Superman, surf & sun

Next stop Santa Elena to find huge Strangler trees and zip wires.  My fear of heights meant there was no way I'd be crossing rope bridges strung 400ms over cloud forest canopies but Chris joined forces with some friends we'd made along the way & super-manned his way through the treetops: 

Chris:

3 of us went on the Canopy, all admitting to perfectly reasonable cowardice in the face of potentially fatal heights should a harness or clip suddenly fail.  Apart from a few admiration-based expletives I managed to keep my fears hidden within a Yorkshire stoic type persona I invented for the occasion.  And this worked great on the zip wires, flying 400m above a cloud forest valley for a whole mile at high speed and through a tunnel of branches was calm, terrifying, beautiful and exhilarating all at the same time.

Once it came to the Tarzan swing, the devil's invention of a tree top experience, things changed a lot.  After walking out on a thin platform, the equivalent of 8 stories above the forest floor, my Spanish lessons came into their own as I constantly repeated 'no feliz' (not happy) at the tour guides who were grinning ominously while they wielded ropes and clips that had to have been tested on people much smaller than me.... 

As it happened the rope caught me after the 3 seconds of free-falling to the full forced bellow of utter terror that shattered the character illusion I'd created completely.  Once I had breath I screamed again - a noise that would have been audible some miles away.  I swung to a halt some seconds later, suddenly aware of 30 other people staring at me.  Cover blown.

Altitude means cooler temperatures of course so after a few days of having it wear a hoody at night we packed up & hit the Pacific Coast in a sleepy little town called Montezuma. 

4 hostels, 6 restaurants, 2 beaches & more whisperingly precious yoga addicts talking about their chakras than you could ever need in one place!  Thankfully the aura-botherers had plenty of floor space to out-worthy each other without crossing paths with the rest of us (& let's face it, sanctimonious as a 'spiritual journey' traveller can be, they're never going to kick off and cause a fight) so the whole place was rather nice. 

We mainly loafed in hammocks reading, walked along beaches, hiked to a few waterfalls and marvelled at huge lizards who'd gather on our roof (tin therefore nice and hot for them to lie on) for fights!  The loser gets chased off the roof and has to scarper into woods until the next day. 

From Montezuma we made the tiny journey to Santa Teresa (just around the coast)- 11 km that takes about 90 mins due it appalling roads & very slow buses.  Similar scenery but replace Yogis with SurfDudes.  This place was so rad it hurt. Dude. 

Other than being so incredibly ripped they make everyone else instantly body dismorphic, surfers are a lovely ecologically minded bunch who lend an air of relaxation to an already horizontal vibe. 4 days later we peeled ourselves out of the hammock, put on real clothes (not swimmies & flipflops) & started the two day journey to the opposite side of the country. 

We'd seen more of the country's animal life along the beaches than we had in the supposedly 'nature rich' parks in the highlands and felt glad we'd resisted paying for a $50 guided tour in La Fortuna.  Lizards (including some huge iguanas), anteaters, turtles, 

pelicans, vultures, parakeets, monkeys and tons of hummingbirds. The only thing still unspotted is a sloth. Despite me pointing and shouting 'Sloth' now at both anteaters and dogs (it was dark) I'm reaching the conclusion we may have to visit the Sloth sanctuary to see some. 

A bus/boat/bus combo and we moved to the capital San Jose. 

Good points.: Sometimes you need to visit a city to recalibrate expectations and remind yourself how incredible all the non-city bits are. 

Bad points:  typical noisy, hectic city with glass/chrome corporate HQs next to tin shack houses.  The vogue for putting rolls of barbed wire along every wall/fence/chicken wire panel is strong. So much it's visually confusing as to who's trying to keep who out of what. 

A charmless but harmless fleeting visit and it's off to Puerto Viejo for a Caribbean Christmas. 

Costa Rica: cloud forest volcanos

The journey from Nicaragua was pretty uneventful although the 1km walk from exiting Nica to entering Costa Rica was a hot, heavy & odd experience (not sure which country the barbed wire walk belongs to but moving it closer to one of the immigration offices would be nice). 

We spent one night in Liberia to break the travelling up (really nothing there despite the guidebooks calling it 'the white city' on account of a handful of buildings painted white. On that basis Redditch should feature in the UK Lonely Planet no?) then got another 3 buses to La Fortuna, the nearest town to the base of Arenal - a lovely big active volcano. 

Being active in a spewy deadly lava way means you can't climb much of Arenal right now but it's smaller sibling Cerro Chatto affords a good view of it from a decent height, and has it's own crater lake to boast of too.  Boots on, off we went. 

Distance wise the walk is nothing - How hard can a 7k round trip be we thought churlishly. 45 minutes later having covered quite a lot of height but no real distance we started to appreciate how hard.  

The height is not enough to make it cool, the humidity was immense & the effort of climbing at a 45* angle made it a relief when we changed from open hillside to cloud forest & got a mist shower. 

Strange thing about cloud forests is they're so lush that you can hear rain but not really feel it much. The ceiling of leaves trap in the heat but stops most the rain falling in. They're dark because of the density of plants & seem to echoe a lot too. All very confusing for the sensory system. 

Another hours climb with the notion of the top in our imaginations the fine mist became a downpour however and cloudforest turned to rainforest.  With it came mud and insects : mostly buzzy flying things but the raindrops highlighted a lot of big webs across our trail. The trick seems to be watch your feet, your hands, the vines above you and the bush around you simultaneously for bitey, crawly or slithery things. In my case be aware but don't think about them too long. If I'd have spotted the manufacturers of said webs I might have died on the spot. 

Having reached the top (soaked through) we then had a 120m descent to the crater lake where we could swim & admire Arenal. In reality this was a 25 minute clamber down a very muddy slippy trail to reach a crater lake in such thick cloud we could see about 5ms ahead. Given we were caked in mud we considered the swim but there was a good chance we'd never find our way back to the right bit of shore so decided against. 

In a very British way we huddled under a dripping tree with 2 others, ate bananas & made stoic comments about how it could be worse & took a scenic picture of us against the limited background of cloud.  Bananas, small talk & loitering until we'd all got cold we admitted defeat & headed back. 

The route was now a mud luge and with Chris's metal knee (great for descents) & my inate mountain goat-like balance we made a slow return trip. 

Midway down Chris displayed his northern routes by bringing the jungle to a standstill with a Brian Potteresque 'whoa whoa whooaaa', hands raised aloft to stop the hoards of people proceeding (in reality just me).  A snake. One of the few dangerous ones in this country and disconcertingly it left our path by disappearing upward into the growth. Last seen about head height just where we needed to pass.  

After that Chris got a bit Bear Grylls (or maybe Chris Packham) and insisted on stopping for every insect we saw. Photos of a caterpillar were taken FFS! 

Part two of the days walking was to a waterfall nearby. The water was cramp inducingly cold but welcome after being so hot for most of the day.  Found out that swimming towards a waterfall is like natures resistance pool as you're constantly pushed away from it. 

Back to the hostel where we'd rented a tent for 2 nights- basic but clean & the cheapest option we could find in this town (Costa Rica is full of Americans on 2 week vacations so prices are aimed at them rather than budget travellers), cold shower, rice and beans for dinner (remarkably similar to our breakfast), a few beers & we collapsed.  Not our most successful yomp in terms of vistas but a challenging, (mostly) fun walk & an introduction to the extreme Eco-system of Costa Rica

Viva la Revolution!

Within 24 hours of being in Leon our true travelling credentials had outed.  Chris signed up for a days volcano boarding (walking up Cerro Negra, donning a Guantanamo-style boiler suit then whizzing down it on a tray) & I went visiting the various revolution themed murals & then onto the Revolution museum. 

Run by ex-Sandinistas (complete with battle scars/bullet holes) they told me loads of very interesting and passionately presented stuff which my basic grasp of Spanish largely failed to understand. The bits I did grasp made it worthwhile though- the brutal fight had been quite unclear to me before hand but given it happened in my lifetime & is still evident in the city it felt important to know more.  I left (somewhat) wiser (topped up by google & an hour in a cafe across the square), a bit somber but better equipped to appreciate Nicaragua and all it has to offer. 

Leon is a fairly attractive small city. Once the capital but then destroyed by Cerro Telica (volcano), it relocated out of lavas way only to become the centre of the 1970s civil war. After this two other cities battled to be the new capital (Managua won) so is now all about their University & the volcanos surrounding (52 of them). 

Cultured up I returned to our hostel to hear whooping gringos cheering on some hapless fools into downing chilli shots at the bar. 

Chief whooper being Chris - already 2 mojitos, 8 shots and 3 beers into celebrating being the fastest man on the slope that day. 

Covered in black volcano dust, smelling less than pretty, the boarders continued their drinks for several more hours. Chris wowed everyone with his ability to drink more chilli shots (the fastest woman of the day was throwing up by this stage) and was gifted 2 vest tops for his efforts. A proud moment for us both. 

The next day Chris pretended not to be ruined as we headed out to climb Cerro Telica. 90 minutes in a 4x4 took us to a village (3 families, few chickens) where we started our climb. We reached the summit before sunset so went to have a peer in. Having never looked into a live volcano we weren't sure what to expect - first thing to strike was the noise. From 100m away it sounded like a river flowing but on top of it like jet engines running at full pelt.  That combined with heat, the smell of sulphur and the sight of pools of lava were incredible.  

Even more so when we went back after sunset & lots of pockets of lava we couldn't previously see appeared. Our cameras will never do it justice I'm afraid but the whole thing was somewhere between awful (the sheer pressure under the ground being exposed 200 ms away is both beautiful to look at and a bit difficult to comprehend) and terrifying. If I believed, I'd probably think this is what staring into hell would look like. 

From Leon we took the chicken bus to Granada - a disappointing town mostly. Like Antigua in the pretty painted buildings & the colonial buildings around the town square but with very little else of appeal.  We walked to Lake Nicaragua (largest lake in the world) and were set upon by hundreds of bugs drawn to the piles of burning rubbish all along the shoreline. Given the current dengue outbreak in Nicaragua we made a hasty retreat back to the town centre- now populated with an unhealthy amount of US & UK expats (could be wrong but I always think a certain type of expat (this type) is on the run from something rather than to something). 

The next morning we got the bus out of town to a volcanic crater, now a lake, thermally heated by the ongoing activity beneath it. Great day of swimming & kayaking in a big warm bath - should really have stayed here (Lago de Poyo) & tripped into Granada for a few hours but hindsight & all that...

Onto Ometepe - big island in the Lake Nicaragua with 2 volcanos on it (one active, one dormant). A one hour crossing is the shortest option to the island, but is preceded by 2 buses for a couple of hours first.  To reach Ometepe from the eastern banks of Nicaragua is a 10hr crossing- it is HUGE and with big waves is called 'the sea' by locals with good reason.  Our trip saw Chris getting soaked by standing Winslet-style at the front while I got greener and greener trying to keep sea sickness under control. On terra firma it was a 2hr journey to our cabina - an Eco lodge on the banks with nothing much to do but kick back, hire bikes & swim in more crater lakes. 

Other travellers had led us to expect abject poverty & harsh conditions in Nicaragua. People are undeniably poor, and the country's politics have left it battered in some areas but overall it's a stunningly beautiful country with friendly happy people (with incredible cheekbones). 

A few days of uneventful lovely nothingness & we've headed out of Nicaragua and into Costa Rica. We've heard they've got some volcanos...

Sting rays, sharks and buses. But mainly buses.

Lying back on a lounger in Caye Caulker I glibly commented that it could be hard to leave here. No truer a word said. 

Two stunning days of Caribbean sunshine (and the one over cast but hot day) & the odd Cuba Libre & we were totally revitalised.  We spent a day snorkelling around coral reef and saw some truly ugly/impressive things.  First destination our toothless Rasta captain Ninja (a six pack sporting sinewy Iggy Pop type with dreads & plaits & earrings - a bit Pirates of the Caribbean really -  who could've been anywhere from 35 to 70) pointed out a giant ray and an eel through the brave, if somewhat foolish method, of diving down and prodding them until they responded. Right back at him. Good to watch from the surface until said eel headed up to our level. See the gringos swim!! 

2nd stop - shark alley. Reluctant to get out the boat until Ninja told me nurse sharks don't have teeth (why would I doubt him), we jumped out & he started hurling bits of fish guts into the water to ensure we got our money's worth. Laughing his weed-filled head off from the safety of the boat, I reevaluated my trust levels in this man. 

Sting Rays are very ugly things! Look constantly pissed off and have no qualms about swimming 15 inches away from people waving their stingy tails around. I spent 20 minutes squealing through my snorkel tube and thinking 'Did Steve Irwin's death teach us nothing?' (Other than no man should wear shorts that short).  It was almost a welcome distraction when someone shouted 'shark' and we all swam towards the sighting.  I say all.  I hovered behind an American man I'd sized up as being sufficiently large/slow to distract a shark long enough for me to get back to the boat. Chris had no such game plan so came face to face with a 8fter. 

Back in the boat and headed to our final spot - coral garden. Just pretty stuff here - big shoals of bright fish, purple plants & lots of conch (conches? Dunno). Other than the giant ray swimming around the boat ladder it was a nice relaxing float. 

Time to pack up & head to Honduras- plan was get the 6am boat back to Belize City, then the once a week ferry to Honduras (5hrs), catch a bus to murder central (San Pedro del Sula - wiki it!) where a fella was meeting us to whisk us away to a safe hostel, and deliver us to the bus station the next morning to get the Ticabus (long distance throughout CA) straight down to Nicaragua.  Not an ideal route but almost impossible to get through Honduras without going through San Pedro & as the bus was a 5am start, an overnight had to be done. 30 hours door to door including the night in a comfy bed. 

Reality was : 

6am boat to the city. All good. 

10.15 the 9am ferry to Honduras called the port to say it couldn't be arsed stopping in Belize & was going straight through to Honduras from Mexico. 

Jumped on a bus back to Flores in Guatemala (6 hours ish), booked ourselves onto the overnight bus back to Guatemala City (10 hours), got there & taxi'd across town to try & find the one bus a day that went to Nicaragua without spending a night in El Salvedor (a close 2nd to San Pedro for crime). Got to the bus office with 25 mins to spare & joined a queue only to find that it was pre-booked & full. We loitered & thankfully someone called Jennifer failed to turn up.  Bundled on board with minutes to go we promptly fell asleep for the first leg of the journey. 

Arriving in El Salvedor 5 hours later, we had to swap buses & check in for the next leg. This involved putting our backpacks on a new bus which then promptly drove away & handing our passports to a woman who then disappeared to a locked office. How the locals laughed at our stressed faces. Chill they said - it's not like it's your world possessions you've just handed over in a country you have no record of being in. 

30 minutes of nervous laughter with 3 Swiss fellas in the same situ, it all reappeared & we set off again. 

Next stop the Honduran border - stayed on the coach while 4 uniformed fellas walked up the aisles assessing our faces for signs of something (nefarious activities/culpability for bribes?), stamped our papers & let us through. 

Only another few hours (3 ish? Time bore no meaning by this point) to the Nicaraguan border where we had to decamp & take our bags to be searched. Search meant lightly prodded by an old fella who'd been up too long too so was over without incident quite quickly. 

All aboard the happy bus (by this time quite smelly bus) to get to the capital Managua. A fairly horrid city with an advice warning of staying in your hotel at night. Arriving at 2.30 am with no hotel booked we slept on chairs in the bus office (behind locked doors, under the watchful eye of a bored security guard) until 5.15 when we got a cab & headed to the market/bus station for the first chicken bus out of there. 

$1 paid, 3 hours of potholes & no suspension later & we got to Leon (west of managua).  We were so tired we both slept on the chicken bus which is remarkable considering they're built for people at least a foot smaller than us, and we had our packs on our knees. Chris woke up to find a small boy perched on the edge of his seat, holding a chicken. Just to prove the namesake is right. 

hostel found, cold shower had, breakfast (rice & beans) eaten & we crashed out in hammocks. 51 hours & 5 countries end to end.

Nicaragua - you better be bloody worth it!