We did eventually have to leave Costa Rica, to save us breaking the bank or any more bones. We were starting our northward trip back up through Nicaragua that would eventually get us to Honduras, specifically Utila, in time for Christmas. On the way up our main stop was in San Juan del Sur plus a couple more days in León. We rocked up to San Juan late afternoon and were met by a completely stunning sunset and a beer pong competition. Pretty representative of the town and our stay to be honest.

Among travellers, San Juan is one of the ultimate party destinations in Central America mostly due to Sunday Funday, the (in)famous pool crawl – three different hostel bars over 12 hours. Central America is littered with Sunday Funday vests in various colours and they are worn like a badge of honour to show that you survived. 

The town itself however is a haven for ex-pats and the relaxed permanent traveller.  It’s the kind of place you come to for a week and end up staying for the rest of your life. It’s right on the beach which while not the best beach for surfing has the most incredible view of sunset and is also overlooked by the second largest Jesus statue in the world. 

I immediately fell in love. The chilled out vibe, the colourful, cosy streets and the friendly people made it a place I can very easily imagine coming back to for a longer stint. While we were in San Juan we discovered Nicaragua’s signature phrase, akin to pura vida in Costa Rica. ¡Dale pues! means ‘lets do it’ and perfectly suits the people of San Juan.

We arrived on a Thursday night, giving us a perfect amount of time to assimilate before Sunday Funday arrived. We explored the town, went out to one of the nearby beaches to watch a surfing competition, ate bagels at El Gato Negro for almost all our meals and were completely robbed of free Sunday Funday tickets at trivia night (Jesse, Calum and I were anyway. It’s a corrupt system).

Our hostel, Pachamama’s, was one of the participating bars which not only meant that we were in a great position to sneak into the front of the line but also that we got half price tickets. Ours was the first stop which meant that our party started a bit early than most people’s as we waited for everyone else to arrive, though we were kept company by the 2-4-1 mojitos.

To summarise probably the best 12 hours of my life, at least of this trip, we started off at Pacha’s which involved a game of giant jenga, then to another hostel called Anamar that had a super cool pool (in both senses of the word). Third stop was the well known Naked Tiger hostel just outside of town where we had the perfect view of sunset over the bay before finishing the day/night in a club called Arribas back in town.  

I’m glad to say that everyone made it through the day (and the following morning) intact. We tried to fend off the Monday blues with a trip to visit Jesus (literally, not spiritually) but unfortunately he was already closed up for the day by the time we got it together enough to get out the door. 

It was here in San Juan that we met the best people and made the best friends that we have so far while travelling. Our hostel was one of the most sociable places we’ve been and we ended up with quite a little crew by the end of it. There were the two American college students who we affectionately nicknamed ‘the frat boys’; Juan and Tito, two Nicaraguan guys that worked at Pacha’s; Miguel, Tatum and the rest of their group of expat American teenagers (who were actually younger than us! Hard to find out here!); our old friend Stephen who we first met in Treehouse in Granada; and last but not least Litz and Vale, the German/Chilean travelling buddies who we adopted into our exclusive group and would have loved to have kept. However they were heading down to Panama so we’ll just have to settle for reuniting at Oktoberfest, right Litz? 

It was hard to leave even though we were going back to León to discover more of the city and then on to Utila to see everyone and we are already trying to plan how to fit in a return visit with a visa run to Costa Rica! As we’ve been going along, one of the big factors that helps me decide how much I like a place is if I can imagine myself living there long term. Suspects so far are Manuel Antonio, of course, but also León and San Juan easily joins them. ¡Dale pues!

After being chased away from Isla de Ometepe by the threat of hurricane Otto (a threat that never manifested, for us a least) we were back in Granada but for more than a night this time. The hostel we wanted to stay in was now open but as it is actually a bit outside Granada we had part of our first day to hang around the city until the free shuttle arrived. We found a place to leave our bags and off we went to explore León’s sister city! 

After being a bit let down by León, I had high hopes for Granada. We spent that first afternoon wandering around the Central Park and taking in the stalls and the impressive cathedral on one side. Eventually it was time for the shuttle to our treehouse hostel on the side of Volcán Mombacho! 

I’d heard many things about Treehouse, one that it knows how to throw a party and another that by the end of your stay the staff feels like family. By the end of my stay I’d seen both of these to be true. We spent a whole day just chilling in treehouse and three nights partying away and when it came time to say goodbye to all the people who had looked after us, it was hugs and Facebook requests all round.

Despite not actually staying in Granada versus being right in the centre of León I felt like I got a better feel for Granada. It is definitely the more touristy of the two and you can tell – cleaner streets, a fresher facade, and gringos everywhere. Saying this, there is a surprising lack of tourist activities in the city. You can of course visit the gorgeous mustard yellow and burnt red cathedral or climb the tower at Iglesias de la Merced to get incredible views over the city but otherwise you mostly have to look to the surrounding area – Las Isletas in Lago de Nicaragua, Volcán Mombacho or Laguna de Apoyo. Overall I enjoyed my visit to Granada more than to León.

However, if asked which city I would prefer to live in my answer would be León. For me it has a more lived in feel and was made for the people rather than the tourists. As tourism has increased in Nicaragua León has stayed true to its roots as a political hub, full of pride and energy and has a lot more to it than meets the eye. 

We did León in a bit of a rush, with only one morning to actually just wander around the city with the rest of our time taken up by going to the beach or volcano boarding. Our plan now is to go back for a few days on our way to Utila in Honduras for Christmas and I’m excited to have another chance to dig through the surface and see more of León, something I think is part of the city’s charm. 

After Granada we headed to near by Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake where we planned to stay just one night. However in our usual flexible style we ended up staying four nights, partly because we loved it there so much and partly because Lucy managed to get her volcano boarding wound infected and needed an extra day to recover. 

Our hostel at Apoyo was called Paradiso and that basically sums up my feelings about it. Lazy days of swimming, kayaking, watching incredible sunrises and sunsets and enjoying good food at their restaurant – I’m actually surprised we left at all!

One night we ventured over to Volcán Masaya, the only place in the world where you can get as close to actual lava. Yep, actual lava. You can’t see too much because of the angle of the crater and the pictures definitely don’t do it justice but it’s one of those experience you don’t need pictures for. It was incredible.

When we could finally drag ourselves away from Laguna de Apoyo and Hotel Paradiso I couldn’t be sad for long because our next stop was… COSTA RICA!!! I feel like we definitely ended our time in Nicaragua on a high, with one of our favourite places so far. Nicaragua has treated us (and our bank accounts) very well and we will definitely be back – Sunday Funday in San Juan del Sur and León round 2 await us!

Picking up from where I left off last time on a bus to Isla de Ometepe, we arrived after possibly the most magnificent ferry ride I’ve ever had, watching two volcanoes get bigger and bigger as we got closer and closer. The name Ometepe comes from the words ome meaning two and tepetl meaning mountains in Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua people, an indigenous group found in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. The two volcanoes that the island is composed of are Concepción and Maderas. Concepción is the higher of the two at 1610m and is active. It is also considered the most perfectly formed volcano cone on Central America! Maderas is slightly smaller at 1394m and is dormant, although it does host a crater lake at it’s peak and supports a diverse rainforest ecosystem.

When we arrived we were taken to a hostel that was recommended to us, El Zopilote, which doubles as a working farm. At first we thought it was extremely cool, right in the forest, very rustic and laid back. Then we went on the hike to our dorm. I’m not kidding when I say hike, it took a good 5/10 minutes to get there and wasn’t fun in the dark. Then we saw the bathrooms. Apparently compost toilets are a bit of a thing in Nicaragua, who knew? We lasted two nights in El Zopilote before moving to a more convenient hostel but we don’t regret our time there and we definitely got some stories out of it!

On our first full day on the island we decided to rent bicycles and visit the ojo de agua, which translates to ‘eye of water’ though it is actually just a natural spring that has had a swimming pool built around it. It was a hot ride but really fun and we had the perfect way to cool off waiting for us at the end!

The morning we left El Zopilote, Amy and I decided to get up to watch the sunrise from one of the miradors (lookout points) before taking advantage of the free yoga classes guests were offered. The sunrise was a bit disappointing but yoga was excellent. As a bit of a yoga pro (I’ve done it once before) I obviously knew exactly what I was doing… It was good to get a bit of a stretch and ended up being so relaxing that I actually fell asleep!

The hostel we changed to was called Hospedaje Buena Vista and was right on the beach in the next town over, Santa Domingo. The beach had a great view of Volcán Maderas and was just the right temperature for a swim.

Our most interesting day was definitely when we decided to rent mopeds and drive to the San Ramón waterfall. Have any of you driven mopeds before, I hear you ask? No we had not. All was going smoothly until we left the paved road and it was not five minutes until we had our first crash. More like a topple to be honest but of course it was our beloved yet accident prone Lucy that was driving with Jesse on the back. A quick patch up and reshuffle of drivers and we were off again with nothing but a minor mechanical issue before we reached the start of the hike to the waterfall.

However when we arrived there it was to find out that we didn’t actually have enough time to hike to it and get back in time to return the mopeds. We decided we would ride back around the island and go for a swim instead but even that didn’t go to plan.

The minor mechanical fault from before turned major and we had to fetch a mechanic and wait for it to be fixed. This meant that despite turning around with hours to spare we only just made it back in time! Once we got back on to smooth roads I had a turn at driving and I was pretty good, as in I had no crashes unlike some of our other drivers…

Our last day was nowhere near as interesting, for me anyway. Amy and Tom left at 5.30am to climb Volcán Maderas while the rest of us lay around and then went to find some petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are drawings carved into stone and many of Ometepe’s contain spiral designs, leading to archeologists calling it the Island of Circles and Spirals. Relatively little is known about the history of the petroglyphs on Ometepe though it is estimated that they could be up to 3000 years old.

I think we were all a little disappointed by them, maybe because we were expecting something more like the Mayan ruins in Copán. It was still worth the trip though as they are part of what the island is known for. 

We ended up being chased off Ometepe by the threat of Hurricane Otto. For those of you that don’t know, Hurricane Otto touched down in the very south of Nicaragua on the 22nd November and continued down into Costa Rica, doing a lot more damage there than here. The worst weather we had this weekend was half an hour of semi-heavy rain. 

After Isla de Ometepe we chicken bussed our way back up to Granada – watch this space for the next blog! 

We are now one week in to many of travelling around Central America. So far we have seen five places and are on our way to the next. Despite having planned how we were going to spend our time in Nicaragua, nothing has actually happened the way we though it would. Everything from buses that don’t exist to trekking through a national park in search for a random old man to awkward hostel opening times has meant that we are having to be very flexible with our plans – something that pre-Honduras Sara would have struggled a lot with but I have managed to keep any worrying (mostly) under the surface. 

Our first stop last Saturday was Yamaranguila where there are other Project Trust volunteers (shoutout to Grace and Hannah for putting up with us!) and where we were going to meet up with Jesse and Lucy from Tomalá and Calum and Tom from Roatán, our travelling buddies for the next few months. After cramming 8 people into their two single beds for a night we left for Tegucigalpa the next afternoon. We arrived in the dark but I wasn’t very taken by Teguc and was glad we were leaving at 6.30 the next morning.

Enter the bus that doesn’t exist. We got driven to where it was supposed to leave and it had already left at 5am. Cue a lot of improvising and four buses instead of one but we got where we wanted to be, Estelí in the north of Nicaragua.

Our plan had been just to stay a night in Estelí but we were all exhausted so decided to add an extra night (a luxury we have because we haven’t booked anywhere to stay until Utila at Christmas so we can kind of just wing it until then). There was only one thing we wanted to do in Estelí anyway – find the stone man. 

The stone man is Alberto Gutierrez who lives on the side of a mountain in the national park next to Estelí and carves amazing drawings into the rock face. We set off with the vaguest of directions and took a taxi for almost an hour to get to the area before wondering around blindly for a while. Eventually we found the sign we needed that pointed to Alberto’s (having already walked past it) and found the stone man. 

He was very welcoming and had us sign his visitors book before he took us to his carvings. He’s been doing this for 38 years and has over 3,500 drawings. They were absolutely incredible. Hitchhiking back turned into a two hour walk before a car actually picked us up! Overall I really enjoyed the few days we spent in Estelí, surprisingly as its not usually a must see traveller’s spot, but the city is nice, we had a great hostel, Hospedaje Luna, and the stone man was definitely worth a trip.

The next morning it was up at 4.30am to head to León. This is in an area populated by lots of volcanos and we saw our first two on the bus on the way in. After being up so early our thoughts went to one place – the beach. 

There are two beaches by León and we chose Las Peñitas to relax on. We hung out at a hostel/bar/restaurant called Oasis and spent six hours battling the huge waves, relaxing with a cold drink, treating ourselves to some expensive food ($8 is expensive for us!) and watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Pretty magical. 

One of things León is famous for, apart from its gorgeous white cathedral, is the fact that it’s close to Cerro Negro, the only active volcano in the world that you can board down. That was where we headed on Thursday with the social charity Quetzaltrekkers. Cerro Negro is the smallest volcano in Nicaragua at 728m but the most active. It erupts every 15 years or so and last erupted in 1999 so it could happen any day now! 

Volcano boarding was an interesting experience. The trek up was hot and heavy with the boards and jumpsuits but thankfully not long. I have to say though that I didn’t enjoy the first run down. I didn’t chicken out and I went extremely fast from the start but however steep Cerro Negro looks (which is very) it’s actually even steeper. This meant I was getting sprayed in the face by the volcanic rocks, in my eyes, nose, mouth, even my ears! And then I went over a bump at the bottom came flying off and rolled down the last bit! I was fine, nothing wrong except a bruised bum and bruised pride. 

With Quetzaltrekkers there’s the option of boarding down a second time which most people actually didn’t take but I was determined that I would enjoy it so braved the trek a second time and took it a lot slower on the way down. Much better and no crashes! An absolutely incredible experience and even if you don’t like the actual boarding the views from the top are still worth it.

Yesterday we took the morning to look around León and finally made it up to the roof of the Cathedral which is just as beautiful as it looks in all of the pictures. We took a late afternoon bus to Granada which was meant to be our next stop but timing issues with the particular hostel we want to stay means that we decided to change plans again. We found a hostel for the night and are currently on a bus to Isla de Ometepe which promises to be amazing. We’ll be there for four days so will probably get its own blog post written on the bus as we leave! 

It’s been such a fast and furious start to travelling, it’s hard to believe I only left Candelaria a week ago today! If this is how the rest of our time is going to go, it’s going to be pretty fantastic.