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Published: November 3rd 2008
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Rubén Dario resting place
Ruben Dario, an incredibly important poet and revolutionary here in Nicaragua, rests in the main cathedral. This powerful little piece has the Nicaraguan Lion, a very strong symbol here, mourning the loss of one of Nicaragua´s greatest men Tim version:
* Returned to Leon for a proper look and to catch up with photo backups and other stuff.
* Saw many a church, got in some latino style club dancing, and sandboarded down an active Volcano!
The version that cant describe just how freakin cool it is to sandboard down a Volcano!!:
(Also there a tonne of photos for this one as this place has a lot of art that just makes you take the camera out and take another snap! I´ll still try and limit it to a reasonable amount...)
Trekking back from Little Corn was a bit of a slow but painless process! The Captain D was agian my vessel of choice. I had to leave Little Corn around 2pm but checkout is 11am so I lazed on Little Corn chilling near the docks, watching the slow moving political flyer handing people wandering back and forth. Once I had taken the Panga to big Corn, I had a tonne of time to kill! Stuck with my bag I didn´t feel like moving around much, and The Captain D didn´t leave until midnight, so on and off the boat I killed the next 10
Sandinista with a home made granade
From the museum of Heroes and Martyres hours, talking to some locals and just resting up. The boat ride back was uneventful but pleasant and got us into Bluefields around 6:50am, good timing. No direct routes to Rama this time unfortunately! Unfortunately the ride got a little annoying here... the Panga´s don´t leave until full, and we were 2 people short for 2 hours and all had to wait! Once the boat was ready to go, the military decided to search all out bags. A bad time to have a big backpack with only one opening at the top! Getting it checked was nightmarish and unfortunately I was last due to another officer wanting to see my passport right away before joining the queue to get bags checked so there was me, left with my bag and all my shit on a crappy table in plainsight of everyone, with the guy running the boat trying to hurry me up, grabbing things here and there. This also meant my seat was the worst in the panga. Not the most enjoyable trip unforunately but it got me to Rama nice and fast, 1 1/2 hours or so. In Rama the bus I wanted didn´t leave until 7pm and I
A father heading off for work
I don´t take shots of people as those reading my blog will know, but this one really caught my eye and the family happily let me take the photograph. So thankyou to the anonymous family. arrived at 11am so I then had yet another 8 hours to kill. I´d seen Rama so mostly just read and chilled next to the bus in a shitty little street. The bus got me to Managua just after midnight, so I had to Taxi which I found cost more than double at night, and stay a night there that I didn´t really want to yet again... the hostel was simple and fine though, and with some rest under my belt the next day I made the last easy part of the trip to Leon! Leon... ahh so good to be back!
My Hostel, Lazybones, was a freakin mansion! I knew I had 4 or so days of computer research ahead of me, including chasing up banks and missing bank accounts, moving stuff around, filling out insurance claims etc. so I went for the best! Checkout the photos, this place was a palace! No free pancake breakfast or kitchen but just such a roomy clean atmosphere with the pool and all with 5 good fast computers and a good net connection that it filled what I needed perfectly! And I nerded it up, very happily for 5 days, seeing
Student protest violence
An unbelievably good painting in my opinion. Needs close inspection... Leon in dribs and drabs which was incredibly relaxing and a good way to do it I found! 1500 photos, various movies, all backed up too.... a big load off my mind!
Walking around Leon is very different to Granada, not offering the juicy touristy sights up as easily. Instead you need to really find them! The paintings and murals that can be found, be they official ones or not, are the real gold here and looking for them is awesome fun. Its a very studenty atmosphere here, a better atmosphere than Granada for me right now, and there are artists creating all sorts of works around the place... its a hard place to describe in a blog but well worth a visit!
Had a night out with some Germans involving some terrible club dancing to Latin and American music switched at random with totally different musical paces all over the place. It was wicked fun and what I needed after such a non social week of computering! Thankfully the german girls really couldn´t dance either so the playing field was level heh. When grinding music came on, it was all much the same, but its awesome when
latin music comes on with a good fast samba or some other traditional dance beat comes on as many of the Nicaraguan guys and girls, regardless of age, bust into incredible practised moves that blow the westerners off the dance floor!
My final activity was Volcano Boarding! I wanted to see this Cerro Negro Volcano, and traking up it followed by hurtling down the side of it on a piece of wood sounded perfect! Even though volcanic rock and human flesh don´t really mix too well. We trekked up the volcano over the rubble and got some incredible views of the crater. It is constantly fuming sulphorous gases which gives it that funky fart gas smell but also stains it yellow and gives it a whispy fuming look thats unreal! We got to go into the crater too, feeling the insane heat coming out of cracks in the crater, and getting up close and personal with those sulphurous gases! This is a volcano by the way that erupts about every 8 years apparently, and it has now been 9 years since it´s last eruption with American geologists telling them that the gases underneath are still getting hotter so there
A history of Nicaragua
A mural, starting out of sight on the left, that goes through the history of Nicaragua. A very interesting piece. I have the whole thing on film but its a lot of photos that I need to make a panorama from should be a decent eruption within the next year... heh and he´s happily telling us that information as we´re feeling the heat and fumes pouring out, showing just how active it still is! Nowhere in the richer western world would they let you do this, safety would pull you back, but TIN (This Is Nicaragua), and I´m glad it´s all possible! After the history talks and general amazement at where we were it was time to throw ourselves off the side! The experience, unreal... so so good. Its a huge long run, giving a feeling somewhere between sandboarding and snowboarding. You slide faster and more freely than sandboarding, sometimes sinking a bit under rocks on your board, and can carve a little like snowboarding. I didn´t go flat out as I want my flesh in one piece for the next part of my travel but you could get some insane speed down this thing! That said and done, my time in Leon is now over and its time to hit up some El Salvadorian surf! So border crossings, buses, a numb ass and some $$$ later I should be in El Salvador by night fall (I hope)!
Leon has
been a fitting finish to my Nicaraguan adventure. This place is seriously incredible, and you could easily travel another month up the Miskito coast, to Estelli for some time, and a bunch of other places quite happily and hopefully in the future I will... but now I have surfing on the brain I´ve gotta run for it!! I´m thinking a month maybe? What do you think? A month of surfing solid... I don´t know if it will happen but I hope so!
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