NICARAGUA

Make Nicaragua your next holiday destination.  Not enough time to do it justice here but the country beautiful and the people more genuinely friendly than anywhere else on earth.

A whirlwind drive took us to Leon and Granada, the two main colonial cities after the super dangerous capital Managua. In Leon we stayed at the Ozzie owned Big Foot hostel which was still being built so we were allowed to stay for free.  Although less aesthetically beautiful than Granada, Leon has a real character and spirit about it, with lots of bars and live music and galleries.  We went out every evening and one night listened to a couple with a guitar singing the melancholic and beautiful songs of the guerillas.   We met Dave and Maria Angeles who worked for NGO's in Honduras and they joined us for the ride south. We had a great day checking out villages en route to Granada - San Juan del Oriente, the home of ceramic makers in Nicaragua and Masaya for the famous handicrafts market.  Here we tracked down the home of Helio Guiterrez, the artist behind the incredible pottery we had seen in the museum in Leon.  His son Luis invited us into his workshop and gave us a demonstration of his skills.  Incredible what can be created with a bic biro, a rudimentary spinning wheel, some local mud, a couple of stones and an immense amount of skill.  We listened in awe, took video and bought a serious amount of pots.

We also went to the viewpoint above the crater lake - Lago de Apoyo (photos below)

In Granada we stayed in Oasis hostel which had been recommended to us several times. A great hostel at under $20 a night, included the use of their little swimming pool and free Internet access! Granada is a stunning colonial town and a recent surge in the number of visiting tourists and foreigners choosing to settle there meant that there are great investment opportunities about.  Again, everyone with nothing but the warmest smiles.

From the Honduran border entering Nicaragua to the Costa RIcan border leaving Nicaragua we were constantly the target of skanks, the most notable of which was being pulled over by three corrupt policeman, who contrary to what we expected didn't find the steering wheel on the right-hand side remotely amusing.  In fact, that they told us it was illegal to have the steering wheel on the RHS and were therefore going to impound the vehicle.  We managed to negotiate down to a hundred dollars and then to five dollars.  What a joke!

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