Leon - old capital of Nicaragua

Leon turned out to be quite an interesting city to visit - it is the old capital of Nicaragua, so has many lovely old churches and the largest cathedral in Central America. One of the reasons we really liked it was relatively few tourists, and it feels fairly like an ordinary town where people go about their daily business. One of the oddities that kept us awake at night was the multitude of churches ringing their bells all day and night long, accompanied by a cacophany of firecrackers - 4am, 5.30am - you pick the hour.
We had a really relaxing time in Leon after the long journey to get here, and time for Caroline to recover from her ear infection. We found a fantastic hostel (Lazybones) set in a lovely courtyard with a swimming pool and free internet.

One of the real highlights of our stay in Leon was our visit to the Fondaccion Ortiz - a really exceptional art gallery (by Central American standards, and even by European standards) with many really good Nicaraguan and other Central American artists set in a series of beautiful buildings around well-kept green courtyards.

The long journey to Nicaragua

Unfortunately the morning we were due to head from the jungle lodge on a 2 day epic bus journey to Nicaragua via the Honduras capital, Tegucigulpa, Caroline had a bad night with an ear infection. So we made a last minute diversion to the hospital in La Ceiba instead. After having had some rather scary discussions with a dutch couple who had given birth in Tegucigulpa, we somewhat feared for the quality of the healthcare system. Thankfully however, compared to our previous hosptital visits whilst traveling in developing countries, this one turned out to be pleasantly surprising! Gary got to see live on TV via optical probe the inner workings of Caroline´s ears and nose - quite the experience. We were out in less than 40 minutes with prescription in hands and only $45 worse off.

We "dashed" across town(picking up and dropping off other passengers as we yelled at the cabbie "mas rapido por favor") to see if we could catch the 10am bus and just made it in time. 3 hours later we arrived in San Pedro Sula, bought another onward ticket to the capital, and another 5 hours later arrived in darkness in what felt like the sketchiest place we´ve been yet....

Thankfully, our guidebook came up trumps for a hotel, which for only $15 was safe and had not only 2 bedside lamps, but also a glass showerscreen - pure luxury in the world of budget travel!

Next morning up at 4am to get to the bus terminal at 4.30am. Changed buses at 7.30am and arrived in Nicaragua´s capital about 1.30pm to then find another bus to Leon. Our Taxi driver however did not appear to want to take us to where we requested and took us instead to a local market and the stand of local "chicken buses" (and of course tried to charge us more). With some reluctance we hopped aboard guarding our belongings and fearing that a 1 hour journey would now probably take 5 hours. We´ve generally avoided the chicken buses where we can (because we can) but it was actually good fun. No-one tried to share our seats, sit on us, mug us or sell us any chickens - they played party music all the way (YMCA and the like), and they kindly told us when to get off, and it was the right place for a change!

So eventually after a marathon 48 hrs traveling we arrived in Leon and found ourselves a great hostel with swimming pool and free internet, appropriately called Lazybones. We found a local hostel serving roast dinners ! and then passed out.

Pico Bonita national park

We were disappointed to have to turn down the opportunity to visit one of central America´s last true wildernesses in La Moskitia, but we decided to visit the Pico Bonita national park close to La ceiba for a taster of the jungle on the Northern Honduran coastline.

We did a day hike followed by a night at the Jungle River Lodge overlooking the river. The hike was great - a couple of refreshing river crossings, lush green jungle, tumbling waterfalls (where we had a very refreshing dip), and yet another magnificent thunder and lightning storm as we played cards by candlelight in the evening. (Thanks to stephanie who taught us a new card game, but which appeared to have no end)

Back to the Caribbean to learn to dive - Utila

After visiting Copan we headed off to the Carribean to learn to dive. The islands off the coast of Honduras are some of the cheapest and clearest places in the world to learn and so we could not miss this opportunity to have a go. We chose Utila Water Sports as our dive school, mainly because they seemed the most patient and professional - and as an added bonus they had fabulous accomodation overlooking the water with their own jetty for catching the sunset.



It was pretty scary learning to dive at first, but amazing once you get comfortable with being underwater. They provided 4 fun dives free after the course which were perfect for practicing and getting more comfortable with each dive.






On the final fun dive, we had an amazing sighting of 15 to 20 pilot whales swimming around the boat - we´ve seen a lot of whales, but this must be one of the best sightings we´ve ever had! Utila is also famous for Whale Sharks - huge beasts around 40ft long, but unfortunately sigthings are increasingly rare and we did not manage to see one on our trip - we were then somewhat bummed to discover that the day after we left the rest of the group saw and swam with one! esta la vida !!

Copan Ruinas and Macaw park

Oh, yet another bus journey to make you cry. Long story, but having already been on the phone with the owner of Adrenalina Tours in Guatemala to complain about other problems, we were anxious about taking a shuttle with them again, and oh godness, we wish we had not! The driver nearly killed us going at breakneck speeds in torrential rain around tight mountain roads - then when we got half way, he told us he wasn´t going any further and that we could get another bus shortly to take us the rest of the way ..... a likely story !!! using our best threatening in Spanish (thank goodness for Spanish school), an hour later he eventually agreed to take us....

Anyway, so we arrived in Copan Ruinas somewhat jaded after the journey, but delighted to find Copan Ruinas to be such a welcoming nice town. We arrived on the Central America Independence day (Sept 15th) and got to experience some very colorful and musical parades.

Feeling a little tired we opted for a lighter activity and headed out to the Macaw sanctuary just outside of town. The Sanctuary has a very colorful and loud mix of macaws, parrots and toucans. Our guide was one of the founding handlers and he was able to give us some great background stories on the birds and best of all let us hold them to take pictures!





Obviously the main draw was to see the actual Mayan ruins at Copan Ruinas and they didn´t disappoint. The best thing about these ruins (aside from very few other toursists) are the magnificent sculptures (mostly of King 18 Rabbit - what a cool name!), and a marvellous museum which thankfully had English translations for a change.

Cowboy country in Honduras

Well horseback riding isn´t the kind of thing we would normally get up to, but.... we had a wicked time!

We joined a tour with Finca el Cisne - a large farm very close to the border with Guatemala growing coffee, cardammon and loads of other fruits and vegetables. We spent the morning riding around the plantations (quite an experience since neither of us have been on a horse for years) with our host Carlos (a bit of a dish of a cowboy according to C). After a delicious lunch of homegrown veg and coffee, we had a look around the coffee plant which was amazingly built in the 1930´s by Carlos´s grandfather and entirely runs on water coming off the mountain behind the farm.

Later in the afternoon we chilled out in some natural hotsprings close to the lodge before retiring for another fabulous fresh homecooked meal and some cards with the other folks on our trip before a solid nights sleep at the lodge.

Xela - full moon volcano hike and hotsprings

We liked the town of Xela - unlike Antigua which is great fun, but full of tourists and quite gentrified, Xela seems to be a real Guatemalan town. Meaning that it has real shops and stuff, not just full of hotels, restaurants and tourist places. The town isn´t particularly attractive, but it has a certain appeal.


On our first day in Xela we went out to the natural hotsprings, Fuentas Georginas, about an hour from town. It was super super hot as it had been raining heavily during the week. we could only stay in the water for 10 minutes or so at the time. We´re pretty sure that the locals had fun watching us silly gringos hopping in and out of the pools (and Caroline was very glad she had worn her T-shirt and shorts into the water instead of bikini to minimize the gawping).



The big event of our trip to Xela turned out to be the full-moon hike up the Santa Maria Volcano. We set off on the hike about 1am, and made it up to the summit in plenty of time for sunrise. Sadly, the weather was cloudy so we didn´t get much light from the moon and the sunrise was pretty but not spectacular. However, the most cool thing was watching the active Santaguito Volcano below us which is active every 50 minutes, spurting out a large mushroom of smoke and steam.

On the way back down a local flyboy showing off gave us a flyby, and we swear we could have almost touched the wheels of the plane as he skimmed the peak.

Lago de Atitlan - San Pedro

After a tough week of using our brains again at Spanish school, we were utterly delighted to find ourselves chilling out in San Pedro at Lago de Atitlan. We found a great cheap hotel - with a brand new room, we were the first ever inhabitants - and just had to wait a few hours for the owner to finish tinkering with a screw driver. Best of all, we had cable TV! So Gary was happy as Larry to be able to chill out watching movies after dinner each night as the rain poured down.

We also had the fortunate timing of arriving on Sunday just in time for "British Roast dinner night" - fabulous and extremely well accompanied by 30cents cuba libres.

We were quite happy to lounge around for a while and didn´t do a great deal - we took a boat trip across the lake to visit San Marcos, a strange little hippie community, offering all sorts of wacky new-age spiritualistic stuff.

We also did one strenous, but very worthwhile hike up the alternately named Indian´s nose or Mayan´s nose. Once at the top, we had amazing views over the entire lake and across to the three volcanos flanking the lake.

Much of the rest of the time was spent hanging out on the decks of various restaurants watching the world go by on the lake. It was tough to leave !