Hola Nicaragua! A few days in San Juan del Sur

After a day and a half of travelling across Costa Rica, we finally arrived in a very hot Nicaragua and headed straight for San Juan del Sur. 

We’d heard that San Juan was a bit of a party town, and might be best to be avoided but we had to pass through anyway, and when we arrived we immediately fell in love with the quaint little streets and colourful colonial-style buildings, so decided to stay and see how we got on.

And so we spent a thoroughly enjoyable 3 days, having surf lessons, going for BBQs on deserted beaches with fun-loving people and enjoying cheap coffee and beer in the many cute cafes. I swear my surfing skills have plummeted since Costa Rica, which was not the desired outcome, but it was fun and we proudly sported our friction burns around town like surf pros!

After my many failed attempts at finding luminescent algae in Cambodia, my late night sea-thrashing finally paid off and we were rewarded with an incredible display from the glorious little wonders on our own private beach...simply magical!

We did also decide to dip our toes into the infamous party scene and were cajoled into joining in a pub crawl by an over-confident Aussie girl who tempted us with an offer of $5 for 5 drinks. However…as it quite predictably turned out, the drinks tasted like calpol and contained about 1% alcohol, and you had to wait about an hour between bars which meant buying more drinks which didn’t suit our budget….plus the music sucked, we felt geriatric compared to practically everyone else, who are think were mainly on drugs (you'd have to be to dance to that music!!), and very quickly remembered that the purpose of pub crawls tends to be to go out on the pull…which we had no intention of doing! So all in all not the most successful of nights and we were happily tucked up in bed by 11pm trying to satiate our respective sugar highs...No harm done!...Apart from perhaps a little tooth rot.

We did meet some lovely people though, enjoyed the beaches, the sunshine and the atmosphere, and it was definitely a good start to our time in Nicaragua. A rather limited selection of photos as we were reluctant to take our cameras on the beach, but this gives you a taste...

Mama Sara's place...this one's for you Mrs Ramsay!

It is also time to say goodbye to these old friends. I bought them in a sale in Christchurch (New Zealand) in March and they have been my adventuring companions ever since...They've dipped in so many different seas, shuffled through sand, scrambled over rocks, pounded the tarmac in so many different cities and wriggled through forest undergrowth. They've traipsed across 12 different countries and here they are finally laid to rest. Is it weird to  say that I'll miss them?!...

Goodbye my old friends