León, Nicaragua

We had to get a taxi at 2am to get to the Tica bus station (the correct one this time..) to get our bus at 3am to León, Nicaragua! So I decided not to sleep as I would only have gotten about 2 hours anyways. Once on the bus, I slept most of the way although there were several interruptions. We had to go through Honduras to get to Nicaragua and even though we were only transiting, our passports still got stamped and we had to pay $19 for the privilege. At the border between Honduras and Nicaragua everyone had to get off the bus and collect their luggage and go through customs. It seemed everyone’s bags were getting checked but with ours he took a look at us and let us go straight through. Benefits of looking paler than the locals I guess…

Feeling all quite disorientated as we were sleeping the bus stopped and León was called. We were the only ones getting off as the rest were either heading to Managua or even as far as Panama.
We got straight into the taxi that was waiting for us as we had no clue where we were and headed to the hostel we had booked, Lazybones. It was a nice chilled out hostel with plenty of hammocks and a pool which was very welcomed – it was hot here!
We relaxed a bit in the shade sorting out the next few days before having a wander around the city. It is an old colonial city and is really quite pretty. There are lots of churches and on the central plaza is the largest cathedral in Central America.

The Cathedral in León

We visited a museum on the main square that told the story of the revolution and Leóns involvement in it. It is a very sad story, one with a lot of death but one that is close to the hearts of the locals as it really wasn’t that long ago and many were involved. The guide showing us around was even in one of the photos as a younger man. We found a very local place for dinner which you could pretty much eat all you wanted for £1.

Friday – We spent the morning exploring some more of the city. we visited some ruins – Veinte un and took a tour around the museum of legends and traditions. Here it seems the norm to have a guide going around the museums with you as there is not a lot of information given on the walls. We looked around the market buying a few things to give to the finca (our next destination) and saw a couple of the other churches before heading to Pan y Paz for lunch.

In the afternoon, we met our guides to go sandboarding! We were expecting a bus load of people but it turns out we were getting the back of a motorbike each! The way at first was fine, just roads through the down and then at a point in the the outskirts we turned off onto a more country road. The fun started when the track turned into a sand track that was at least a few centimetres deep in sand and the only way to get through it was to go at some speed. The back wheel was often all over the place but the drivers definitely knew what they were doing. I’d certainly rather them than me! It was beautiful scenery along the way once we got more into the countryside. There are several volcanoes around this area and it makes for some amazing views.

Volcano Cerro Negro

It took about an hour or so to the base camp from which we would walk up for about an hour to the crater of the volcano, Cerro Negro. We carried our sandboards which is really just a piece of wood with a bit of rope attached. Not the easiest thing in the wind but we go there in the end. Once at the top we got to go and see the crater. If you dig in the ground (it’s just lots of little stones) just about 10cm under the surface it starts getting very warm, too hot to touch for long.

Sandboarding!

There was a big group that sandboarded just before us so we got to watch how it’s done. You get to wear some pretty attractive jumpsuits, goggles and gloves for the ride down. It doesn’t take long at all to get to the bottom and I got to go pretty fast. The more you lean back the faster you go. At one point it was a bit too fast, I fell off! Managed to get back on thankfully, all part of the fun!

The motorbikes were waiting for us when we got to the bottom for our ride back to León. It was another exciting ride! And definitely time for a shower when we got back. We were totally covered in dirt!

We did it!

We decided to go out for a nice meal in the evening as we weren’t 100% sure what our food was going to be like for the next week. Splashing out we each paid about £6 for starter, main and a drink. It was a very nice Italian style restaurant, Meditteraneo. Afterwards, we had been told about some live music that was going on in another hostel so we went to check it out. Was cool to hear some live local music!