At the Ticabus terminal there was no English spoken but managed to get the right ticket for the next morning no problems - I had to use all the cash on me to pay for the ticket - leaving me with 7 cordobas - 35 cents! Close! I headed to the hostel Chris recommended which was on the same block as the Ticabus but the next corner. The place did not have a door or a bell - just a locked large driveway gate with razor wire at the top (you always know you're in a gre...

We arrive at Granada, and as this is Chris' second visit, I follow him from the bus to his recommendation of the Bearded Monkey Hostel. Along the way we meet Mike from Canada, who was also on our bus & a also a tout who wants to get paid for taking us to the hostel We arrive & check in and arrange to meet up again later for dinner. I ran into Tony & Paul from Omentepe as they had also recommended this hostel & arrived on the next bus after us. ...

I squeezed myself into the back seat of the top deck of the Lancha and immediately got chatting with 33 year old German Frank. He was 6 months into a year long holiday, having started with 2 months of Spanish school in Cuba then worked his way down to Nicaragua. He was heading to Santa Cruz on the island to meet some friends he made - I was heading to Santa Domingo because the guidebook said it was a beach, and I was hungover so thought that sounded great! Whe...

I arrived at the Costa Rican / Nicaraguan border town of Penas Blancas (te he!) and the nice lady riding next to me held up her passport to give me a heads up that we'd arrived. The money changers were 15 deep at the door of the bus and hounding us as we walked through to get out luggage from under the bus. I grabbed my bag and probably took out a few of them swinging it onto my back! I headed off in the direction I thought passport control was, and continued ...