Blog 10 - Blind Massages & Kayaking "Records"

To get to Granada from 

El Transito we had to get up at 5.30am (yawn) and travel on a couple of chicken buses.  I have become surprisingly used to this form of transport.  Sitting between two hot and sweaty people on what is clearly a seat designed for one, while the driver either chats on his mobile phone or swerves to avoid giant potholes has become the norm, and I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about getting on a regular bus, even more so a train ever again.

When we stepped off the bus, we found to our dismay that it was RAINING!  As we hadn’t experienced such an event in numerous weeks, we kind of took leave of our senses and walked into the first café we could find for breakfast.  It was not great.  After that, we went and checked into our hostel: The Bearded Monkey.  This hostel is rated number one in Granada in the Lonely Planet guidebook….we are not sure why.  It wasn’t bad but certainly nothing to write home (or an entry in a guidebook) about.  Also, a couple of people who were staying in one of the dorm rooms had money stolen from their locker which isn’t great.

Granada is fine, it’s nothing too amazing though.  There are lots of nice cafes and old buildings, but we’d kind of seen all that in Leon so it was all much of a muchness for me.  On the first day my back was pretty sore so I decided to go across the road to the “Seeing Hands Blind Massage” place.  Here I got massaged by a blind person, and it was definitely the best massage I’ve ever had.  It was also very thorough……very, very thorough.  Over the next couple of days we generally mooched about, checking out the town.  On the Saturday, Nick spent the night in a treehouse a few miles away from the hostel.  This trip definitely wasn’t for me as you were guaranteed to be sleeping next to all sorts of scary creatures and the chances of me getting a good night’s sleep were pretty slim.  Instead, I went out drinking with some other people who were staying at the hostel: much more suited to my tastes :-) 

On the Sunday we said goodbye to Granada and travelled to Lake Apoyo.  I was mega hungover and so when the bus dropped us off, we walked into the first place we saw which turned out to be LOVELY!  It was called the Laguna Beach Club and it was a kind of cross between a hostel and a hotel.  Swimming in the lake was amazing.  The water was so clear that you could see incredibly far down; not to the bottom though as the lake is 300 metres deep!

We stayed here for two nights, and on the night before we left Nick decided he wanted to kayak across the lake and back which is a 7 mile round trip.  Someone (me) suggested that they should leave at 3pm so that they would be back by 5.30pm so not to be kayaking in the darkness.  Someone else (him) left at 3.30pm and got caught in a storm when he was halfway back across the lake.  When it hard been dark for half an hour and there had been no sign of him, the barman got in a kayak and went to search for him.  As it turned out, he was fine.  The current had carried him across the lake away from the hotel, so he was kayaking along the shore back to us when the barman found him.  Nick would like me to add here that he is the “first man ever” to kayak solo across Lake Apoyo, purely because he can’t find any other mention of anyone else having done it on Google.

If you look closely at this picture, you will see Nick setting off on his trip.  In the next instalment: Ometepe Island :-)

Blog 9 - It's a Small World After All

So today’s adventure: Volcano Boarding! An early start as the shuttle bus picked us up at 7am, so perhaps I can be forgiven for still being only half-awake when the next group of people from another hostel across town got on.

I was chatting away to this Austrian rock-climber guy when I overheard someone talking in front of me and had a strange feeling of, ‘I know that voice’. 

Clearly they must have thought the same thing, because he turned round, and for a second I thought I might have found our second doppleganger….however it turned out to be the actual Mark Wardle, one of our friends from University! 

Here the two of us are posing on top of the volcano. So random how you can go literally halfway around the world and end up sat on a bus next to someone who you lived only a couple of rooms away from in the same building in halls!

So while we started catching up, the bus made its way out of town, and about an hour later we arrived at the Cerro Negro National Park. Straight off the bus, we were handed a duffle bag full of kit, a wooden board and looked up at what we’d let ourselves in for.

The hike up to the top of Cerro Negro took about an hour, allowing for a couple of stops to admire the views along the way. Our guide told us the mountain gets its name (The Black Mountain) from the fact that it erupts so frequently that the vegetation simply doesn’t get a chance to grow back. The border between the green and black in the photos below shows where the most recent lava flows reached to.

At the top we were sandwiched between the heat coming down from the midday sun, and the heat coming up from the active volcano underneath. Digging a small hole just 3-4 inches into the black rocky ash meant it got too hot to touch.  Apparently this was the perfect time to put on our boiler suits, and stand around for 10 minutes while the guide gave us a safety talk.

What exactly is Volcano Boarding you ask?  Well, you sit astride a shelf-like board about 1m long and 30cm wide.  One side is polished smooth, and the other has a rope tied to it to use as a handle/accelerator. Then you tip yourself over the edge of a 1km, 45 degree slope. So off I went.  In only a few seconds I was hurtling down the side of the mountain, small rocks and black sand spraying off all around me, and it was awesome! I reached a top speed just shy of 70kph…..before …. I came crashing off….

Our guide had said we could use our feet as brakes to slow us down if needed, however my experience suggests this was nonsense: the only thing putting your feet down accomplished was to; increase the amount of rocks and sand being thrown up, spin the board, tip you over, and send you rolling head over heels for the next 20m. (In the guide’s defence, he may have given us further information - I have to admit to getting distracted by a giant yellow butterfly during our safety talk).

Still, no harm done.  I dusted myself off, got back on the board and cruised down the rest of the mountain. A quick side note:  I would later discover during my tumble, my phone came out of my pocket and spun out onto the mountain. Looking for a black-grey phone, in a mountain of black-grey rocks, sand and dust is just as fun as it sounds.  Fortunately after an exhausting 15 minutes my phone and I were reunited.  Incredibly it was still working and with barely a scratch on it!

So in summary, Volcano Boarding: awesome.

Got the bus back, and after a fruitless check at the hostel I found Becki wandering the streets, she looked very happy to see me, as it turns out she’d had an adventure of her own.

A New Day - Off to the Beach

It had now been 4 days since our trip to the beach, and it seems that’s pretty much the maximum time Becki can spend away from the sea. So with the start of a new day, we set off to the Green Surf Hostel in El Transito on the Pacific coast.

Due to some excellent last minute planning, we had chosen to go a town to which no buses ran. So our trip involved a one hour chicken bus to a town called Miramar, and then a 15km ride on a motorised tuktuk. Here's us enjoying the ride.

Arriving in El Transito, a village of no-more than 1000 people, the hostel was no-where to be found. So we decided our best option was just to walk along the beach, until we found something that looked hostel-like (How many could there be!).

Well 15 minutes later we were well out of town and had almost run out of beach when we spotted a tiny sign no bigger than your forearm hanging against a palm tree, and we were there! It turns out our difficulty in finding the place wasn’t entirely accidental, as this conversation we had with the owner later in the evening shows:

“Your hostel is really hard to find, we only just managed to spot that little sign”.

“Yeah I only put that up a few weeks ago, I don’t really like people to come here”

Despite the apparent grouchiness, the owner was actually a really nice guy, and made some really good ceviche (a kind of dish made with raw fish, chilli and lime juice that seems to be all the range in these parts).

So the next few days were spent playing on the beach, swimming in the sea, and enjoying some amazing sunsets.  Only interrupted by the occasional thunderstorm, and FYI; a thunderstorm over the ocean at sunset is something amazing. I literally stood there for hours watching it!

One more thing; walking along the beach we kept seeing these strange looking things. Apparently they are called ‘Sand Dollars’ (probably not the scientific name), and are a kind of creature. While living they are a kind of Sea Urchin and look a furry brown grey, but when they die, they get bleached in the sun and this kind of shell-like skeleton is all that’s left. They come in all different sizes but they all have these leaf imprint like star patterns in the centre surrounded by near perfect straight line holes.

Blog 8 - Take off Your Shoes & Put on Your Sunglasses

From Tuesday 18^th November, we spent six days in Leon, Nicaragua.  On the first morning we discovered a French bakery called Pan y Paz, selling croissants (for Nick) and cheeses (for me).  We went there every morning after that for our wake-up coffee and breakfast.  The main touristy thing we did in Leon was to visit the Cathedral.  The inside is pretty impressive, as you’d expect, but the really amazing part is the roof.  We paid about a dollar to walk up the tiny narrow staircases up to the very top of the inside of the building.  Once there we were met by a man who advised us to, "Take off your shoes and put on your sunglasses".  The reason being, the roof has recently been painted the brightest white that white can be, meaning the effect underneath the midday sun is almost blinding.  The second picture is from the inside of the roof looking out - quite a difference! 

The next day I was simply too hot and fed up to stay in the city and Nick diagnosed me with a severe case of “beach withdrawal syndrome”.  So, we got on a bus and travelled the 40 minutes to the coast.  As we have been quite spoiled re the quality of the beach in La Tortuga Verde, we found that this beach was nothing special, but I got my seaside fix anyway.  That night we went for dinner at a fish restaurant called Pescalitos.  Here’s a picture of me with my MASSIVE fish, covered in garlic sauce….the fish, not me.  It was delicious.

 We’d heard that about 15 minutes walk out of town, there was a “Museum of Myths and Legends”.  I don’t usually go in for visiting a lot of museums as I have a fairly short attention span, but this sounded quite interesting so on Wednesday we thought we’d give it a go.  Well, I think maybe the word “museum” was used fairly loosely here, as we managed to get round the whole thing in under half an hour.  With our limited Spanish skills, we were unable to decipher much of the information.  My highlight though, was this giant woman.  Apparently she is very important in Nicaragua.  If you closely at the picture, you can see Nick too – this gives a sense of just how giant she really is.

 After three nights at the hellhole that was La Pasada Gordita, we packed up and went in search of an alternative hostel.  We ended up at Hostal Latino, which was a massive improvement.  The next couple of days were spent mooching around and trying to firm up some Workaway placements for later on in our trip to save us some money.  So far, we have booked a placement working in a small hotel in Peru for the month of February. 

On the Saturday afternoon, we obviously had to stay holed up in our room at the hostel and find a website that was showing the AC Milan v Inter Milan game, otherwise Nick would have been most unhappy.   They drew 1-1, and as I helpfully pointed out: a draw is better than losing.

Sunday was our last day in Leon, and Nick went off to go Volcano Boarding.  This is a most dangerous activity consisting of sitting on a snowboard/go-kart contraption and hurtling down the side of an active volcano at speeds of up to 100kmh.  Nick will tell you more about it in the next instalment.  For my part, having carefully memorized the way to Pan y Paz the day before (due to my being more than slightly directionally challenged I was nervous about making the 3 minute journey alone), I set off to have my breakfast there as normal.  However, when I arrived I found that it was closed on Sundays and so I’d have to find somewhere else to go.  Panic.  Well, I was most pleased with myself as after 10 minutes or so of wandering around I found myself in a coffee shop with air conditioning, free Wi-Fi and lemon drizzle cake: Result. 

The problems began when I walked out of the door and found that I couldn't remember which direction I’d come from, not least how to get back to the hostel.  After half an hour of walking round in circles feeling stupid and getting slightly teary, I approached a friendly-looking American couple and informed them I’d lost my hostel.  They showed me a map of the city, which didn’t exactly help matters, and I was about to give up and sit in a heap on the floor, when they pointed out that my old favourite Pan y Paz was only two streets away!  As I was rounding the corner to the hostel, I bumped into Nick who had returned from Volcano Boarding and had come to find me – probably wise.

And finally....on our last night in Leon, I received my first ever electric shock.  This was given to me by the dodgy plug socket in our room at Hostel Latino.  It hurt a lot, and my hair didn't stick up in the comedy style that I've seen in so many films, which definitely would have helped counteract the pain :-(

Blog 7 - Sleeping in all the Wrong Places

The next morning after Nick’s volcano adventure, we filled ourselves up on breakfast, ready for the journey to Honduras.  In order to fit in all the places we want to go to, we were only using Honduras as a one night stopover on the way through to Nicaragua, which is a bit of a shame but we can’t do everything otherwise we’d never come home!  So the plan was to leave La Tortuga Verde at around 10am.  However, when we tried to settle the bill we found that stupid Natwest had blocked Nick’s card for a second time this trip.  So, much time was spent on the phone to them sorting that out before we could go anywhere.  Here's a helpful map to show you our journey so far - the solid red line is where we are up to this point, and the dotted line is where we'll be by the end of this blog entry.

To get to the border we left La Tortuga Verde and took a chicken bus from El Cuco to San Miguel which took about 1hr 30 minutes, then a second bus from San Miguel to Santa Rosa (a town 20 minutes from the border), which took another couple of hours.  Our plan was to then go straight over the border and find a place to stay for the night once we’d crossed over to Honduras.  However, we decided to hop off the bus at Santa Rosa at about 5pm as we were hot and tired (both of us) and grumpy (mainly me), and find a hotel.  This was much easier said than done.  After traipsing around the streets for 30 minutes, it transpired that there was not a single place to stay in the whole town, as generally it doesn’t get very many visitors, i.e. it’s a horrible place.  We got in a taxi and asked the driver to take us somewhere, anywhere where we could spend the night.

As some of you will know from my startled Facebook post a couple of weeks ago, he took us to the only hotel in town – a pay by the hour motel.  The lovely room we stayed in was fitted out with such splendid features as:  a tissue paper dispenser next to the bed, free condoms, a switch next to the bed to operate “seductive” music, a sign detailing how to turn on the “adult” tv channels, and of course....mirrored headboards. 

Needless to say, we got out of there pretty quickly the next morning, and continued on our journey.  So, it was back on a chicken bus to the border.  Getting through the checkpoint itself was relatively painless and only took about half an hour.  Once we were on the Honduran side of the border, we took yet another chicken bus to Chaluteca and then a minivan shuttle to the Honduran/Nicaraguan border.  The minivan section of the journey was a a little scary - the sliding door didn't stay shut and so someone had to hold it in place the whole time, lest we fall out the side.  Also the road was filled with potholes, some a metre wide.  This meant the driver was continually swerving onto the other side of the road in order to avoid them - not very Health & Safety.

This border was a lot more hectic…we’d hardly even opened the minivan door when we were surrounded by several men, who all wanted to take us the 4km to the checkpoint on their rickshaw.  We eventually chose our man and set off.  I’m sure everyone is aware of what a rickshaw is, but just in case, it’s a bicycle with a two-person bench seat attached to the back of it. We felt quite bad for the guy as it was ridiculously hot, and pedalling three peoples’ weight and all their luggage has got to be pretty hard work.  Once through the checkpoint and into Nicaragua, it was on to yet another chicken bus to Leon where we would spend the next week.

Here’s some useful info about Leon for you:  It is a university city about the same size as York and used to be the capital of Nicaragua, but during the revolution the capital was changed to Managua - I don't know why... sorry.

After 9 hours of travelling we finally arrived at our destination.  The hostel we had booked was called “La Pasada Gordita”, which by the way means “the incredibly obese woman” (and she was). Now, this hostel was the highest rated in Leon out of hundreds.  However, our room turned out to be the worst we have stayed in before and since.  The mattress was a piece of foam which a) was just really uncomfortable to sleep on, and b) foam is not the best material to alleviate the UNBEARABLE heat throughout the night.  The room was equipped with a fan off of the 70’s which was so loud it sounded like a helicopter was taking off next to our heads all night.  I ended up sleeping on the cold tiled floor instead.  I am very hardcore now.   

I will tell you all about our time in Leon in the next entry :-)

Blog 6 - El Volcan Conchagua: The Kindness of Strangers

Ultimately I decided on the title ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ because of three events you will hear about shortly, but it was a close call between that and a number of alternatives: ‘Oops I did it again…’, or even ‘Cerberus: Guardian of Amapalita’. Anyway, all will become clear soon.

If you don’t like spoilers then ignore this link to our previous travel blog from a couple of years ago, but for those of you who do remember it, todays Volcano adventure follows an eerily similar pattern…

So, I’d decided I wanted to climb this volcano which overlooks the Gulf of Fonseca, a bay dotted with
islands on the border between El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Becki in her infinite wisdom, preferred to spend her last day at La Tortuga Verde relaxing on the beach and sorting out bits and pieces for the next stage of our trip, so after an interesting Salvadorian breakfast of; Scrambled Eggs, Fish Fillets, Fried Bananas, Re-fried Beans and Cheese I set off by myself to make my way to the volcano.

El Volcan Conchagua is about 30km from La Tortuga Verde so the first stage was simply getting to the main road where I could catch a bus. Just over 2 miles according to the map, no problem. What the map neglected to mention (yes, definitely the map’s fault) was; this 2 miles was entirely up hill, and entirely without any shade. After a few baking minutes walking by some chickens, cows and a pig who were all just milling around, a group of locals returning from their morning wood chopping session took pity on me and gave me a lift in their truck the rest of the way to the main road - Kindness of Strangers Take 1.

So, now all I had to do was wait for a bus, although the group of locals who had already been waiting for over an hour didn't fill me with confidence. Apparently; the Sunday bus service, not exactly reliable. Seeing as one advantage of El Salvador buses is you can just stop them and get on anywhere, and one disadvantage of being me is I can’t stand still waiting for too long; I decided the best thing to do was just start walking along the route to Conchauga.

After about 30-40 minutes (and still no sign of a bus going in either direction), I passed by 3 men sitting out on the verge by the side of the road. We said hello to each other, and they asked where I was going. With my Spanish not good enough to explain I was going to stop the bus on route, I had to say I was walking to Conchauga, which they found hilarious, (“Silly Gringo, you cannot walk all that way”), still they wished me luck and I kept walking.

After another half an hour of looking over my shoulder at every sound of an approaching vehicle, and still no bus, I was starting to wonder how smart my decision had been. But suddenly, another local in a truck pulled over and told me to get in - Kindness of Strangers Take 2.  He drove me the rest of the way, while we argued over whose football team was having the worse season, him being a Liverpool fan vs my AC Milan, we decided to call it a tie.

So finally I was there. The climb up the Volcano was amazing; hard going, and very hot and humid throughout, but all that was offset by some incredible views: back inland a landscape of hills, valleys, mountains and volcanoes stretching off into the distance, to the east 3-4 large islands sitting in the gulf, and to the south views out into the Pacific.

There was also plenty of awesome nature to see closer by; I think the pick of the bunch was a crazy dragonfly creature with stick thin wings almost to the point of being invisible, except for these brightly coloured spheres on each wingtip. When it flies it looks like four differently coloured pin heads spiralling around each other.

Also I came across the biggest swarm of ants I have ever seen in my life, and not just regular ants, these were massive; easily 4-5 times the size of the regular black ants back home. The entire path, which was about 2m wide, was covered for a good couple of meters in front of me. I stopped with the intention of getting some close up Attenborough style video of the swarm in action, but no sooner had I turned on the camera when the ants started to swarm all over my shoes and up my legs. So what you have here is a few seconds of ants, followed by my calm manly panic at the idea being carried off and devoured by man-eating ants.  And by the way, over the next few minutes up the volcano, I did the maths, and if they had all got together they could definitely have carried me!

So all in all, so far pretty awesome, however I started to run into a bit more trouble on the way down. The main problem was, there is a very fine difference (read: no difference at all), between the areas of dense jungle which have been deliberately slightly cleared by man to make an unobtrusive path, and those areas of jungle which have been slightly cleared by the randomness of nature. The picture to the right for example, shows a legitimate path, can you spot where it is!

So on two occasions on my way back down, I followed a false path-like clearing, only to have it suddenly disappear. And I soon discovered once you’ve gone off the path, finding it again is not so easy.  First time I harmlessly wandered around in the undergrowth for 20 minutes before finding my way again. The second time however, I was not so lucky.

I hasten to add, after getting lost the first time, I vowed to pay close attention to any potential path options before me, and so had already decided to avoid a particularly thick and confusing part that I’d been through on the way up. Instead I was going to walk an extra mile along a small dirt road (which the path briefly crosses) to the next town along, Amapalita.

So thinking I was almost done, I turned the corner at the entrance to this small town, at which point a fairly large dog started to bark and then charge at me. And not in the kind of “I’m a dog and I’m defending my territory” kind of way, as they often do in these parts, but in a, “I have been bred to kill, and when I catch up with you, I’m going to eat you” way. Needless to say, I ran as fast as I possibly could back the way I came.

There was no other way around, so against my better judgement, I had to go back and search for, and subsequently fail to find the path I had previously chosen to avoid. So what followed was around 45 minutes of pushing my way into and then out of a ravine, a dry-river bed, and finally scrambling up a small cliff before I re-found the path. Well I say re-found the path; actually I startled a bemused Salvadorian farmer who had been busy collecting avocados, before a thoroughly exhausted Englishman pulled himself up over his cliff edge. Anyway he kindly gave me some much needed water, and pointed me in the right direction - Kindness of Strangers Take 3.

Finally I made it back to Conchagua, and was pleased to find a local Pupusa festival in full swing. Pupusas are El Salvador’s national dish, basically they are halfway between a tortilla and a stuffed crust pizza, and they are as good, if not better than they sound. Understandably these guys love them and they had a giant party to show it; families competing against each other with crazy flavours, a speed Pupusa making contest, a marching band, a bouncy castle, and TV crew to take it all in.

Refuelled and reenergised, I had one last venture to go; getting back home. Due to the extra time I spent being lost, and the aforementioned Sunday bus service, the only way back was to team up with some locals, who had been stranded at the Pupusa fiesta, to flag down an out of service bus and negotiate a lift to get us home (I’ll be honest, they did most of the negotiating).

Finally, and a few hours later than expected, I arrived back at La Tortuga Verde to find, not only has Becki organised everything for the next leg of our trip tomorrow, but also packed all our bags, and had a Chicken Burger ready and waiting for me! A bag-full of Awesome Wife bonus points have been duly awarded!

As it turns out the real danger was not to me trekking up a volcano, but rather to Becki staying at the beach. As we walked across the sand to our hostel bar, death in the form of a falling coconut missed her head by less than an inch! 

Blog 5 - RESPECT THE SEA!!!

On Saturday 8^th November we left San Salvador and took a local “chicken” bus to San Miguel.  From there, we hopped on another bus which took us through the mountain range to the ocean front town of El Cuco.  At one point the bus was struggling so much up the mountain that we were barely moving at all.  In fact, when we reached the top, the driver and a few of the locals whooped and cheered, which makes me think that perhaps the bus getting to the summit is somewhat of a rare occurrence.  We then hurtled down the other side of the mountain at top speed which was very exciting, and I’m sure completely safe.

Once we arrived in El Cuco we started to walk the 40 minutes to our hostel, La Tortuga Verde but soon managed to hitch a lift in the back of a pickup truck instead, which was far more enjoyable! Here we are enjoying the ride.

La Tortuga Verde is a beachfront hostel, yoga retreat and turtle sanctuary.  The owner buys hundreds of turtle eggs at a time on the black market to save them from being eaten.  He then hatches them and releases the baby turtles into the ocean.  When we arrived we found that we were just in time to help the latest hatchlings be released!  This was a really amazing experience, and you feel really responsible for the turtles you release.  Apparently however, only 1 in 100 turtles actually survive the journey out to seam which is a bit of a bummer.  I bet it’s my one that survives though.

We love this place – it has such a chilled atmosphere, with palm trees and hammocks everywhere and a view of the ocean wherever you may be.  Originally we had booked to stay here for three nights, but quickly extended it to nine nights the day after we arrived. Even though we have been here now for eight days, I’m able to condense all of our activities into one blog entry, as apart from one or two exceptions, the days have mostly followed a pattern of: eat breakfast, lie in hammock, eat lunch, swim in sea/bodyboard, eat dinner, drink cervezas!  So, I’ll just fill you in on any extras that weren’t covered in that last sentence.

La Tortuga Verde is on Intipuca beach, which is a hot spot for surfers; obviously this means that the waves are pretty big and powerful.  Now, I take my self-appointed role as “Frazier/Madge Family All Situation Health and Safety Rep” very seriously, and have always prided myself on having a “respect for the sea”, and thus not swimming when the tide is turning.  However, on Thursday the sun must have gotten to me, and I adopted Nick’s attitude of, “How dangerous can it really be?”  The answer – quite dangerous.  After 10 minutes of frolicking in the waves, we soon got caught in a riptide which had pulled us beyond the point where we could stand, and with every massive wave that crashed over our heads, we were being pulled further out to sea as it dragged back again.  Thankfully a few minutes later we had managed to fight our way back to shore, feeling thoroughly exhausted and quite a bit scared.  Lesson here: RESPECT THE SEA!!!

On one of our first days here, we learned that a pub quiz would be taking place at the bar that evening!  Obviously we were very keen as we do love a good quiz, even on the other side of the world.  Well, we went to the bar (early) and waited and waited for said quiz to start, and after an hour or so were informed that it would have to be cancelled as we were the only ones who had turned up!  To reward us for our keenness we were given the opportunity to go paddle boarding in the estuary for free the next day.  As paddle boarding is a sport which relies highly on a sense of balance, I left Nick to it and hung about on the shore, pretending (in my head) to be a CIA agent on a reconnaissance mission - We’ve been watching a great deal of spy-based drama “Homeland” in the evenings.

Now for the really exciting news:  Those of you who read our last blog from our travels a couple of years ago may remember that we encountered a series of doppelgangers along the way.  Well….we’ve found our first of this trip!  He has been named “Australian Greg”.  Greg Gaynor is a friend of ours from uni, and this lovely Australian man named Chris resembled him so much in facial features and mannerisms that I just had to take a photo of him for the blog.  For those of you who know Greg, here he is.

And finally – we went to a pool party last night (Saturday) and something very important happened:  After years and years of trying, a fellow guest at La Tortuga Verde managed to teach me to open a bottle of beer with a lighter!!! That’s something to tick off the bucket list.

As I’m writing this, Nick is walking up/down a volcano (on his own), so if he ever returns I’ll let him tell you all about that in the next entry.  Tomorrow morning we leave La Tortuga Verde and are journeying to Nicaragua through Honduras.

Here are some pictures of the beach to annoy you all…..sorry!!

Blog 4 - El Boqueron: Looking for the Giant

We decided after yesterday’s Tazumal excursion, today we would stay a little closer to home; a trip to the main shopping street, Boulevard los Heroes. Perhaps like me you would have thought walking the ½ mile or so, in a direct line between the University (near where we were staying) and the expensive shopping district of Boulevard los Heroes would be a fairly safe choice. It turns out not so much. Before we knew it we had definitely walked into the wrong part of town: some kind of slum maze, with buildings piled on top of one another and leaning together for support. They were literally so close together no light could get through. The trouble is once you’ve walked in, the paths all curve back on themselves or lead to dead-ends, so finding your way out is not so easy.

Fortunately we did make it through, found the beautifully air conditioned shopping mall and celebrated with a traditional Salvadorian breakfast…Subway!

Becki wanted to buy some loose cotton trousers, which turned into a bit of a mission because for some reason, no-one here seems to want to keep cool. The fashion for women being jeans or woolly leggings despite it constantly being between 25 and 35 degrees. Also, FYI – sunglasses: not a thing in El Salvador.

Next up we walked down to the National Palace. Built in 1905 after the previous one was destroyed by fire, and now being rebuilt again after sustaining significant damage in the 2009 earthquake.  

Now who am I to question the architects involved in designing such a grand building, but even so I don’t think the placement of that door would pass health and safety back in the UK!

We took in a couple more sights of the city; next door to the palace was the Cathedral de San Salvador, and just down the road the Plaza de Libertad - this was originally the central point of San Salvador, with a New-York style grid system of roads sprawling out from there.

Stopped at one of the market stalls on the way back to buy Becki a cap for our expedition tomorrow, which brings me to another question: If you have 8 stalls in a row, all selling the exact same selection of caps and hats for the exact same price, who are the people who decide it’s a good idea to open another stall with the exact same thing again right next door!

A quick side note: in our best attempt to keep our clothes clean, plus our water and other provisions for tomorrow cool, we improvised a fridge/laundry area in our room.

Day 5 in San Salvador – The Big Mouth

Next up, an expedition to the Parque El Boqueron, a national park just west of San Salvador centered around a massive volcano.

On the walk up to the top we came across this curious sign. Needless to say we did as we were told and kept our eyes peeled for giants throughout. It wasn’t long before we reached a platform on top of the caldera rim, giving us some amazing views across the whole volcano. 

The caldera, created by massive eruption 800 years ago, is over 5km around and about 400m deep. In fact the entire park is named after this immense feature; ‘El Boqueron’ meaning ‘big mouth’ in Spanish.

It used to be completely filled with a lake, but in 1913 there was a second eruption which boiled the lake away (that’s a hell of a lot of water!) and left the smaller caldera you can see in the picture below. The little one is called; ‘la Boqueroncito’ – yes you guessed it little mouth.

While we were taking in the amazing views, a flock of Great Black Hawks were circling around the rim, gliding effortlessly on the thermal updrafts coming from the (still active) volcano below. They did actually swoop by pretty close to us, and if we had a professional photographer with us you would now get an awesome picture like the one on the left, but we didn’t, and they were too quick for us to do anything but stare at them, so you get the picture on the right.

We walked around the upper caldera rim, going along stepped paths from one viewing platform to the next, and then started our descent down.

The hike to the caldera floor was pretty varied, sometimes an easy stroll but also difficult going at times. Quite early on we passed a sign telling us that we had passed the edge of the ‘official park’, and that the authorities of El Salvador took no responsibility for people who got lost on the way down, always an encouraging sign. 

Technically there was a path the whole way, but it was pretty steep in places, and not always obvious which was the right way to go.

There was plenty of nature to take in on the way; lots of little birds, butterflies in reds and yellows, and some pretty funky looking big, red, furry caterpillars.

When we looked back up from deep inside the crater, the clouds were moving overhead so quickly they looked like a time-lapse film. I guess this is also something to do with the thermals pushing the clouds aside much faster than they would otherwise be going. It was a strange experience walking down; the temperature, pressure and humidity all seemed to change quite quickly and left us with the odd sensation of being simultaneously hot and cold at the same time.

We stopped for some lunch and a rest before making our way back up. On the whole coming back up was much easier, since we didn’t need to spend so much time carefully shifting our weight and using up mental energy avoiding slipping, but the flip side was it was thoroughly exhausting!

Back up near the top we spotted an 'Agouti Paca', a kind of large rabbit like rodent, that lives in these parts. Well I say spotted, we caught a fleeting glimpse before it dashed off into the undergrowth.

After another adventurous bus ride; back down the volcano back to San Salvador, we arrived home, with barely enough energy to pack up our things before falling asleep. Tomorrow; on to somewhere new.

Blog 3 - Crazy Buses & Mayan Ball Games

We had an early flight out of New York, and after two quick flights and a short stop-over in Dallas we arrived in San Salvador. From the grey skies, cold winds, and rain we left behind we stepped out into the 30 degree heat and clear blue skies.

We jumped in a taxi to our Hotel: Villa Florencia. While Becki settled into the hotel I took care of the first order of business for English people arriving in a tropical climate: find some sun cream and water. With that out of the way, we went out for an explore together.

So we turned out of the hotel onto the nearest street and to put it mildly; it was hectic. Basically what they decided to do was take a regular sized street with enough room for one lane of traffic and a pavement each side, and instead decided to try and cram in two lanes of traffic, shops and cafes with tables spread out over the pavement, then two rows of market stalls each side, plus a few random people with carts of food winding their way through any gaps they can find. All the while everyone is shouting to get your attention, but curiously it seems no-one is actually buying anything.

We stopped at some guy selling fried chicken and turned down another street to continue our explore, and then another and another, but apparently this is what every street is like in San Salvador.

Day 2 - On today’s agenda; head out west of San Salvador to the visit the Tazumal Ruins.

On our way to the bus station, we stopped at a Cocina. These little half café/half someone’s garage things are everywhere, at least 3 or 4 on every street, they’re pretty strange but the food is pretty good too! We got ourselves a standard Salvadorian $2 breakfast of: a pork stir-fry/casserole, with rice, salad, these corn tortilla things and finished off with some watermelon. Now that’s what I call a breakfast!

Off we went on the bus to Santa Ana, another hectic giant marketplace of a town, before doing a quick change on to the crazy little local bus to Chalchuapa. There are no rules for these local buses, you can get on or off wherever you want, they just keep cramming people in until they’re hanging out of the sides, and any time you do stop people from the nearest load of market-stalls get on, and squeeze their way down the bus selling their wares. Now fair enough, you might be on a bus and think I could really go for a bottle of water, or a burrito, but I can’t say I’ve ever thought “you know what would be really useful on this bus journey, toothpaste”. So all in all, bus trips in El Salvador: quite an experience. But then they do only cost 18p to ride, so I guess it’s all good!

So far, so good, even with our limited Spanish we had successfully navigated the market-mazes and hectic bus system. However we than ran into the first instance of what would be a recurring problem in San Salvador: they don’t believe in any form of signs, directions, maps, or providing information online for anything remotely touristy. For example:

(1) is where the map says the Tazumal ruins are, (2) is where they actually are. Now in my book when the entire town is less than 2 miles across, being over half a mile out is pretty far out. Fortunately a perfectly balanced combination of wise directional deductions and blind luck led us to the Mayan ruins.

There’s no two ways about it; Tazumal ruins – pretty impressive. You’ve got a massive pyramid temple, which used to sit at the centre of a city-state at the Southern edge of the Mayan empire. This is surrounded by smaller temples and alters, one of which I was stood on top of while taking the shot below. Nearby to the temple are the stands for an ancient sports arena. The Mayans’ sport of choice was a ball game that was played with a big rubber ball (think of a cricket-ball sized version of the bouncy balls you used to win from arcades as a kid). The players wore these heavy stone belts, and the idea was to hit the ball using your hips. Apparently it was not uncommon for the losing side to be sacrificed to the sun god. So when a Mayan tells you the game has gone to ‘sudden death’, he really means it!

Headed back to San Salvador, in another instance of the grand Salvadorian joke of information for tourists, the one ‘Tourist Class’ bus, doesn’t stop in the bus station the same as all the others, but rather you have to guess at what random point on an unmarked road it will stop on. It was just starting to get dark and a mild sense of panic setting in, when we spotted it. And in fairness it was worth the wait, you can see Becki looking pretty pleased with her fully reclining air conditioned seat!

Blog 2 - NatWest: "The Helpful Bank"

So on Friday, I met Daisy for a boozy brunch.  I had Eggs Benedict (with ham, bacon, spinach, potatoes and vegetables!) and a couple of Mimosas. Nick went off on his own to explore the rest of Central Park.  Now, those of you who are familiar with our previous travelling adventures will know what a bad idea it usually is to let Nick go off on his own, with no way of contacting me to let me know he’s either:

1. Lost
2. Feels like going for a longer explore so will be late
3. Is actually lost, but pretends he isn’t by saying he feels like going for a longer explore so will be late.

Well, in this case he was just plain lost.  However, he only kept us waiting in the cold in the middle of the park for a mere half an hour, so we couldn’t get too angry. 

Then it was off to New Jersey with Daisy and our pirate costumes.  All shall become clear, don’t worry.  We got off the train at Hoboken rather than Newport and walked the rest of the way, so that we could see the beautiful views of Manhattan across the water at night. 

Once we got to Daisy’s apartment, we changed into our pirate costumes and Daisy got dressed up as a minion, and went upstairs to a different apartment to have pre-lash drinks with lots of Daisy’s Mountbatten friends.  We played a brilliant game called Cards of Humanity.  If you have not heard of this, then please look it up/buy it because it is seriously a lot of fun.  Then it was back on the train to NYC to get to the venue for the Halloween party we were attending. 

Once we arrived at the venue, which was basically a huge warehouse – it had a kind of Subdub feel to it (Leeds people will know what I’m talking about), we were pretty annoyed to find that we were going to have to join the mother of all queues to get in.  However, Daisy went and spoke to the security and told them how great we were and that we had VIP tickets etc, so we straight in we went!  After a couple of hours of partying it was 3am and we decided to call it a night.

On Saturday, Daisy’s sister and auntie arrived from England so our host was occupied all day.  This and the fact that the weather was awful, meant that we had a pretty valid excuse to just sleep off our hangovers for most of the day.  Now, last night Nick had attempted to use two ATM machines and was denied cash both times.  We figured out that stupid Natwest must have put a block on his account as transactions were showing up in USA rather than in England.  This would be all well and good had Nick not been into stupid Natwest before we left the UK, to explain that we were going to be travelling around various countries for the next 6 months, to avoid this from happening!  So, Nick phoned up stupid Natwest, the “helpful” bank, and they took off the block on his account. However they were unable to say whether or not this problem would continue to happen in every new country we visit.  So that’s just great! 

Sunday was our last day in New York, so we got the subway into Manhattan and tried to go back to that delicious salad place, Cosi, but alas it was closed on Sundays :-(  We found a kind of deli place instead which was ok, but definitely no Cosi.  After lunch we met up with Daisy and her family and went up the Empire State Building VIP style – this meant no queuing! Thanks Daisy!

Afterwards we said goodbye to Daisy (sob) and went to the restaurant in Macy’s for dinner to cheer ourselves up.  We then went to check out Times Square, which we both agreed looks a lot better in the films than in real life.  Nick bought six deep fried Oreos from a street vendor for his pudding.  He claims he tried to buy one but apparently they only sold them in batches of six.  Then it was back on the subway to the hotel to pack and get an early night ready to leave at 5.45am for La Guardia airport and our journey to San Salvador. 

Finally, I'll leave you with this picture of a man with a giant tennis racket.  

I know it looks like he's about to hit the woman with it, but they were actually having quite a pleasant conversation.

Nick's tales of San Salvador to follow in the next few days :-)