Granada

Gorgeous sky!

What a beautiful city! Nicaragua is as hot and dry as Costa Rica is humid and wet, and this means it is noticeably crisper than CR, and therefore not nearly as lush (actually, I am speaking only for the region in which I have travelled, and in actual fact I think vast areas of the North are decidedly lush and wet, but I’ve not seen those parts). However, what it lacks in wildlife it makes up for in architecture, and this city is just beautiful and in stark contrast to CR’s towns which are on the whole decidedly non-descript.

We spent a few days here enjoying wandering round the old streets and sipping coffee in front of old colonial buildings imagining we were in Europe. We also caught the local bus to Laguna de Apoyo with a jolly Dutch couple and a German girl where we bobbed around on the waves in rubber tubes, sunbathed and ate overpriced pizza (camera left at home).

Probably our most surreal experience in Granada….we decided to treat ourselves to a chocolate massage!! Yes that’s real edible, delicious, locally-grown chocolate! You basically lie down naked and get covered in warm melted chocolate, then the lady sprinkles you with sugar, rubs it in and leaves you for half an hour to let you stew.

Now this is supposed to be relaxing but if you know me, you know I have a very sweet tooth. Therefore lying still whilst smothered in what is essentially a pudding, with its delightfully sumptuous aroma drifting into your nostrils is far from being relaxing! There’s no way to dress this up, I spent the entire half an hour surreptitiously licking myself in ways that I imagined wouldn’t be noticeable by the masseuse. Whether I succeeded in my pursuit or not, the end the session arrived and I joined my betrothed to have a shower (yes they cover you in chocolate and then let you share a shower).

Our conversation went something like…

Me: “OHMIGOD-YOU-GORGEOUS-YUMMY-GIANT-CHOCOLATE-MONSTER-LET-ME-EAT-YOU!!!”

Bro: “WHAT-THE-F**K-EMS-THAT-LADY’S-RUBBED-IT-IN-WITH-HER-HANDS-YOU-CAN’T-EAT-THAT!!”

So it turns out that whilst I’d been gorging myself, Brodie had been serenely stretched out as he was supposed to and the thought of having a nibble hadn’t even crossed his mind.

So that put a stop to my romantic and comestible notions but we did enjoy the experience, and definitely left a lip-smacking aroma in our wake for the rest of the day, which if we’re honest makes a change!!

Ometepe

After a couple of lovely bustly local buses (we always love taking these), and one absurdly hairy boat ride, we finally arrive on Ometepe-an island made up of two volcanoes which are joined in the middle, and found in the middle of the huge Lake Nicaragua.

Cloud Porn

Sunset at Punta Jesus Maria...we actually missed the Sun as Bro was too busy taking photos of a howler monkey

This island is simply stunning! We found a super cheap ($7 a night) but beautifully-presented hotel in Moyogalpa and plonked ourselves there for a few nights. Then we spent our days zooming around the island on a moped ($30 for 2 days!), exploring the different sights, discovering beaches, finding absurdly well-hidden but rather impressive petroglyphs, getting lost, swimming in beautiful blue lagoons and chasing the sunset! If you’ve never tried scootering, it’s a great way of having some freedom to explore without costing an arm and a leg, and don’t worry mum, we always take it easy and make sure we wear helmets!!

 

We stopped to watch a local baseball match. Such a buzzing atmosphere-these guys take their baseball pretty seriously! 

We finally found some petroglyphs thanks to the help of about 400 local people and a lot of wild gesturing...I know nothing about them as there was no information whatsoever, but I do know they're pretty old. That or some kid just got over-excited with a stick and these people are playing an elaborate prank on gormless tourists...

We stopped for a cool off and a coconut at the blue pools...lush!

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

Pura Vida Costa Rica!

So after a magical three months in this beautiful country, we bid Costa Rica a very affectionate farewell. We came here because we’d heard so many great things about this luscious land and its ability to buck the global trend and let its forests regrow, and we were rewarded with some of the most breath-taking experiences of our entire trip.

Of course the story is never black and white-we have since found out that in the 80s Costa Rica had the most rapidly declining forest in the world, so it has a lot of rebuilding to do, and like with any country, it has its own pretty severe cocktail of social and environmental problems which it seriously needs to address. But at least its doing lots of things (in terms of the environment) right that put many a more developed countries to shame, and there aren’t many countries in the world who can boast protecting 25% of their land.

So Costa Rica, your pristine beaches, your glamourous women in their skin-tight lycra and acrylic toe-nails, your forbidding and thrilling waves, your cheery ‘holas’ and your ‘pura vidas’, your succulent forests and their grand old trees, your giant morphos and your tiny little bees, your beans and your beers and your bellies full of rice, your crazy rains and your unforgiving sunshine, your calf-busting mountains, and your icy cool streams….we bid you not a goodbye, but a hearty “Hasta Luego”. Until next time…

Pura Vida!

Tortuguero

We went to Tortugeuro as we wanted snakes and we were told this was the place to go. Apparently they just “drop out of trees”…or in one story we heard they even “drop onto your plate while you’re trying to eat”! We had to go somewhere where snakes drop onto your plate.

Alas, after 2 days of snake-hunting not one of our slithery friends had fallen from the sky in front of us, and we hadn’t spotted any of our beloved pit vipers, or the infamous boa constrictor, but we had spotted three beautifully sexy green vine snakes. Check out this little beaut…

Despite relative snake drought, we did however have a fab few days and enjoyed an early morning canoe, night walks, some unfruitful, but enjoyable strolls around the National Park and some lounging on the beautiful black sandy beach. 

Red eyed tree frog-what a stunner!

Angry Spider monkey!

A rather cunning-looking Cayman

Golden silk orb weaver...looks pretty petrifying, but she's actually rather friendly! I held this 'little' (3 -inch long) lady and she was very gentle with me!

An earnest-looking basilisk (or Jesus Christ Lizard)...as you might have guessed from their name these guys can run on water...it looks pretty awesome to watch, but they're far too quick for a picture, so if you want to see what they look like when they run, have a look here  (if you're lazy skip to 45secs)

Oropendola nests. The birds live in colonies and it's the males who make the nests

The male oropendola also carries out a very loud and very elaborate bowing display to attract females, where they literally swing upside-down on the branch. Not great pictures, but they give you an idea-its quite impressive to see if you catch them (or see someone else's equally rubbish but quite interesting video here).