11/1/10 - day 33.

got up at half 7 as i was keen to get an early start. moving on to Leon today which is a similar in style colonial town like granada. got an 8:30ish bus to managua (the capital) where i had to change buses for leon. the way the minibus style buses work is that they just basically wait til they are full then go so you can never be sure how long you´ll be waiting. i was lucky tho i was the last person to get on the bus so it left immedeiately. and i got the front seat up with the driver! also at the bus stations there are geezers just standing their next to their bus shouting the name of wherever they are going so its easy to find the right bus, plus its in their interests to get you (and your money) on and get it as full as they can as quick as they can so they almost come looking for you!

it was about an hour to managua and about another 2 hours to leon. on the 2nd bus, the driver whacked up the air con full blast so that what was initially cool relief very quickly became shivering! so i kept accidentally knocking the controls for it turning it down with my knees. dont think he noticed.

when i got to leon, i met an american guy, andrew, who was also on the bus. he´d been working on a friends farm in nicaragua for a few months and was now seeing the rest of the country. he was not only a football fan, but an arsenal supporter!! we walked to the hostel i planned to stay at, dumped our stuff and went out for lunch and a beer. after, went for a walk around the city checking out the biggest cathedral in central america and the usual chaotic markets. leon is similar to granada but bigger, bit dirtier and not as nice in general.

later that afternoon we met up with a nicaraguan friend of andrew´s who lives in leon (lester). had dinner at a place lester knew on a roof top terrace overlooking the city. expensive looking setting i thought, but food cheap as ever. we ordered a bottle of flor de caña rum to have with the food. its nicaragua´s national drink from what i can tell and very popular. it´s normal to just order by the bottle as you would with wine. in fact flor de caña is cheaper than beer.

a couple of lester´s nica friends joined us and we went to a couple of bars after including one that had live music which was cool. more bottles of rum were consumed throughout the night and got back to the hostel about 2am.