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.

Flores, Guatemala and Caye Caulker, Belize

It's proving tricky to even remember which country I'm in lately, so I'll bundle a few of the last places I've stopped in to one blog update to make it easier to read and follow.

From Útila, Jorden, Victoria and I took a ferry and a couple of buses, making our way to San Pedro Sula, Hondruas. We were aware that San Pedro Sula is regarded as one of the most violent places in the world, having recorded 187 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2013, yet, we still felt (relatively) safe as we walked around the city during the night to find a cheap hostel and dinner.

Having survived San Pedro Sula (one night was enough), we made our way by bus back in to Guatemala and stopped at Flores for a couple of nights, where we could unpack our bags and even spend a day checking out the Mayan ruins of Tikal. Whilst mainly a place to base your visit to Tikal from, Flores was a nice little town where you could also enjoy a nice meal and enjoy a beautiful sunset over the lake.

Flores, Guatemala

Then, it was another border crossing, into another new country - Belize. Having both passed our Advanced Open Water courses in Útila, mine and Jorden's main reason for entering Belize was to visit Caye Caulker and tick off one of the scuba diving world's most talked about (many say it's overhyped) dives - The Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole (image stolen shamelessly from Google)

The Blue Hole is a large sinkhole off the coast of Belize. Circular in shape, it is over 300m wide and 124m deep, with many fish, sharks, corals, and stalactite formations. Even having our Advanced license, we were still technically only certified to dive a maximum depth of 30m. However, as is common with many dive shops around Central America, they'll take you further than you're supposed to go. We were taken down to a maximum depth of 46m, where for many divers, narcosis is known to set in (narcosis is an alteration in consciousness that occurs while diving at depth. It is caused by the anaesthetic effect of certain gases at high pressure).

The stalactite formations are found at around 42m, which means the total time you can actually spend at that depth is quite small - between 5 - 10 minutes. Yet it was incredible. It was probably the narcosis, but it felt like a dream. We stayed close to the stalactites, giving us a natural reference of where we were (when you look away from the stalactites you can't see anything - just blue ... and sharks), so you get this sense of impending doom is just around the corner, and it's easy to understand why there have been many deaths at The Blue Hole due to diver incompetence. I surfaced with more sinus problems (and blood), but with another bucket list experience ticket off the list, I'm now glad to take a break from diving for a while to let it recover.

Jorden, Victoria and I went out for dinner for our final night together and splurged on a huge, delicious, yet way overpriced (as is the norm for Caye Caulker) pizza, then parted ways - Jorden and V heading back up to Mexico, whilst I head back down through Central America and into El Salvador.

Antigua, Guatemala

After the partying of San Pedro, and a full day spent on chicken buses, Antigua provided a comfortable refuge where we could rest and recharge. 45 minutes outside of the capital Guatemala City, Antigua is a small colonial town littered with cafes and restaurants catering to all types of cuisine. It’s the kind of place you could always stay for one more day.

We used most of our time here for just that - coffee drinking, bagel eating, chocolate sampling, playing cards and also cooking a few meals of our own as we still had our gang from San Pedro together.

On our first night at the hostel, unaware how close we actually were to it, we spotted Volcán de Fuego off in the distance, shooting off some steam and lava. As we stopped what we were doing to enjoy the moment, we decided at that point that climbing up Volcán Acatenango for a better view was our must do activity in Antigua. So, on Thursday we did the rounds of the travel agencies, sussing out the competition and trying to play them off against each other to get the best price. We settled on one and booked it in for the following day.

Come 10:30am on Friday morning, we were still waiting for the tour bus to arrive. When they finally arrived soon after, we told them we wouldn’t be going on the tour as it was too late to begin the trek and we’d miss sunset. We walked over to the tour office and soon found ourselves in the middle of an argument and an unwanted choice over not getting any refund, or taking the tour on Saturday without food included. Still unsatisfied, it wasn’t until we mentioned we’d go to the police until they finally cooperated, and included us on the tour for the next day with all meals included.

Our persistence paid off, as when we woke Saturday morning the weather was clear and we left on time. The hike involved 6 hours of mainly uphill walking through slippery tracks, before we reached our camp and set up our tents and campfire.

Probably the best moments of the whole experience were had during and after sunset, as Victoria, Jorden and I sat out on the grass, witnessing the most surreal (and at times blinding) lightning storm unfold next to Volcán de Fuego, which was shooting off bursts of smoke and lava every so often. The bucket list moment was well and truly cemented when, whilst fiddling around with different exposure settings on my camera, I managed to get this shot:

After much conversation over life, travel and how lucky we were to be sharing, or even just experiencing these moments, we headed back to the campfire where we shared some cheap liquor with our guides and roasted a few marshmallows on the fire.

With 4 of us jammed into a relatively small tent, needless to say there was little sleep had, and any that we managed to get left us with aching bodies from the thin mattresses and cheap sleeping bags.

We were soon up at 3:45am to attempt to climb to the top of Volcán Acatenango, a tempting opportunity if not for the thick cloud and considerable rain that we found ourselves in. As much as I wanted to stay in the tent, I realised it was my only shot at this, so joined the others who were keen enough to brave the conditions and begun the 90 minute uphill climb. Unfortunately for us our efforts weren't rewarded, and as others predicted, the climb was cancelled due to the poor conditions and we ended up turning back.

After a breakfast of an apple and a banana (I ate the rest of my meals the day before after the trek), we descended for 3 hours to where we started the previous day, and our bus took us back to Antigua.

While exhausting, it was an incredible experience that Antigua would have otherwise felt incomplete without enduring. With aching muscles all over, Victoria, Jorden and I then began our 17 hour bus ride across the border into Honduras, a new country to be added to all of our lists.

Lago de Atitlán, Guatemala

For the first time since arriving in Ecuador a couple of months ago, I was able to add a new country to my list of places visited - Guatemala. It took just under 12 hours and 3 different buses from San Cristóbal, but I finally made it to Panajachel, which is located on the northeast shore of the beautiful Lago de Atitlán (Lake Atitlán).

Lake Atitlán is the deepest lake in Central America (with a maximum depth of about 340m) and while considered one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, I didn't find it quite as serene as Lake Titicaca, which I visited from both the Peruvian and Bolivian sides.

Jorden, his girlfriend Victoria and a few other friends were already here, but across the lake in a little town called San Pedro la Laguna. It was late at night so I decided to spend the night in Panajachel with Sara, a girl from Tokyo who I met on the bus earlier.

The next morning started with a superb, the best I've had in months, coffee from the Korean run Cafe Loco, near our hotel. Then I hopped on the ferry to another nearby lake town - San Marcos la Laguna.

Renowned for being a laid back hippie town, commonly used for yoga or meditation retreats, I initially intended to spend a night here before meeting up with Jorden and the gang in San Pedro the following day. But, remembering my time in Vilcabamba, I decided it would be much more fun partying with my mates and so hopped on another lancha (powered boat) to San Pedro.

As is common whenever Jorden and I are together, the partying was inevitable. It started off innocently enough with a few games of Yaniv at the hostel - then we ventured out into the town, bar hopping and cashing in on any promotions for free shots that we could find. We parked down at Buddha Bar for a while, where things escalated before finally stumbling into bed in the early hours of the morning.

For our final morning in San Pedro and Lake Atitlán, we rose at 3AM and trekked up The Indian's Nose, a mountain perched atop the cities of San Juan and San Marcos - giving an incredible view of sunrise over the lake.

Sunrise from the Indian's Nose

After a nap and some lunch, we departed San Pedro, taking the "chicken bus" to Antigua. These buses are old recycled (definitely not refurbished) school buses from the USA. They cram as many people as they can on to these things, and, braving cracked windscreens, bald tyres, wet roads and a sleepy driver, it's probably surprising we made it safely to Antigua.