Volcano Boarding or Not!! After about 2 hours sleep I was up doing my morning exercises by 5am - this is starting to become a very bad habit that I should try and get out of. I had some breakfast which is a typical snack from here consisting of fried yuka (similar to potato) balls soaked in honey: they were absolutely amazing with the crusty edge absorbing all the super sweet honey. I hung around in the morning surfing the net, drinking Nicaraguan coffee and waiting for the others to get out of bed. It is Megs birthday today and unfortunately Meg was up but spewing from lastnights drinking episode and to make it worse they are all off Volcano boarding at 9am which involves an hour hike up a steaming volcano. When everyone left I headed to the market to go sampling some more of the local sweets; priding myself not to buy anything in bulk and just buy to try (something I usually struggle with). I tried fried corn tortillas, condensed milk and coco treats, this weird pink corn jelly thing and sweet preserved fruits. I had some really nice conversations with the ladies selling all the sweets and they found it hilarious how much I loved all the sweets. I found this little section of the market where there were a bunch of hairdressers setup and decided on getting a bit of a haircut. For $1.40 I got an amazing haircut and the lady was so lovely and could understand my bad Spanish I wanted to tip her. With my new haircut I headed off out to the surrounding city neighborhoods for a look. I found another very local market and an old lady making Mexican Pinatas and decided to buy one to stuff full of lollies for Meg's birthday. There were so many food stalls with super-interesting foods to choose from to eat lunch but after the last few months of stomach bugs and constant travelers diarrhea I decided to head to a fast food place and buy some roast chicken. I love to try all the local food of the places i travel but at the moment I know my body is weak so going for cleaner food is a necessity. At 1:30pm I headed back ready for our 2pm trip to the Volcano to go Volcano boarding. Unbelievably when I got back to the hostel we were told the trip had been canceled and we would have to find another company to go with: we rang two other companies but they were both full so we headed out to the street asking all the agencies. We went to all 6 agencies and all either were full or had left already for the afternoon tours. At first I was disappointed i would miss the Volcano boarding and seriously contemplated canceling tonight's shuttle to Honduras so i could stay and do tomorrow. However in the end I decided to except that this is just another one of those things on my adventure I will unfortunately have to miss this time around. We met this really nice Kiwi girl working at one of the tour company offices and chatted with her for a while about other things we could do in Leon and once again I really thought to change my plans (only problem being if I don't take tonight's shuttle I would need to spend 4 more days here) but after talking with Luis and English girls and hearing about their plan to leave tomorrow I decided to just keep my plans for the shuttle tonight. In the evening I walked around the city where I got talking to this lovely local lady about Nicaragua and travels. When I returned to the hostel it was time to celebrate Meg's birthday: food, cake, wine and Pinatas in place we kicked celebrations off with a bang. The Pinatas were great fun and we all had a go at being blindfolded and smashing the Mexican Pinatas and having candy go everywhere. Drinks, laughs and good times continued until 9pm and then everyone decided to go out to a flash resteraunt in town. I had already eaten but joined the others and after they finished their meals we decided to head back to the hostel and have a few quiet drinks. Everyone ended up staying up chatting, drinking and waiting for my 2am departure so we could say our goodbyes.

OBSERVATIONS:
- Volcano Boarding fail
- Meg's Birthday Bash