Willandclaire’s Travels

Right, we got to Nicaragua and the first place we headed was to the beach of course, the lovely (and very touristy) San Juan Del Sur. The beach near our hostel was the windiest beach ever, we actually got cuts from the sand blowing against our legs, the beach also had a dead eel in the sand every meter or so, very strange!

The next day we went to another beach for a surf lesson, obviously Will managed to stand within 5 minutes (because he is great at everything ) but an hour later and 100 tries later I managed to stand for more than 5 seconds, result!! The next day we went to a little island in the lake called Isla de Ometepe. It was a lovely tranquil place we were happy as we were the only people around, we went swimming in the lake which was great, than Will casually mentioned that there are Bull sharks in the lake at which point we ran out. We also went to the gorgeous swimming hole (ojo de agua) but as it was a Sunday lots of families appeared so we went to the beach for the day (a hard life), we caught the local bus back to our town in the afternoon and everyone on the bus was pissed and singing and playing a cheese grater?!!

The next stop was Granada, the bus route was crazy, about 20 kids and women got on selling everything from drinks, cooked lunches to pills?!! Went to Laguna de Apoyo, it is a lagoon in a dormant volcano (I know I was a little freaked out by it too). The volcano is over 21,000 years old and 250 meters deep. It has been one of the most relaxing places so far, the water was amazing to swim in and it was super chilled out! We also went on a boat tour of islands near Granada and visited a tiny island (about the size of two large rooms) called Monkey Island. It had 4 monkeys on it that were brought to the island and now live on there, we felt sorry for the monkeys, it was just strange that someone would do that.

We went to Matagalpa next to do a coffee tour. The coffee plantation that we visited, Selva Negra, was amazing, everything was organic, they even had houses for their 300 workers on the plantation and apparently half of their staff were women. The tour was good as the guide was the owner of the plantation and a very chatty and educated man called Eddy, however we were disappointed as we didn’t even get a cup of coffee out of it.

Our final destination was Esteli, it was a quiet little town. We went to the Galeria de Heroes y Martires, it was a huge room dedicated to the memory of the towns fallen revolutionaries. The museum is run by mothers of the martyrs and it was very moving seeing all the pictures and clothes of the people that fought, by far the best museum so far.