A brief visit to Costa Rica and Nicaragua 12th - 19th of November

So from San José i took a bus the next afternoon to the beach town of Samará. The reason for coming here was to meet Kasey, who you might remember I made friends with on then boat trip in Patagonia and then travelled on with the Pucón (to climb Villarica). She was out spending some time there with her friend Ashley. Samará is a very laid back beach town, with a couple of miles of perfect palm backed beach. A very nice place to relax for a couple of days, which is exactly what I did! although I was staying in a hostel on the beach, Kasey and Ashley had managed to get some pretty nice free accommodation (through a friend) in a kinda resort place at the end of the beach with little villas. The perk of this was that it had one of those classic irregular shaped swimming pools with a palm tree mosaic on the bottom and even a swim up bar! although it was stupidly expensive we couldn´t resist the opportunity to swim up and drink piña coladas, one afternoon. The other full day I was there we walked round the coast a little bit, before retiring back to the pool/beach, again just lazing around reading books etc. That day was Ashley´s birthday however, so we went round a few bars on the beach that evening. Although they happened to have rather comfy deckchairs, which I may have fallen asleep in.... before trying to make my way the 1km or so back along the beach to my hostel at 3am with a high tide, making staying dry rather tricky.
The next morning I got moving again heading towards the border with Nicaragua. Turns out I actually had a sinus infection, so i had to get some anti biotics to get it sorted out. Apart from that it was a fairly uneventful journey to the town of la cruz, about 20km short of the Nicaraguan border. My last bus however was rather packed and I spent the first 10mins literally hanging out of the front door. While I was looking for some food in the evening, I ended up chatting to a couple of guys in wheelchairs. Turns out they were part of the Costa Rican wheelchair basketball team and they were doing a demonstration in the local school that evening. I went to have a watch and as wheel as basketball they also had a game of sitting down volleyball against the school volleyball team.
The next day was one of those days with numerous types of transport. It started off early with a lift to the border, with a border worker and a policeman. Then I had to walk the 1km or so across the border, getting all formalities sorted on the way. Then it was on to one of the local (u.s. school bus) buses to the town of Rivas about an hour up the road. Then I took a pedal taxi across town to try and find an ATM. You feel a bit like royalty as you are sitting in front of the driver. Then a taxi to the port town of San Jorge, on Lake Nicaragua. Then I took a ferry across to Isla Ometepe. This is an island formed by two volcanoes and the Isthmus joining the two, very picturesque. Then I had to take another local bus across the island getting dropped at a junction in the middle of nowhere. From there I hitched a ride on the back of a truck along to a place called Playa Santa Domingo. Unfortunately as it is the end of the rainy season, the level of the lake has risen so much that the beach is several feet under water! We also had a bit of a tropical storm in the afternoon, making any outdoor activities impossible. I had thought about maybe climbing one of the volcano s on the island or going for a cycle trip, but when I woke up the nexbt morning I still didn´t feel 100% with my chest and sinuses and the weather wasn´t too great so I decided to push on to a place called León back on the mainland.
On my first bus on the island I met up with an American guy called Ben who was also heading to León, so we decided to team up for the day on our trip. We had to pass through the capital Managua, and I think we were quite lucky not to get caught up in any riots there. There is a lot of unrest after the recent elections here and our taxi driver took us a long round route, round the outside of the city so we would avoid any trouble. A very wise move in the end, as when we watched the news in the evening we saw the extent of the chaos in the city!
Today I went on a Volcano boarding trip to cerro Negro. This is a very new Volcano, a 600m ashen cone which emerged out of the farmland about 150 years ago. We hauled ourselves, our protective suits and boards to the top, before admiring the viewas and hurling ourselves back down again. You ride these boards like you would a sled on snow, getting speeds of up to 60 or 70kmph! I didn´t make it this fast however as i was wearing my backpack, which dragged in the ash like a break. This resulted in a some pretty large holes in my bag , which have had to be repaired with gaffer tape. A few guys proper wiped out though, and even with the protective suits the razor sharp ash cut up their legs and arms pretty good.
Tomorrow I´m going to head to Honduras, aiming for the bay Islands in a few days.
O