) slid down the side of the volcano on what can only be described as a basic sledge. It was a pretty exhilarating experience, although I’m pretty sure we still had ash in our trainers, hair etc for weeks after! The afternoon trip was a more sedate but longer walk up another active volcano, Telica. It was a long afternoon hike in a small group to the top and we arrived just in time for a spectacular Pacific sunset. From there we hiked in the dark to the crater to get a view of the lava below, although it wasn’t at its most clear because of the increased volcanic activity we were still impressed. The hike down in the dark was tricky and we chatted away to an exuberant French man – more on him later.
Next day we were up and off on a local bus to Granada where we
found the tourist capital of Nicaragua. It was a pretty colonial city, with great churches and architecture and a vast lake giving it a seaside feel, but it was our random meeting with the unusual French man was the most memorable part as he proceeded to tell us about the numerous activities he didn’t like on his travels and in life (we asked about beaches, cities, shopping etc) and consequently having little to do! Our other highlight was a cold beer by the underdeveloped lake area, watching the bird life and a young boy on a horse herding cattle along the shore. It was fairly obvious that Nicaragua is less developed than many countries we'd been to. Their unsettled history has clearly slowed their development, the infastructure was much more basic with horses still being used as delivery vehicles.
With New Year approaching we thought we’d try some time at the beach at San Juan de Sur. On arrival it was clear it was going to be busy and after a huge search found an overpriced distinctly average guest house. The beach itself was nice, with a sandy crescent shaped bay giving way to high cliffs either
side. Unfortunately the weather was pretty windy and this made lying on the beach pretty impossible. We busied ourselves instead with a steep walk to the top of the cliffs (where we saw some colourful birds), a short boat trip around the bay and a lot of well not very much really! We did meet a couple of American vets that were in the country for a week working with stray dogs. New Year arrived with a bang – same as Christmas in San Salvador there were copious amounts of fireworks which we watched from the beach. As well as this the local families set fire to life size human effigies in the streets, causing fire and smoke to spread everywhere. It was even more like a riot than Xmas!
We didn’t hang around long on New Year’s day and crossed the border to arrive in the small town of Liberia in Costa Rica early evening. We immediately found the pace of life slower and the people a lot wider, we enjoyed a lovely Chinese meal and checked into a decent & quirky hostel which made a change from our recent stops. Next day we headed off
San Juan de Sur
Bangers and fireworks New Year for a walk in a local National Park - Rincon de Vieja. We hiked for a couple of hours through grassy plains & woodland to a beautiful waterfall, where we cooled off with a swim. In the afternoon we took the volcanic circuit and witnessed steaming pools of water, bubbling mud areas and distinctly methane smelling gas outlets. It was unlike anything we'd seen previously on the trip & without much H&S restriction we could get as close as we dared!
Moving on again we took a couple of long, winding bus journeys back to the Pacific coast and a place called Ostional. We'd read it was a big nesting site for turtles and Tina didn't need much more convincing. Ostional is a really small village with just a couple of shops and accomodation options. We checked into another decent hotel with beautiful gardens and enjoyed relaxing in hammocks and watching the birdlife. The beach was just 100 yards away and a long sandy expanse that carried on far into the distance. Plenty more birds were active there as well, with frigate birds & pelicans sharing the skies and the beach with countless birds of prey.
Rincon de Vieja
beautiful light and scenery Despite it not being a main turtle landing time, one night we were able to see a black turtle burying it's eggs at the top of the beach. A local conservation tour took us out and we were not entirely impressed with some of their practises, (mainly the selling of turtle eggs for eating) and made it pretty clear to the guide. After more research we found out that they only sold a small amount of eggs - a lot of these would be lost anyway - and in order to stop locals stealing them anyway. It was an interesting conservation method, we couldn't see how selling turtle eggs in sauce at a shop within a national conservation park was the right thing to do...........
Reluctantly we dragged ourselves away from the quiet beach and headed back inland towards the capital, San Jose.
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