Spanish Grad

I am now considered an Intermediate Spanish student apparently! The school had a mini graduation for the people that were finishing their week and they gave us a diploma and a t shirt. My diploma said Intermediate it was really thoughtful and was a nice way to say thank you and good bye. The rest of the week I have just been checking out the markets and some of the churches and other preserved buildings in the city. A few of the girls from the school and I went out on Friday for some drinks and dancing but this week has been pretty mello. I am torn between beign excited to come home and live my life with all these new experiences that I have had and beign a little sad that I am leaving all these beautiful places. I guess though I am ready to come home now since it is getting into the rainy season and is difficult to keep a tan while Victoria is becoming warmer and warmer.

Gotta Love Guatemala!

Antigua is a beautiful town in Guatemala that used to be the third capitol if the country but after a large earthquake it changed to what is now called Guatemala City. One of the things I really like about this country is that everyone is so friendly, everyone says hello to you when you are walking down the street and the population is generally happy. The town looks up at a beautiful volcano and is very nicely preserved. It has cobble stone streets, secret passage ways, outdoor laundry fountains and 16 churches (12 which are active). I finally found a Spanish school that was reasonable priced and gave me the type of accommodation I desired. Unfortunately there is no pool but I did find a cool spot on the roof of the house to soak up the sun. The school also offered me a free t shirt, tour of the city and other activities throughout the week and of course hours of Spanish in a one on one setting!!!! Pretty intense but learning the language was one of my goals this trip that I plan to meet.

Copan Honduras

I travelled from Largo de Yojoa to San Pedru Sula which hosts the main bus station and it took two hours then from the main bus station to Copan where the famous ruins were (4 hours). The town is so beautiful, the streets are cobblestone, there are out door markets and it has a beautiful city center. I went for dinner at a pizza place and there I met an older man who used to play in a band. We jammed on his guitar and then the Canucks game came on. The score was not in the favour of the Canucks but it is always nice to be able to catch a game when I can, makes me feel like home is not so far off. It has been a little scary travelling without a guide book and only random internet searches available for information but I have been really lucky so far, everything seems to be working out fairly well and I am making the most of my time. Ruins tomorrow and a little more site seeing then off to Gutemala for some more Spanish!

I switched hostels to a place called Via Via as I got my private room and better internet, it also has a bar and restaurant. After the rude people at the other hostel last  night coming into the door at 3am wasted loud and turning on the lights I needed a good night sleep. After some town site seeing and grocery shopping I headed to the Famous Copan Maya Ruins. It was absolutely breath taking, the restoration was so good and there were not many tourists crowding up the place. I was able to see the statues, museum and ruin site, it took 3 and a half hours. I also got a sneak peek of the tunnels that you were supposed to pay an extra 12$ for by pretending to be a lost tourists who doesn’t understand any Spanish. At the ruins I ran into some other Canadian boys who I had met in Nicaragua, it is always nice to run into people from Canada and of course have some people to talk to on my adventures.

D&D Brewery

I travelled a little south from San Pedro Sula to this little town called Los Naranjos where they have a micro brewery. The chicken bus was a little scary because I thought the trek was supposed to be 1 hour and it ended up beign 2 hours in the mountains, then I wasn’t too sure exactly where this place was as I am now travelling without a guide book. The bus driver said that he would tell me when I was there and I remember reading somewhere that the bus route goes right past the place. So the bus driver says this is my stop at the side of the road and all I see is a sign for D&D Brewery and a long dirt road (not driveway road). I walk for a bit and see a little store I ask the guy if there were cabs here and they were none and then he said the only way to get there was to walk down this road for 10 minutes. A little worried that all of the locals who were on their porches looking at me walk down this road in the middle of nowhere solo, would come out and rob me I was ok. As soon as I got to the Brewery I was set up in a private room because the dorm was messy and they couldn’t tell what bed was clean, then I checked out the taps. I then found myself drinking delicious raspberry ale enjoying the tropical wilderness of Honduras.  This place had a pool, outdoor restaurant and even a horseshoe pit which I consumed for a while! The next day I hooked up with some auzies and went to Largo de Yojoa. There was a beautiful path and nature and we were going to rent canoes until we saw that half of them were sunk by the river.  In the afternoon we went to a coffee plantation, but it was sort of boring and had a hard hike to the top.

Moving On Up

Getting stuck in Managua for another day was clearly not desirable but it was neccesary to get to Honduras, so while we were there we decided to make the most of it and go to the National Museum of Nicaragua. There we were given a guided tour for free and I think it was a really good way to say good bye to Nicaragua because I learned so much about the country which helped me appreciate it more. Did you know that it is the youngest country in Central America, when the plates shifted thousands of years ago Nicaragua was created, prior to the shift Central America was not connected. Because it is such a young country there are many volcanos and lakes, hence the name of the country Nicar (volcano or mountainous region) and agua (water). The night ended early as our bus to Honduras was at 4am the next day.

Travelling through boarders in Central America is definitely not something that you want to do very often and after my 15 hour bus ride with multiple stops I have decided when I do come back down into Costa Rica I will be flying. The stopover at the boarder lasted over two hours and there was three stops that were like 30 minutes and the bus was 2 hours behind schedule as the added boarder patrol stopped our bus on the search for a specific Nicaraguan person.  Driving through the country though was quite beautifull as it is very green and mountainous. There were many pick up trucks cruising down the road full of fruit and houses among the hills that looked almost like Greece except colourful. There were also a bunch of fires in the bush close to the road and as we drove past you could feel the heat through the bus. The houses closer to the city however were very poor looking and the structure of some of the river side homes looked as if they were going to crumble. After the long travel we ended up at a hostel and pretty much fed ourselves and passed out. See mom its not all about parties lol.

Shop Till Ya Drop

The markets are unreal here, you can get fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, cheese and breads, right beside clothes shoes and electronics. It is like a street walmart lol. That took a lot of my time for a few days as there is just so much stuff to look at you feel you need to look more because you missed a lot. For one of the days I went to a nice outdoor pool at a hotel and lounged all day while enjoying the really inexpensive cocktails. In the evening we went to an outdoor reggae festival which had the Smirnoff girls.

The next day we ventured out of the main city to a smaller city called Masaya because they have a really big market. It was really overwhelming but I got some decently priced goods. We also had an amazing lunch of chicken breast cooked veggies, tortillas and salad for only 50 cords which is about 2.40$. Beign the weekenda  bunch of people from the hostel went out for some drinks and late night dancing! It is really crazy in the bars and restaurants when it rains because everything is so open. I actually got soaked walking to the bathroom and the dance floor was half flooded.

Ometepe

This island is really cool as it is in the middle of the lake and has two volcanos on it. It is really rural and the only way you can get there is by boat. The history behind the volcanos is like Romeo and Juliet, there were two tribes who were not liked by each other and the son and daughter of the cheifs fell in love and wanted to be together but the fathers wouldn't allow it. The two love birds actually killed themselves in order to be together in heavan and the legend says that the volcanos are the two breasts of the daughter. The volcanos erupted and killed all the towns people as they were angry that her and her mate could not be together, or something like that lol. The main attraction clearly is the volcano hikes which I did, well attempted to do. It was 4 hours up a straight hill for the smallet one and I only made it to the half way look out point  (two hours of climbing) when my legs were uncontrollably shaking. I went back down for two hours, then walked anouther 1 km to the petrogyphs.The next day I took the ferry bakc to the main land to Granada.