3 Days, 5 Countries - Managua, Nicaragua
Setting a new personal best for countries visited in under 3 days (my only personal best for that matter), I left Caye Caulker on the morning of Monday 30th November. By Wednesday afternoon, I'd made it to León, Nicaragua - along the way setting foot in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
Although it looks good in my passport, I didn't really get the chance to explore too much at each stop (considering I've already spent a bit of time in Honduras and Guatemala, it was really only El Salvador I glossed over). I spent one night in Flores again, and one night in San Salvador, where we were told by a number of locals it was too dangerous to walk around the city after dark. In saying that, I still managed to try a pupusa, one of the local delicacies, albeit at a hygienically questionable food stall at the border crossing.
Pupusas at the border crossing
I arrived in León joined by Patrik, a guy from Sweden who made the same journey from Flores. León is a small University town, the first on the "gringo trail" if you're making your way down through Central America into Nicaragua. Patrik and I sampled some great street food here, but our main activity was to hike up the Cerro Negro volcano not only for the great view, but to sandboard down once we'd made it to the top. It was an easy hike, and an even easier descent, after which we were treated to some vegetable burritos (I ate 7 ... tried to get my money's worth!). It wasn't the most exhilarating of activities, but I was just happy to make it down unscathed after injuring my knee doing the same thing in Huacachina a few months back.
Atop Cerro Negro Volcano in León, Nicaragua
The chicken bus journeys continued as Patrik and I arrived at our next stop, Granada. Granada is renowned for competing with León as the best city in Nicaragua, kind of like the rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, but on a much, much smaller scale. After independence, they fought (not literally) for which city would become the capital of Nicaragua. Until in the end neither was chosen and Managua was declared the capital.
I enjoyed Granada more. It was like León, but bigger - more people, more cafes, restaurants and things to see. The central park area was bigger, full of horse drawn carts and somewhat surprisingly, casinos, which dotted many of the surrounding streets.
Granada presented another chance to hike an active volcano - I say hike, yet we were driven to about 20m before the summit - to see plumes of smoke billowing out of the crater of the Masaya Volcano. We took photos at sunset, then after a quick tour through a nearby bat cave, went back to the volcano to see the smoke now coloured a bright red due to lava located some 270m below the tip of the crater. On trying to get a peek at the lava (we couldn't actually see that low), many of us ended up in a coughing fit due to the toxic fumes of the smoke.
The penultimate stop in Nicaragua was the city I'd end up spending the most time in - San Juan del Sur, a beautiful fishing village turned tourist surf town. Although there was supposedly world class surfing beaches in the near surrounds, I opted to stay put, also evading the infamous Sunday Funday weekly drinking binge in order to chill out for a few days. It was the first time in months since I'd been back on my own as a solo traveller again, and after cramming in plenty of diving, hiking, partying and border crossings of late, it was rejuvenating to just do nothing, going back and forth between the hostel and the beach, a cafe or a smoothie bar, often accompanied by my journal, a book or a movie.
San Juan del Sur beach, a mere 100m from my hostel bed
I did on one occasion step out of the 5 kilometre radius I'd lazily imposed on myself, on a hostel organised tour to La Flor Natural Reserve, where the Olive Ridley turtles come to the beach en masse, during so called arribadas in which thousands of turtles arrive at the same time to lay their eggs. This way, the hatchlings will swarm the beach in huge numbers and in doing so they increase their chance of survival.
Although there were far from thousands of turtles at the beach that night, it was incredible to observe these creatures in their natural habitat during such an important phase of their species' survival. While we couldn't use cameras with a flash, I did manage to take a video on my iPhone.
After observing this process, we let off a few recently hatched turtles that were kept in artificial nests to improve their chances of survival. We stood in a line along the beach and, guiding them in the right direction, watched them swim off into the ocean to begin their life in the wild.
The best photo I could come up with using an iPhone and a red light
Not unlike the sea turtles during the arribadas, today I jostled shoulder to shoulder with countless other Nicaraguans on the at times frustratingly slow local buses, back to the sands of Managua. Tomorrow I'll take a more comfortable and unarguably less dangerous form of transport, via a flight to Panama City.
