¡Hola! So, we made a fleeting visit to the baking hot Pacific coast before we headed to Costa Rica and stopped at San Juan del Sur, a bona fide surfing party town that was pretty much exactly how we imagined. We didn't have time to go to some of the nicer beaches nearby, but we made do with a welcome bit of sunbathing on the perfectly lovely main beach. I did manage to get my toe bitten by some weird sand-dwelling creature in the water which was absolute agon...

¡Buenas! We spent five nights on the magical Isla de Ometepe - a fairy-tale island in the middle of the massive Lago de Nicaragua made up two volcanoes stuck together. There are some wonderful beaches dotted around it, which we discovered are probably best enjoyed in the dry season; right now the lake is higher so the beaches are small and the water is a bit muddy and churned up. So, instead of sunbathing we concentrated on climbing those two volcanoes! We ...

¡Buenas! So while we were at Laguna de Apoyo we went on a quick day trip to Volcan Masaya, a fairly small but most definitely active volcano just outside Masaya. There are very few countries that would let you just drive up to the crater of a volcano like this, but lucky for us Nicaragua is one of them. You can just walk right up to the edge and peer into the crater, which is continuously spewing out plumes of gas and heat. There are several bizzare regulati...

¡Hola! So, we´ve been staying at this place a la Laguna de Apoyo called Proyecto Ecologico, which is a biological research field centre, a Spanish school and a hostel. There´s a resident scientist here from the US called Jeff, and another Nicaraguan dude called Lorenzo who is a diving specialist, plus a handful of staff that run the hostel. They do research into the local populations of bats, birds, butterflies, rodents and fish, including some that are end...

¡Hola! So we´ve been using Granada as a base from which to visit other places nearby, such as la Laguna de Apoyo, Volcan Masaya and Volcan Mombacho (see separate blogs). Granada is the largest and grandest colonial town in Nicaragua, more wealthy and prosperous than its liberal nemesis to the west, Leon. I expected to really like Granada, and it didn´t disappoint with its beatifully intact architecture and bright colours, but the atmosphere is very touristy...