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Published: August 14th 2008
One of my Final Retired US Schoolkids Buses
I've gotten so used to seeing several countries public transport systems underpinned by retired US school buses, it's going to be weird not seeing them in London...Well, time is now up on the Central American adventure. I'm now back in Chalk Farm, North London, picking up my life pretty much where I left it back in mid-November last year. It's certainly been a long time, and strangely enough not a lot has changed - especially not many of the improvements to the flat that the landlord promised anyway...! Over the previous 6 months I've had loads of different experiences - from volunteering in Guatemala to kitesurfing lessons in Honduras, from climbing active volcanos to getting my PADI dive certificate, from spending 5 weeks in spanish language schools to camping on uninhabited white sand Caribbean islands - for a fairly small part of the world, Central America certainly packs in a lot of punch. The last 2 or 3 weeks of my time in Central America was spent in Nicaragua, taking in some off the beaten track jungle missions, chilling on a lake island made up of two volcanoes forcing their way through the water, and getting narly at Nicaraguan surf school. It all went a little like this:
EL CASTILLO & RIO SAN JUAN
Rio San Juan (or St John's river in english) is
El Castillo
Chilled-out jungle river town where I spent 3 nights in the south-east of the country, running from Lake Nicaragua all the way out to the Caribbean coast. To get there, I needed to get a bus down one of the worst roads in Nicaragua - the 100km stretch from Juigalpa to San Carlos, which took the better part of 8 hours, so I guess that's an average speed of 12.5km per hour! It was a truly shit road, and everyone on the beaten-up former US schoolkids bus was shaken about pretty badly. It wasn't helped by the fact that the bus was majorly overcrowded, i had to share one seat with 3 Nicaraguans, basically I just had to perch on the seat-edge on one butt cheek for the whole journey. I was, however, one of the lucky ones and felt a little sorry for those poor sods that had to stand up for the entire 8 hours - although I didn't feel quite sorry enough to offer up my seat!
Eventually we arrived in the fairly ordinary town of San Carlos from where I made my way upriver for a couple of hours by boat to the picturesque small town of El Castillo. El Castillo literally means "The
Castle", named after a fort from 100s of years ago that still dominates the skyline of the town. The fort actually played an important role in the history of this area back in the day - the Spanish and the English had a major rumble over it at one point, and curiously enough the leader of the English expedition to capture it was one Admiral Nelson, the one and the same who sits on top of the column in Trafalgar Square and who would die about a decade later fighting the Spanish somewhere else.
The setting of El Castillo was pretty cute. It was just a tiny little town miles from anywhere really - it could only be properly accessed by boat, although there were horse trails between it and neighbouring villages. One day me and a few folk I'd met got a guide and missioned along the trails for a while and went to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere about 2 hours walk from El Castillo. When we got there, we got introduced to a local family, and the spent the day with them at their house and doing stuff in their kitchen - like
Multi-Tasking!
Grinding the corn, and posing for the camera - all at the same time! making tortillas from scratch. First we'd have to get the corn and shred it fine, then transfer to a stone mortar-and-pestel type arrangement, although it looked more like a rolling pin and board. Then we'd mix it with a bit of water and grab a ball of it and pat it repeatedly while turning it until we ended up for a flat tortilla ready to cook on top of the wood-burning stove. It was just a pretty chilled out day doing local kitchen stuff and practicing our Spanish with the family.
We also went on a tour in dugout canoes up a tributary of the river which was pretty sweet. There were crocodiles up there and we were lucky enough to see one or two heaving themselves off the bank and into the water just 10 feet from us paddling along. Twas pretty cool, and not so scary as they would always swim away from us - I think most nature instinctively likes to get away from us people! We also had a bit of an odd incident where we stopped and got off for a bit beneath a massive tree with a troop of howler monkeys at the
Volcan Concepion
On Isla Ometepe, an island basically made up of two volcanoes forcing their way through the water top of it, but apparently we weren't that welcome as the bloody monkeys started pulling the small fruits of the trees and hiffing them down at us! Little buggers.
ISLA OMETEPE
After my mission up to El Castillo, I headed back up the river to sketchy San Carlos again before getting on a slow old ferry that took 9 hours to go partway across the lake and drop me at the island in the centre called Isla Ometepe. The ride over was a little uncomfortable as although it was pretty warm outside they ran the aircon for the whole journey so I just ended up freezing, plus the played several Steven Seagal movies on the TV quite loudly and I kinda reach my Steven Seagal threshold after about 1 movie.
Isla Ometepe was a pretty cool time. The island itself is kinda freaky in that it’s just two volcanoes that push their way out of the lake, and the various volcanic ash and rock from past eruptions has joined them together and joined them together as one island. Because of the rich volcanic nature of the soil on the island, pretty much all the farming is
Finca Magdalena
Ramblin' old farmhouse that is now basically a big dosshouse for international travellers. Isla Ometepe. organic because there really isn’t any need for fertiliser.
I stayed at a place called
Finca Magdalena which was quite a laugh. Basically it’s a huge old rambling farm house on a 350 hectare farm at the base of one of the two volcanoes with great views across the island to the other volcano. It’s owned and operated as a collective by 24 different local families that live on the island. It basically feels like a big doss-house with beds everywhere and heaps of travellers of various nationalities camped out in massive dorms or, if they really need to save money, just sleeping in a hammock on the big verandah.
I spent one day climbing to the summit of one of the volcanoes with a group of folk from Finca Magdalena which was pretty hard work but a good workout all the same. The extinct volcano had a crater lake at the top, but it was ice cold so couldn’t stay in long, plus the bottom was very gooey-muddy and I’d always sink into it halfway up my shins which was beginning to make me nervous after a while… Although the highlight of the day was when we were
Dirty, Dirty People
Mission Accomplished: At the crater lake at the top of Volcano Maderas trekking back down and off to the left of the path slithered one of the 10 MOST POISONOUS SNAKES IN THE WOLRD! How’s that for hardcore? It’s called the
Coral Snake , and it disappeared into some undergrowth but our guide tried to go after with a stick so he could pick it for us all to have a better look, although I’d had quite a good look already and didn’t need to look any closer, and was quietly relieved when it buried itself so deep in the undergrowth our guide couldn’t find it anymore.
SAN JUAN DEL SUR
After my time on Isla Ometepe I had less than a couple of weeks to go in Central America, and I knew that for the lion’s share of that time I wanted to go to Nicaragua’s premier surf/party beach town of San Juan Del Sur to chill out in the sun, learn to surf and sink a few cold ones without needing to think too much about what I was doing with my day. Although my previous few months had been a lot of fun, sometimes I’d pushed myself quite hard with my chosen itineraries through parts of some countries,
Surfin' Safari!
San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua and with the clock ticking on the whole adventure I decided it was high time to turn into a slothful gringo for a while before heading back to London.
Hence, I ended up in San Juan del Sur for 9 nights, during which time I took surf lessons and practiced quite a lot in my spare time too. It ended up with me being able to stand up all by myself and ride a wave all the way into the beach, although am not yet at the level where I can turn sideways and stay ahead of the breaking whitewater…. That’s my next task, and might need to head out to Devon or Cornwall to develop my skills further sometime later this year.
I was really chuffed with the place I stayed in San Juan as well. One of the leading Surf outfits,
Arena Caliente , (that’s hot sand in English), has a bunch of rooms out behind it, complete with its own kitchen and big lounge area with a huge TV, DVD player and X-box, plus pretty much everyone else staying there was a serious surfhead so it was quite a good environment for me to be in while
Cathedral
San Juan Del Sur I was learning. Plus they only charged me US$6 a night for my own room, whereas around the corner at the cool party hostel they charge people US$7 a night for a bed in a dorm with 11 other people, so was pretty happy with the place I landed in - so am thankful to the kiwi girl from Dunedin that I met in Isla Ometepe who gave me the tip off.
San Juan del Sur was also a pretty good party town too, probably the leading “party town” in Nicaragua, jam packed with gringos wanting to get smashed off their heads on a regular basis. I joined them a couple of nights I was there, but left it at that since I was usually up in the morning with my board going out to hit the surf. But the bar-club scene in San Juan was pretty happening, anyone travelling through Nicaragua who wants to find a place to live it up can’t go too wrong by basing yourself there for a while.
GRANADA, LOS PUEBLOS BLANCOS & MASAYA
My last couple of days were spent in the towns of Granada and Masaya. Granada was the
The View Across Granada
The oldest european city in all of the Americas, founded by the first Spanish Conquistadors in the early 1500s. first proper city in all of Latin America, and was the capital of all of “New Spain” for a while back in the 1500s. It is quite a pretty colonial town, but also feels pretty touristy with people trying to hawk stuff at me at every available opportunity as well. As I really only had an afternoon and an evening there, I didn’t do a lot apart from have a general nosey around and drink a couple of beers next to the lake at one of the popular lakeside bars. Fortunately I bumped into a Spanish guy I’d met earlier in the trip who was volunteering there, so had someone to hang out with in the evening. He spoke pretty good English but we mainly spoke in Spanish, and it was good to know I could largely hold my own chatting with him (and that we could revert to english on those occasions that I got stuck!)
I then spent a day exploring some smaller villages near Granada, known as Los Pueblos Blancos (or, The White Towns), which were also very pleasant places with nice views over the lake, and lots of Nicaraguans eating, drinking, gas-bagging and occasionally shouting
More Revolutionary Wall Art
Taking up all of a wall in a small village near Granada, this is a memorial to a Sandinista "Commandante" who fell in battle at one another. And from there I headed up to Masaya, which would be my last stop, and where I sadly seemed to come down with a bit of a nasty chest infection just before I was about to fly home, but not before I did a whole lot of last minute shopping for organic coffee beans, Nicaraguan chocolate and a couple of bottles of the finest Central American rum - one aged 12 years and the other 23 years, which I’m looking forward to opening but not until someone in London actually offers me a job ;-)
Despite being sick, I also managed to get up to the crater edge of the most active volcano in all of Central America (it helped that there was a road right up to the edge, and that taxis in Nicaragua are pretty cheap). They might have a lot of volcanoes over here (all of Central America is on the same "pacific ring of fire" as New Zealand), but in terms of total activity it's Volcan Masaya that is the most active. I hung out at the top for a while, but the Nicaraguan health department has signs up saying not to
Volcano Masaya
The most active volcano in all of Central America (which has a lot of volcanoes). Health warnings at the top tell you to stay above the fumes for no more than 20 minutes. stay directly above the crater for more than 20 minutes due to air quality issues to do with large amounts of sulphur, so after my 20 minutes I decided it was time to come down again. It did stink a little up there...
And that's about it. No more Central America for me, no more travelblogs for you - it's a disaster all around isn't it? But I'm happy to be back in Chalk Farm, my two lovely housemates did a sterling job of keeping my room open for me while I was gone, and I’ve felt really good about being back in London and being able to move straight back into my old place. For now, London is home - for how much longer I never really know, but I’m happy to be back here and there’s really nowhere else in the world I’d rather be living at the moment. So here is where I’ll be staying, at least for a little while.
So, until the next time that I decide to go off on a big mission... which you never know, might just be sooner than you think...!
ADIOS!
;-)
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barrygahan
Barry
You do get to some great sounding, off the gringo trail places. El Castillo sounds cool, I remember you recommending it to me, but we only had time for the main sights. This is another country I'd love to come back to and see properly over a few months. Good luck moving back to London, I'm returning there myself in October.