Friday 23rd August
Another bad nights sleep, tossing and turning and then woken up by 2 nearby cockerels at around 3am in the morning. They kept on going until about 5.30 and I didn't sleep a wink in between those times. Liam on the other hand didn't seem to have much of a problem sleeping through it all so I wasn’t his biggest fan once he had woken up!
After getting a couple of hours sleep again we got up and got ready for our scooter hire day. Only we changed our minds because one, we had heard horror stories about breakdowns and times when you take it back and they find imaginary damage and keep your deposit. And two because we stupidly hadn’t charged out phone overnight so had no way of getting help if we broke down far away.
We found an 'American diner' for breakfast which proved very nice, and it set us up for our decision to rent push bikes for the day. Off we went on our 14km ride to one of the small nature reserves on the island. The weather was very hot and it was far from an easy journey but it was pleasant all the same. You could see both volcanoes for most of the way which was stunning because we aren't used to seeing them just yet. We rode past lots of wooden huts, lots of huts with thatched roofs and old stone buildings which looked run down but people had converted them into a home by draping stuff over the outer walls to make a roof.
For the most part the roads were fairly quiet, most people get around by push bike or scooter. Some people are in trucks with a few people normally in the trailer part on the back. There are lots of horses, as there are all over Central America it seems, and lots of cows and bulls and pigs. They seem to belong to certain areas but they're normally not penned up as such they just graze and wander around the area even in the road. We came across a few individual men on horses rounding their cattle up and leading them down the road which was good to watch. Everybody we passed had a smile for you if you smiled at them, they all seemed very friendly and willing to shout a hello or good day to you as you went past.
Due to some difficulty with the chains and the heat it took a bit longer then expected but we finally got to the park anhour and a half later after trying out more Spanish asking for directions. Liam's chain in particular was a nightmare in the last 20 minutes as it kept sliding off every 2 minutes which was very annoying.
We finally got there, and walked around the lagoon through the forested areas. It was great, we saw all sorts of different birds, lots more were heard than we saw. We saw a big bird that sounded so much like a pig we thought there were wild boars for a while.we could hear howler monkeys most of the time, and owls. We saw a few families of howler monkeys in the trees as we went round which we loved. There tended to be the male by himself making a bit of racket every now and again, and the ladies a lot of them with small babies, followed by other kind of smallish to mid sized ones playing in the trees. We saw some small babies but they were high up so I don't think we got great photos.
There were loads of massive Mosquitos everywhere which was a pain as we wernt expecting them and didn't have spray on. They were so big when you swatted them blood burst all over your legs and hands, which isn't new for us but it was even more than usual and really manky.
We went to a small "beach" which overlooked one of the volcanoes over the water before cycling back. It was a little bit cooler than before but the bike chains were still playing up so it was proving quite difficult for the first 20 minutes. Once we got to more even ground the chains managed better though so we managed to get a bit more speed. About half an hour in the Scottish couple we had met on the bus the day before came past us on a scooter and stopped to say hello. They said that they had moved hostels and just so happened to be in the same one as us so we agreed to meet them later to go for food.
Food was ok, a so called “Italian” mean which tasted not that brilliant, and we also met with another couple who were known to the Scottish from another hostel, and it just so happened they had been sat in front of us on one of the buses we had been on a few days ago.
The night wasnt that great, our room is right by the main common area and doesn't have windows, just grates with a thin curtain over them. So you can hear everything that's going on out there which wasn't too bad the night before, but tonight a big group of people decided to drink and become extremely loud with loud music until the early hours of the morning. They were stood right by our " windows" talking at a drunk volume and looking in through the glass of our door every now and again which was a bit disturbing and made for not such a great evening but theres not much you can do about that when you’re in a cheap hostel.
