Buenas Dias!
We have a bit to catch up on as we have been out of touch for the last week or so!
After Antigua, where we last updated, we chicken-bussed it west to Lago de Atitlan for a couple of nights. The lake was formed by a massive volcano and is quite beautiful, especially the views of the surrounding towns and volcanoes driving in and out. Here we hung out at an Israeli hostel (this place is full of Israelis) and learned a very serious card game called Yannif. We visited the famous and colourful highland markets at Chichicastenango where we spent the day insisting that no, we really can't fit a 5kg embroidered tablecloth or a huge rusty machete into our backpacks, and eating unidentified mushy chicken something-or-other wrapped in banana leaves. The next day we swam in the lovely warm and clear lake and then set off back to Antigua for a mammoth trip to the Corn Islands, Nicaragua.
We basically spent the next four and a half days travelling on buses and boats - all the way from Antigua to Guatemala City through El Salvador and the southern tip of Honduras to Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. From here we caught another bus east to El Rama, a river port town, then a boat to the Carribean town of Bluefields where we boarded a 7-hour ferry from hell to Big Corn Island, then a panga to Little Corn Island, where we collapsed in relief!
Luckily Little Corn Island was a chance to stop for a while - we spent the next six days there, learning to scuba dive and hanging out with pretty much the entire traveller population of the island (it´s low season, luckily, so everyone gets to know each other) plus some awesome local guys including our legendary scuba instructor Karl. One night the dive shop put on a $2 BBQ with unlimited fresh fish and salad - we got to try delicious meaty barracuda that had been caught only hours earlier. We scored a great, cheap hotel room after staying in a rat-infested hut for the first couple of nights and generally just had a good time. It was very relaxing (apart from the fact the island had no running water and very little electricity due to a broken generator - we had to draw water with a bucket from a well which was fun!) The highlight of course was the diving - just awesome - we got to do 4 open water dives as part of the PADI certification and on the last day the visibility was 30m, which was brilliant. Saw some really cool stuff including a lot of nurse sharks, huge elk horn coral formations, a porcupine fish plus lots of other fun stuff.
I´m ashamed to say we are not made of very stern stuff...we decided to give the ferry from hell a miss on the way back and flew back to Managua instead, saving ourselves a couple of days. That day we travelled to a colonial town called Granada which we explored for a day before getting a boat to Isla Ometepe, an island made up of two volcanoes in huge Lago Nicaragua. We are currently in a small village called Balgue, on Ometepe, staying on an organic coffee farm at the base of the smaller volcano.
We´ll try to add some more photos in a few days. Please email any news you might have :) Over the next two weeks we will be making our way through Costa Rica and toward Panama City.
Matt and Ash
xoxoxo
