Costa Rica Chaos!

The trip to Costa Rica was a highly unpleasant one. Firstly, one a chicken bus on the Nicaraguan side, a drugged up skollie hit me in the face to try and cause a fight with us Gringos. He came from behind and I had no idea what hit me (literally) until I saw everyone’s face in shock. Scary! He tried to fight Michael and Robert and got scared and left the bus. What an unpleasant human being.

Then on the boarder everyone was trying to rip us off, but that’s normal. We got a bus to the closest place to Monteverde, our next destination. But when we got there, my bag wasn’t there. I was both in shock and pissed off, it’s every backpackers worst nightmare to see the empty bottom carriage. Thank God we went with an actual bus company, and when we called they non-chalantly said it’s on it’s way, be there in an hour. No explanation for anyone, my bag just grew legs but decided to come back! Luckily, I had my camera in the bag!! Everything is mega-expensive already, I can see the Gringo Trail in full force…

Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

An unsuccessful attempt to spend a few nights in a National Park (the bus dropped us off in the middle of no-where and randomly pointed in a vague direction. We couldn’t even see the volcano the national park was on!),  led us straight to the docks where we met up again with our mate Michael. We can’t seem to get enough of him. Ometepe is the indigenous Nahuatl word for ‘Omete’ (two) ‘Tepe’ (mountain). The island was picture-perfect beautiful with the iconic volcano cone shape! The two very distinct volcanoes forming an island in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua. So excited to get there…

Lago de Nicaragua with Ometepe in the middle. I stole this pic from the internet because I forgot to take one myself!

 As we arrived to the docks on a lovely ferry we caught the most fun bus taxi ride to Balgue, a small town at the base of the lesser Volcan Maderas (1394m). We stopped for beers, listened to the worst quality Celine Dion while driving on bumpy roads, it was great fun!  We arrived at Finca Magdalena with horses everywhere! Can’t get away from them…a little racoon on a leash was playing around, and it was sundowner time. Cheers, we watched the sun sink slowly behind the bigger Volcan Concepcion and mingled with the other backpackers. Salud!

Sundowners on the roof of Finca Magdalena with our new mate Alistar.

 Finca Magdalena – what a fantastic hostel! $3.50 for a private room, comfortable and simple. The staff are friendly and the food is cheap and great! That morning we hired a guide to take us up Volcan Maderas for $5 each. He said it will take ‘mas o menos’ 5 hours…oh man, we miscalculated, it’s 5 hours up…and 4.5 hours down. We didn’t bring enough water. The Volcano is overgrown with structurally diverse vegetation that is distinctly separated in 4 ecological stages according to altitude. (Volcan Concepcion only has primary growth because it erupted and killed all the trees, so it’s barren but beautiful). We loved the walk, it was hot and humid in the beginning, but as we reached higher altitude the air was fresh and clean. We saw Wild turkeys, white-faced monkeys, howler-monkeys and of course the amazing view of the other Volcano. The only shitty thing was our group thinking it’s a race and were practically running up the volcano not watching the nature. I didn’t pay 5 bucks to see my feet  and the mud trail!

'Mirador' of Volcan Concepcion, a pleasant view.

 At the top the view was fantastic. Nicaragua is really an under-rated country, the people are friendly, the food is…well chicken & rice, but it’s good! At the view point we finished 90% of our water and still had over 1.5 hours left…to the top! Bad planning…Got to the top and had a great view!

No water, but we saw a Nicaraguan Wild Turkey!

On top of the World in Nicaragua!

 Then we arrived at the Crater Lake. I’ve never seen a Crater Lake before, it’s gorgeous. The vegetation is so lush and everything thrives here due to the incredible fertile soil. A great swim in the lake cooled us down, and got us dirty. It was so peaceful there, I wish we camped up here.

A tiny section of the Crater Lake on Volcan Madera.

 The ‘walk’ back was a breeze. We all unanimously decided cold beer awaited us at the bottom of this Volcano and literally ran down it! It felt like we were in Predator, running through the jungle, we could smell the beer…An almost 5 hour walk turned into about 40min! The guide laughed his ass off. What a great day!  And it was about to get better….

Rob and his machete are in a tight relationship now.  He bought it a few days before and has become disturbingly attached. We asked the Ladies at Finca Magdalena if we can get some coconuts from the plam trees that grew nearby. “Sure, if you can climb them!”. Little did the poor lady know that we had four ‘alpha’-males ready to show one-another what they’ve got! So Rob went up, got some coconuts. Michael followed, then Alistair and Nick…They were all successful and we managed to get at least 15 coconuts. It’s good to exercise to earn a cold drink.

Super Monkey!

And a cold drink it was! After all having a go chopping up the coconuts with the great new method shown to us on Tobacco Caye (Belize) we managed to collect a jug full of all-natural, fresh coconut water; perfect for the rum we had bought! The sweet ladies laughed and were very impressed (and maybe a little regretful?) to see how much coconut juice we got, and got us glasses and ice for a truly enjoyable sundowner. A good job well done!!

Rob's special technique!

We played several games with the other backpackers, Pass the Pigs, card games, 30 seconds and chatted the night away. This is such a beautiful place. The electricity kept tripping and the power failure sometimes lasted 30min at a time. It was a blessing, because out of the bush came hundreds of huge fireflies that lit up the veranda we sat on. What a perfect place…

Our sundowner spot, overlooking Volcan Concepcion.

 Next day we were absolutely determined to have a little braai on the ‘beach’. Rob’s machete is uber-popular and the boys just wanted to chop down trees and go wild! Of course, they did not, and we only chopped up wood we found on the ground…Alistair, Rob and Chrissie went to the beach and collected firewood, bought beers and were ready to make an epic fire! Well, easier said than done. We sucked! Everything was completely drenched from the torrential downpour we had last night, and the fire wouldn’t start. Epic Fail.

After trying & trying to light this damn thing it was a pleasant sight to see the sweet little howler monkeys play in the trees above us, watching us struggle with the fire. The alpha male was particularly interested in us and he kept moving position to make sure he had the best view. He positioned himself right above Rob trying to light the fire…and pissed all over him! Oh, I almost died of laughter! Rob jumped away like James Bond avoiding a death pit and escaped with only a minor Golden Shower by a monkey! (This may or may not be the reason why he got sick in Colombia).

A little more to the right...Rob's Howler Monkey!

Eventually the wood dried and the fire was ablaze. Next mission: get food! We anticipated the shopd selling chicken or something! Nope nothing…and after a third attempt we managed to get a huge (at least 2kg) of unidentified meat from some dodgy café for only $2, a bargain. I made some soasaties and we cooked the meat while watching the most spectacular sunset, chatting with some very friendly locals who gave us mangoes.

Using the wire from our braai grid we could make sosaties.

The food was alright, the sosaties were great. The meat was a bit iffy. Then Alistair found a cyst or something in the meat and we almost threw up, and tossed the rest of the meat to the stray dogs. Gross. Could’ve seen that coming!

Back at the camp we celebrated our last night on this fantastic island with more card games and chats with the great people. We cleared our bill - $55 each for 3 full days, of eating, drinking and hiking. Not bad!! We woke up at 4:30am to catch the local bus to the pier where we set off to Costa Rica. Good-bye Nicaragua, you are an amazing country.

Warning: you are on an active Volcano!

Volcano Surfing!

So we had heard that in Leon, Nicaragua you could do what is considered by some to be an extremely dangerous and manly sport, surf down the side of an active volcano! How could we possibly pass up a chance to be cooler than we already are (I know, I know most of you can’t believe we could get cooler, but keep reading). So we signed up and prepared to surf!

Volcan Cerro Negro when it erupts, spewing it's lava out it's base. Bad-ass!

 We woke up in the morning of the day in question and had a hearty breakfast.  Who knew, it could hve been our last! Then we played some pool and messed around the hostel. Finally the time came for our surfing trip. So we all loaded onto our huge orange truck slash tank (it had a hatch and everything!) and headed out to our adventure. The truck itself was simply the front car and a carriage at the back that was covered by an orange tarp on top and not covered on the sides at all.

We were all excited about what was to come, little did we know it was going to come sooner than expected, we had a massive torrential downpour on the way there! I don’t mean “oh no we got a little wet” I mean the roads were turned to rivers within minutes and all the staff clambered through the aforementioned hatch and left us to fend for ourselves on the back!

Ten bucks if you can see a guide.

Well the rain really came down! And everyone was soaked to the bone! Not only this but the weight of the water  really weighed  the surrounding tree branches down, which let them slap us around and deposit every sort of creepy crawly in the forest directly into the back with us, if not on us! But we soldiered on and eventually the rain slowed and stopped.

We arrived at the entrance to the national park and saw the volcano we had come to conquer ominously watching over the valley ahead of us. Volcán Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in Central America, having first appeared in April 1850, and has had a record breaking number of eruptions  for the basaltic cinder cone type volcano which it is, these volcanoes usually erupt only a few times, mostly only once. But this one has erupted at least 23 times, and is very much still active. What makes this volcano unique is that the lava doesn’t flow from the cone, like typical volcanoes, it spews from the bottom…killing all life while ash is shot out from the top. Evidence of this was clearly seen, it looked like a fire had just gone through the área. Although on ‘orange alert’ the last eruption was in 1999.

The menacing Volcan Cerro Negro.

At the entrance to the park we found a little shop and bought four beers (one for having survived the trip there and one for after the surf).  Having got this vital bit of work out of the way we were kitted out in our prison orange overalls and safety goggles to help stop the ash and pebbles from blinding you. Then came the crème de la crème, the super advanced high tech volcano surfing boards, guaranteed to protect you from gasses, extreme heat and extreme awesome for the surf down…No, not actually; the boards are in fact pieces of plywood which have a rectangular piece of tin nailed beneath it so it can slide smoothly and a piece of plastic rope connected to the front which you pull up to allow the stones to slide under your board.

Team eXtreme ready to go...

 Sorted! Now for the walk up the volcano… Well it is dead everywhere and you walk along this path made of small rocks from the volcano, they are all black, hence the volcanoes name. So we walked along this path for a while as our guide explained about the volcano’s history. After walking for about half an hour we came to a ridge and as we got to the top of it we were met with a site out-of-this-world. The volcano crater beneath us was steaming and spewing out sulphur all over the place and fine layers of yellow crystals adorned the rocks alongside pure white crystals (obviously crystalized sulphur and calcium deposits). This also heralded the summit of our walk, we just had to follow alongside the ridge to the designated surfing area.

*Just out of frame tons of lava and dragons

Having arrived we saw there was a group ahead of us so we wandered around the volcano taking photos and chatting, we even stumbled across a toad living near the top of the volcano ridge, I wonder how he lives with such sensitive skin with such harsh gasses around. I mean I could feel the burn in my throat, lungs and eyes.

So now having explored the area the moment of truth arrived. Our instructor took her board and showed us how to sit on it and how to steer (this entirely involved of sticking your feet into the ground until you swung in the desired direction). We were also told the speed records for the run and the prizes for breaking one of the records, for the men it was to hit 80 km/h and you would win five free mojitos, for the girls it was an astonishing 87 km/h which was claimed by an Israeli girl who didn’t understand the safety instructions before and just sat on her board and flew down the hill! 

Hypno-toad does not need air! All Hail the Hypno-toad!

With an air of cockiness our grouped moved to the surfing area, a few people volunteered to go first so we watched as they slid down, both of them wiped out several times and neither seemed to get any significant speed. After a few more people Chrissie and I decided that it was our time to go, so we volunteered and walked up to the edge side by side. We sat down on our boards and pushed off, I (Rob) shot ahead initially and thought to myself the mojitos are in the bag. That is until I hit a speed wobble which resulted in me eating dirt and rolling down the side of the volcano with my board trailing behind.

I just realised we get free beer & cookies at the bottom :)

"Watch how fast I'm gonna go!"

 As I came to a stop I shook myself off and looked up only to see Chrissie barrelling down on me at a rate of knots! I leapt out of her way as she sailed by me at about a hundred and fifty miles an hour, only to wipe out herself! We clambered back onto our boards and tried to get our speed up again before the spot where they measure your speed but alas due to a few more falls and the ground being stickier due to the moisture neither of us won the coveted mojitos! This may have been a blessing however, as we learnt the previous week or so ago a person was trying to break the record for the guys, he managed to equal it before coming short just after they had clocked him at 80 km/h and breaking a wrist, collar bone and several ribs, but apparently he had his mojitos before they took him to the hospital…

This is exactly how Rob dodged Chrissie.

Our times were not that impressive (25 km/h more or less) but we still had celebratory beers on the way home and the hostel even gave us two free mojitos each for effort! 

One more thing...

Village People called, they want their member back!