Nicaragua
Early morning start from el Tunco in el Salvador to catch a bus to Nicaragua. Also felt a wee bit dubious because we had to leave from el Tunco in a taxi at 3.45am to meet the bus in San Salvador at 5am, probably not the safest place at that time of the morning, to make it worse we arrived early and the bus station was closed, so we were dropped off in the street to fend for ourselves! All good nothing happened. We hopped on our 12 hour bus and off to Nicaragua we went, new surf board in tow.
Arrived quite late in Managua, but still needed to get 1hour south to Granada, much nicer city. So we made a new friend, scottish girl Philly, and split a taxi ride. Arrived in Granada stayed at nice little place called il padrino, but very hard to find. Hopped up early to walk around the old beautiful colonial town, then headed out to the island de ometepe, set in the middle of a lake just next to Granada. What looked like a short bus ride and boat ride, turned out to be a whole days travel! It was great once we arrived though.
Isla de ometepe is famous because it has two volcanos on it. Very beautiful scenery and great walks. Arrived just as the sun was setting, the hostel we wanted to stay at was booked out and we ventured on to our next hostel, el zipolote. The taxi driver that was taking us there kept saying to us in Spanish... It's very beautiful there but very different, I didn't quite understand what he was trying to say until we got there. Its set at the bottom of the volcano and it is an ecological hostel, completely ecological. Thatched roof cabins, mosquito nets, you need a torch at night, they make all their own food, bread, natural yogurt, honey, veggies etc. The toilet was special compost toilet, showers were under the stars... I think you get the picture! It was very beautiful but we basically lived like hippys for a few nights. They did have a fabulous pizza oven outside and they made pizzas fours one night which was delicious.
We hired some bikes the next day, unfortunately we couldn't walkup the volcano because we were there on election day and everything closes down,including tourism. The bikes were great, we rode around the island and went to natural spring from the volcano called, Ojo de Agua, eye of the water. That night we got a real treat in our ecological hut, 4 big black, spider/scorpion looking things were waiting for us, that didn't really help getting much sleep that night.
After a few days in ometepe we headed back to the coast of Nicaragua, San Juan del sur. Surrounding it has some surf spots. Beautiful sunsets here as well. So back to the surfing we went, this time I decided to hire a board myself. Surf wasn't fabulous but I definitely stood up, sustained a few little bruises as well. The first night we arrived there we had to stay in a dormitory because there were not private rooms available. That was probably the first and the last (definitely getting old!) we had some lovely Aussie bogans in our room, they over did it, came back late and one of the guys was spewing over our balcony, very classy! The next morning we legged it out of there and moved in to a private room.
Next stop is Costa Rica, maybe some more mountain adventures and hitting the beaches again, of course!