Beaches and Volcanos
Spent the last few days in and around Leon, Nicaragua. Leon is definitely a place for the outdoorsy adventurer type, and our visit lived up to that in pretty much every way.
The adventure started on our way into Nicaragua. After a long ass (15 hours) shuttle ride from Ceiba (Honduras), we ended up at the Nicaraguan border around midnight. We got our visas and were cleared to enter, but the system to register the shuttle bus was down and the lovely agent wasn't willing to do the paperwork manually. We ended up sitting at the border crossing for over two hours, sweating (literally - it was 32 degrees) and swatting flies. Once we finally got in, we didn't make it to our hostel until about 4am.
We took Tuesday to sleep in and recover and then explored the city a little bit to find some local food (and beers - of course).
Wednesday we headed to Cerro Negro for the famous Volcanoboarding experience. Cerro Negro is an active volcano that is about eight years overdue for an eruption. It's a hugely impressive hill covered in small black rocks. At the top there was even a crater you can look down into. After carrying our boards to the top we suited up in the jump suits and ripped down. I got up to 61 km/h and I'm pretty sure I will be digging little black rocks out of my body for at least a week. When we got back we took the shuttle to the beach, had a few drinks, watch the sunset (a la romantic couples vacation), and made some new friends. Overall an amazing day.
Thursday we took it easy. I got caught up on my emails and checked out some of our videos. After another local food adventure for dinner we entered the hostel beer pong tourney and naturally brought home the gold for Team Canada. We have several people convinced that it's our second national sport.
Overall, Leon was a blast! The city is gearing up for Semana Santa (week long holiday around Easter) and I wish I could stay longer to check it out. There is also some very cool history around Che Guevara and the the revolution (Leon is called "The Capital of the Revolution") in the city that I would definitely make time to learn about in another visit - but that's for another trip!