After Granada the next stop was Leon, which was the Nicaraguan capital until 1857. We arrived around 1pm, having visied Masaya handicraft market on the way. There was lots of nice stuff, but I resisted the temptation to buy as I still have almost 3 weeks left and there will be lots of other markets and opportunities to shop! On arrival sme people went more or less straight out on a volcano sandboarding trip, which as you will have guessed was not for me! I went f...

7th and 8th August were spent in Granada. The morning of 7th was a travel morning as is becoming the norm on this trip, which is good as it means you arrive at a place to be able to spend at least a day and a half there. Our journey involved the ferry back across Lake Nicaragua and then a mini bus to Granada. We arrived by midday and after getting our rooms went for a walk in the city. Granada is on the western shore of the lake and is a beautiful colonial city. ...

5th August started with our journey to the island of Ometepe which is in Lake Nicaragua, which is the second largest freshwater sea in the Americas and is fed by 40 rivers. Our journey started at 8am on a Nicaraguan "chicken bus" so called as we were soon to find out because of the way people are crammed on, it was certainly a very packed bus!! Buses here in Nicaragua are old American style school buses, there was a luggage rack on top but we put our ba...

So 3rd August was mostly a travel day which took us from Costa Rica up to Nicaragua, across the boarder to San Juan del Sur on the pacific coast. It was about 4 hours to the boarder, including a stop. We got to see some brightly coloured birds, which at the house behind the cafe stop but flying about from tree to tree. I think they are called macaws, like parrots. We also saw a toucan, finally I saw a toucan! At the boarder we had to exit Costa Rica by filling in...