Kat & Marty

We were greeted in Nicaragua by a man in crutches smoking the biggest cubana I have ever seen leaning up next to an old yellow school bus with èxpresso`painted across the top. Tickets were cheap but he didn`t have change for us so we went to a nearby shop to break up our bill. While there another guy came over and offered us a ride in a directivo van at over twice the price. We agreed as we are over spending hours in crowded uncomfortable buses that stop and start every 5 minutes where Marty can`t even fit his knees in behind the seats. We left the border town to the sounds of the cigar smoker^s curses at the directivo for poaching his customers.

Leon has a reputation of being a cosmopolitan colonial town. To me it still just seemed pretty dirty and run down. We had a drink on the central plaza and Marty was served with a beer so cold it turned to ice in his cup. We took a room in another Via Via hotel and though it didn^t have a bathroom it was definitely the coolest room we had in a while with two double beds, a huge wooden desk I took the opportunity to use to write at and nice candle holders and cool paintings around the place which made it feel much more homely. We looked all over to find somewhere to do some much needed laundry but had no luck. We had dinner opposite a church that was holding a Wednesday night meeting. It was so nice to hear the singing as we sat there. The menu didn^t look too promising so Marty asked for a typical meal. This hadn^t been on the menu but turned out to be one of the best meals we have had in SA. The platter for two came out with salad, french fries, fried plantans, cooked bananas, corn chips with beans and cheese, cheese tacos and fried chicken. We couldn^t even finish it between us.

After an early night we got up in good time and found a travel agent to book us plane tickets to the Corn Islands for that afternoon. We were very fortunate to find an English speaking agent as Spanish is still barely understood by ourselves. As soon as we had our receipt we rushed around getting cash, packing our bags and getting to the bus terminal. We found a directivo van to Managua 1.5 hours drive away and had to sit in it for a good half hour while the few remaining seats were filled. It is a bit like sitting in a goldfish bowl as all the hustlers spot a white person and come running. Mostly they are selling snacks or drinks but some just come to beg. Marty had one strange young man come up to the window next to him and stare at him with puppy dog eyes for about 5 minutes. The strange thing was, was that he didn^t say anything or ask for money, he just stared. It was a relief to finally pull away.

Our flight to Big Corn Island was in a rather empty 30 seater plane. I don^t know what type it was but the windows seemed much lower to the ground than most airplanes and on landing felt like we were going to sink into the earth. We had a brief stopover in Bluefields - named after a Dutch pirate - before our arrival on the island. We had made the decision to go straight over to Little Corn Island so took a taxi around to the ferry terminal. Our ride over was pretty exciting. We were in a little open outboard dinghy. As soon as we got out of the shelter of the harbour we were in two metre swells. One lady on board got really sea sick - for once not me! Another lady was terrified and pulled out a good proportion of Marty¨s leg hairs as she held onto a side of his shorts for dear life. With me hanging off his other arm he was quite the gentlemanly support for the lady passengers.

We arrived on Little Corn at sunset and pretended we knew what we were all about. The hotel we wanted to stay at was called Sunrise Paradise and was located on the other side of the island. There were no roads only a series of little dirt paths that criss cross the island. We ended up having the hotel tout, Dennis, show us where to go and it is a good thing he was there or we would have been wandering around all night. When we got there they only had one room left with bunk beds which I wasn^t going to stay in so they got one of the other guests to change rooms for us. Gareth is a traveller originaly from England but knew this part of the world really well so was good to talk to. Some of the other guests there were a group of Norwegians from a Spanish school in Leon, a man from Florida who now lives in the Cayeman Islands and spent his whole time underwater skin diving and finally an English couple who are doing a similar thing to us only for 14 months and around the entire world. We enjoyed spending quite a bit of time talking to George and Chris about their experiences and future travel plans, perhaps we will see them a little bit down the road as we are visiting a lot of the same places.

Our room was a little wooden shack roofed with coconut fronds that kept the heavy night rain off us surprisingly well. The hotel had a few tables with lights down on the waters edge. Our first night was spent talking with the other guests and trying to keep our feet out of the way of the huge crabs that were running around. In fact I think we spent most of our time on the island sitting at these tables.

The next morning was overcast and windy so we decided to go for a walk rather than try and snorkel. We went around to where the ferry had landed which was at the main settlement. We had a breakfast of eggs, rice and beans there then found our way to a lighthouse at the top of the island with a great lookout platform. We then dropped down onto the beach and tried to follow it around the top of the island back to our hotel. At one point we came around a corner to find a skiff pulled up on a beach with a group of men around it. We were first worried that we had stumbled across a drug drop off but it was nothing so dramatic. They were bagging sand for a new pier being built. Eventually the coastline became too rocky for us to follow so we climbed up and walked through the forest finding wild pineapples growing amongst the coconut palms. It is strange as a lot of the paths go right past peoples front doors making us feel like we were invading their privacy a bit but they were all really chilled.

Back at Sunrise Paradise we went for a swim in the wind stirred water but it was a bit cold so after going over and picking up some coconut bread for the next mornings breakfast we settled in for the night. As it was full moon we decided to have a big bonfire. Dennis also cooked Rondon - a coconut based fish stew with various root vegetables in it. He borrowed our spice jar and shook it so hard the lid came off and deposited the entire lot of cayenne pepper, black pepper, chili, salt and garlic salt and curry. He said later it was the best tasting Rondon he`d ever made. We went to sit next to the fire after dinner just as it started to rain so we had to move inside, but it was still a fun night with lots of interesting people to talk to. It was so good to be in an environment where everyone was friendly.

The next day we had arranged with Dennis to take us out on a boat fishing and snorkelling, however the weather didn`t come to the party with rain storms and wind. We hired some snorkelling gear anyway and swam out to a reef straight off from the hotel. It was so wavy that I got sea sick swimming out would you believe. Even the little tropical fish were getting knocked around by the surge. We tried over the other side of the island which is more sheltered and in a 50 - 100m swim saw a giant spotted eagle ray, rows of squid - bizarre - and a new kind of fish that was black with flourescent yellow stripes swmming amongst t-shirts, beer cans, soda bottles and other rubbish that was caught on the coral. The visiblity still wasn`t too good and we got caught in some waves. Without the protection of a wet suit on the coral we decided enough was enough and called it a day.

That night we went into town to a restaurant of good repute with George and Chris. Unfortunately the chef had gone home sick so we had to make do with another restaurant. Dennis was meant to return our money from the boat trip we didn`t go on but never showed up which was a little disappointing. However the company was good and we had a very enjoyable night.

The next morning was an early one to make the 7am ferry. It was running really late and there were a lot of people going back on it so I was worried we wouldn`t make our 8.30 flight from the big island, but it wasn`t a problem and we were even offered drinks on the flight back to Managua. There the taxi from the airport dropped us to the wrong bus station so instead of a directivo mini van we ended up on a chicken bus to Granada. Even so it was still only an hour away.

Granada is a beautiful town on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. We had a hostel recommended to us by the name of Oasis and it proved to be so. So much in fact we have barely left the premises. It has a pool, nice rooms, lots of hammocks, free tea and coffee and best of all free internet usage. I sat down on the bed for a moment and fell asleep for about 4 hours. We only left for dinner the place for dinner, finding a really nice inexpensive restaurant to eat at. It felt like a date, it was a really fun night out for us and so refreshing to take time out from the road.

In the morning we walked down to the Central Plaza and spent some time in the church before walking down to the edge of Lake Nicaragua from which we could see the twin volcanoes of Ometepe Island which we unfortunately didn`t have time to visit. We went to a muesem and were given a free tour - well included in the price of our ticket anyway. We saw the old games the indiginous people used to play which mainly seemed to involve spinning around on a pole like the Mexican sky dancers or attaching oneself to a pretty wild looking sea saw thing that spun upside down as well. They also housed a lot of stone statues found on various lake islands.

Later that afternoon, after Marty got a haircut, we caught a bus down to Rivas. From Rivas we took a crazy collectiovo taxi to San Juan del Sur, a seaside town famous for surf and for being a gringo hangout. The driver spent half the time on the side of the badly sealed road rather than on it and I was praying for dear life! We booked into a hostel called Casa Oro which had a good write up and good advertisements but were under major re-construction. Our room was very basic with raw wood walls and concrete floors  (actually sounds quite trendy but the reality was more of a shed effect). We were tired and wandered around a bit lost until we bumped into some fellow travellers, one of whom had shared a taxi with us back on Roatan. When the restaurant closed that we ate at, we took some drinks down to the beach. The sand was wet so we gate crashed a boat someone had conveniently had parked in the street and had an impromptu boat party.

The next day was a surf day. We joined a surf shop to drive out to a beach where we had perfect learner waves all day long. It was one of the best surfs I have ever had! The drive out was on a rough dirt road past wealthy American developments. There was one small hostel out at the beach but nothing else, only sun and long breaking waves that gave even me time to get up on my feet. Marty went off, catching green water rather than the broken surf. We stayed until sunset then exhausted had an early night.

Our next morning was an early one to catch a taxi back to Rivas where we only just managed to get on a Tica bus  bound for Costa Rica. It was so full we couldn't sit together but at least we were on our way.