Nicaragua (again)

16 June 2010

Leon Cathedral

After another epic day on a bus I ended up back in Granada again, enjoying the delights of a really nice hostel, the fantastic breakfasts at Kathy's and the banana-nut-choc-chip muffins at Euro Cafe.  I stayed a couple of days then bussed it up to Leon which was just as hot as Granda but not really quite as attractive.  I then bussed it up to a wee town in the hills (chosen because I thought the hills would be cooler - I was wrong!) called Esteli where I had booked some Spanish classes.

The town was a lot less touristy which was really nice in some ways, but meant it was very hard to find food other than the fried meat on the street.

My Spanish classes were exceedingly frustrating as the teacher didn't really know much about the grammar and didn't speak enough English (nor I enough Spanish) for me to be able to communicate my questions to him. It was a really bad week topped off by a horrible 36 hour bout of food poisoning at the end.

Leon

The highlight was a tour to a cigar factory midweek.  Nicaragua produces cigars which apparently do measure up to the Cuban standard.  The leaves are fermented in big stacks for a while (the smell is a little intense!) before being sorted, rolled and then finished.  It's quite a skilled job.  And the wee store room we went into to marvel at all the different types apparently contained about $6m retail value of cigars.  No wonder they had an ocelot in a cage out front!

Having decided that I couldn't afford to go up to the states to visit everyone I wanted to see so decided to treat myself and booked flights out to the Corn Islands on the caribbean coast of Nicaragua.  I flew out from Managua on a medium sized jet (a little bit of a surprise as they'd weighed all the passengers so I figured it must be a really small plane!), first stopping at Bluefields on the coast and then landing in Big Corn Island.  I had met an American father/daughter Sam and Morgan at the airport and the three of us plus some others got a taxi over to the dock where we loaded up onto a boat for the half our ride over glassy seas to Little Corn Island.  It's very much the Caribbean on the islands - most people speak English and with a caribbean accent and the way of life is laid back.

The view from my balcony - tough times!

It was really lovely on Little Corn.  There are no roads, just muddy paths to walk along and you can cross the island in about 10mins as it's really tiny.

I had planned to do a bit of diving on the islands, but the weather wasn't right in the first few days for the dive I really wanted to do (caves), and then the night dive I booked was cancelled for me by one of the divers after I had a few beers with him at lunchtime celebrating Canada Day (happily he then bought me another beer!)  I eventually managed to do a couple of dives near to the island which were really lovely and chilled out.  We saw lots of nurse sharks amongst other bits and bobs.  And then a group of us went out on my last day to Blowing Rocks which is a pinnacle in the middle of nowhere.  The diving was really great with quite a few reef sharks and lots of rocks etc which made it quite dramatic.
It was a really nice place and I wish I'd booked my return flight for a much later date as I would have loved to stay longer.

But, onwards again, on the boat, on the plane and back to Managua, stopping only to slip in some vanilla icecream in a shop and get it all over myself and my backpack!

The following couple of days and nights were mainly spent on buses - 36 hours worth of travel in just 48 hours.  The first day was from Managua to El Salvador via Honduras, staying the night in San Salvador, and the second day was up to Guatemala City, a change of bus and up to Tapachula in Mexico at which point I changed to a night bus to San Cristobal in Mexico.  The buses were mainly ok apart from the one in Mexico as it was air-conditioned to freezing point and the Mexicans do love their speed bumps.

I stayed in San Cristobal for a couple of days and then got a 20 hour night bus to Cancun.  Cancun was where granny advised me to get to a doctor (which I did, only to be diagnosed with exhaustion and got two shots in the bum for my troubles!) and where I hung out in air conditioned malls waiting for Louisa to arrive........