Hola gente!!

We thought we would write a quick update on our time in Nicaragua and a bit in Costa Rica so far...

So, we arrived in León after a 10 hour bus ride in extreme heat... Nicaragua was ridiculously hot...like nearly 40 degrees, day and night! Not that we are complaining, obviously that is better than snow, it just took some getting used to! León is a cool city, with the biggest cathedral in Central America. Inside is pretty awesome but someone needs to paint the outside! From Leon we decided it would be a good idea to go volcano boarding... Apparently this is the only place in the world you can do this as its a one off type of volcano (or something like that!?) So we hiked up the volcano for an hour carrying pretty heavy wooden sledges, dressed up in our goggles and orange jumpsuits, then after admiring the spectacular views we got to sledge down the side! Slightly scary but a very fun experience.

We then headed to another city called Granada, gorgeous town on a lake with volcanoes close by...very cool and beautiful. Not much else to say about that as we only stayed one day unfortunately!

From there we caught some chicken (local) buses to a beach town called San Juan Del Sur. The next day was Davy's birthday so as a present we got him a surf lesson! He did really well and by the end of the day was standing up lots, he loved it! After that we went to dinner and for drinks with some peeps from the surf course, very fun evening!

After that we hopped on a very scary boat to a place called Isla de Ometepe. This is an island formed of two huge volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. On our first day we hired bikes and cycled around half the island and saw some stunning and deserted beaches. This island is really cool, there are loads of horses and cows just wandering around, we guess they belong to someone but obviously they just can't be bothered to fence them in..the animals seem pretty happy about it though! Needless to say we were both in huge amounts of pain from the saddle after! Also we apparently didn't do so well with the suntan lotion application... Davy had bright red arms and hilarious tshirt marks and for some reason I just have one red arm...strange! Fun day though.

From Ometepe we got the overnight ferry (from hell), 11 hours, freezing cold, we got seats but some were forced to sleep on deck, not much fun but for £4 we couldn't complain really... We arrived in San Carlos, sweaty little river port, where we caught another boat to a town called El Castillo along the San Juan River, very beautiful and remote. We saw the castle built by the Spaniards to stop our pirates, then got a boat back to San Carlos then took a river boat to Costa Rica. In Costa Rica our first stop was La Fortuna which is another town with a volcano, which we´re getting used to now! Here we did a canopy tour through a rain forest which was awesome, swinging through the jungle like tarzan! We did a morning tour so there were quite a few animals around, including howler monkeys, while we were doing it. We´ve been to lots of places that have howler monkeys and the sound they make is amazing, really loud. We haven´t been able to get a video f them yet but I found a youtube video so as to give you some idea - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REPoVfN-Ij4&feature=fvst The morning tour also turned out to mean that we were the only ones doing it so we got lucky with all the photos the guides were able to take, and unlucky in that the guides said we had time to experiment with different swings, ie upside down!

We´re writing this from another town in Costa Rica called Monte Verde. Hope you´re all well back home. Speak soon