Upwards and onwards!

So, we arrived into Leon and shared a cab in with Finn who was staying at one hostel, dropping her off before we went to ours. We'd reserved 3 nights at a place called Sonati which seemed lovely until we arrived. Our dorm only had two other people in it but was so hot and stuffy. The bathroom and shower weren't too clean and even the common area didn't seem too grand. But we figured to give it one night anyway and see how things were. The staff recommended a good place to eat, we found it on the map and headed off. It served sandwiches and desserts which in a normal day would have been awesome but we hadn't eaten since Tegulcigalpa, hours and hours- and one country- previous and decided to go somewhere a bit more substantial. Wandered around for a while and ended up hiking through a bar/karaoke disco combo to an upstairs restaurant. My goodness me gracious. We sat down and waited for a couple hours before they brought us menus (yes, it's an exaggeration but we were starving and it felt hours). Took them even longer to bring us our drinks, then eventually came back for a food order. The crazy thing with all this is for Central America, ok it was slow, but fairly normal-- where most Western restaurants would go under from getting shocker of a reputation, here it's just as things are, so everyone lives with it.

The food did turn up before midnight though, and damn but it was good, and large servings! We mowed through both huge plates of food and were absolutely stuffed at the end. After sitting round for a while we were trying to get the bill when a familiar figure arrived- Finn. Inviting her over to our table it was only polite to get another couple of drinks while she ordered and ate, and we chatted about all sorts. There were random fireworks going off all over town which was a nice treat and it was some Saints' Day parade with a bunch of priest and church goers running down the street (very decorously) holding a statue of said Saint- with cars and vehicles behind still tooting like mad to try and get through. A bit of patience here people, just pretend you are at a restaurant! Eventually we all headed back to our hostels for sleep.

The next morning we had decided- look for another hostel. It had been so incredibly hot in our room we didn't get much sleep, almost resorting to going and soaking our sheets in the shower and covering ourselves with them. We went to a couple of hostels which had good reputations, and ended up settling on…Lazybones, where Finn was. It had a pool! After a tough afternoon of playing pool and frolicking in the actual pool, a group of us (Finn; Paddy from Ireland; Rory, also Irish and Mark the Kiwi plus a couple of others) went to grab some dinner. The restaurant we went to was just around the corner and doubled (God help us) as an impromptu karaoke bar. Paddy done us proud by entertaining the masses with "Nada fue un error" (Vicki, you may remember the song, was popular in Chile when we were there…). All fine and dandy. After dinner we headed to a bar named "The after party spot". Ha, apart from the staff we were the only ones there for a while, were on the point of going somewhere else when suddenly a few dozen people turned up, foreigners and locals alike. One hardy local decided I was his dream come true and tried to convince me of the same, wouldn't take a polite 'No' for an answer for ages, the numpty…though it turns out that that particular bar is known for being a place the locals can go to pick up lonely travellers… Ha!

The next few days passed lovely and relaxingly- swimming in the pool, wandering the streets of Leon, swinging in the hammocks and generally watching the days go past. The boys were toying with the idea of going to the Corn Islands also but weren't sure, and Finn was planning to stay on the mainland, maybe head to Granada. They told us about a museum they had gone to about myths and legends, and certain of the exhibits sounded so bizarre (an ugly heiress with a large bosom who goes around propositioning men?!) that me and Nick had to go. We tracked the place down, paid our minimal entrance fee and went in.

Ye gads! The museum is now where a prison used to be, so along with the different exhibits there are also random prisoner-type paintings on the walls, and small cubicles where they lived. You'll see in the photos... Nick's favourite probably was the ugly heiress one; I think I liked the Pig-witch better (women who are 'unreasonably' jealous of their men cheating on them turn into giant pigs who can go off and get the b******s). We were in one of the rooms which had a horseless carriage, a headless priest etc when a skeleton fell off the wall- we left that room quite quickly.

After nearly a week of Leon though, it was getting time to head to the Corn Islands. I'll leave that for the next blog though, and just finish this one with these words: If ever you can go to Leon, do it, it's a lovely city with wonderful people, and a good place overall. Just beware large breasted ladies and giant pigs.