Lots have happened since my last post - time has just flown by and it is now my last day in Nicaragua before heading home to the cold north.

We spend Christmas on Little Corn Island, one of two islands located on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua, about 70 km off shore. Little Corn is, as the name refers, the smaller of the two islands and much less touristy and crowded. It was a lovely little paradise with lots of lobster and a completely different side to Nicaragua, which was great to experience. On Christmas eve we had a surf'n'turf dinner with Lise and Jessica, two girls Malene met in Antigua. After dinner we met up with me and Malene's bungalow-neighbours, Martin and Anja, two danes living in Managua. We drank all the rum'n'coke we had and afterwards partied the night away in the one of the bars on the island.
Unfortunately, the weather was bad (rain and wind) the whole time we were there and it got worse the day we were supposed to go back to the big island to fly back to Managua. No boats were going so we ended up missing our flight! Luckily for us, the freight ship arrived that day (it comes once a week!) and we could sail with that back to the big island and get a flight the next morning.

We then spend two days in Granada, one with just seeing the city and all its churches, and one going to the nearby volcano Mombacho.

Then we headed to San Juan del Sur where we enjoyed the beaches and celebrated the new year. One of the nights we went to Wildlife Reserve La Flor, where we saw several sea turtles digging nests in the sand and laying their eggs there - it was an amazing experience!

After San Juan we spend 4 days on Isla de Ometepe, an island formed by two volcanoes right in the middle of the biggest lake in Central America. Here we spend a day kayaking to Rio Istiam and the other days we rented mountain bikes, exploring the island on wheels.

We are now back in Granada enjoying my last days here in Nicaragua. Yesterday we went to the big market in Masaya and today we're going to Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake just north of Granada, so I can spend my last day here relaxing and enjoying the sun :)
 

Merry Christmas from a Nicaraguan paradise!

The last nine days have gone by fast with lots of activities and great experiences. We started with a few days in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, so I could get used to the time difference and Malene and I could catch up (I hadn’t seen her in 2 ½ month!). As most of the capitals in Central America (Malene told me) Managua isn’t really a place you’d want to stay several days, so a day to arrive and one day to see the sights was plenty of time.

Normally I like to walk around in a city, looking at the different sights since I think it’s a better way to get a feel of a city. But several people assured us that this was not at all safe, so we ended up taking a taxi which drove us to the different sights. The driver, Roberto, was actually really nice and told us (or told Malene in spanish which she then translated to me) about the things we saw and stories about the city and the nicaraguan people. You can see photos from Managua here.

Then we headed to León which is an old colonial town 1 ½ hours north of Managua. Here we relaxed at the hostel pool and walked around in the small and colorful streets, seeing some of the many cathedrals and a museum about the central american Revolution.

Around León there’s a whole collection of volcanoes, so we strapped on our walking boots and first headed to one of the youngest volcanoes in the world, Cerro Negro. We climbed this not once but twice in order to then surf down it on boards (sitting down though)! It was hilarous and of course we ended up being almost black from the black volcano sand.
The day after we went on a two-day hike to another volcano, Telica. It was about a 5-hour hike up the volcano through beautiful landscape, but really hot because we had our camping equipment on our backs. We got to the campsite on the top just before sunset and after dinner we climbed to the rim of the volcano, looking down into the crater. Unfortunately there were lots of smoke coming up from the crater which made in impossible to see the lava at the bottom. During the night we awoke to see the lunar eclipse – so beautiful!
The next day we hiked back down and after arriving back in León, Malene and I immediately took a bus back to Managua, in order to catch a flight to Corn Islands early the next morning.

And that’s where we are now – on little Corn Island. It’s a fantastic place and just the kind of place we wanted to spend Christmas!