Hello World! I’m writing to you today from our hotel room in El Rama, Nicaragua…yes, from inside our hotel room…that’s because we found a great deal on a used Toshiba netbook and snatched it up. This will be a huge convenience for us, allowing us to do what we need to do on our own time instead of when we happen to be somewhere that has a computer.
So, speaking of El Rama, we aren’t even supposed to be here…today (sept 14th) is Nica’s independence day and business is not “as usual”. As usual, I’m getting ahead of myself…we are currently on our way to the corn islands. Most people fly to the islands, seeing how this is bit out of our budget we had previously decided not to go. Until we decided that it would be worth 10hrs on bus and 10 hours on boat to get there for super cheap! So, when we decided this, we were enjoying a stay on Ometepe Island (a decent size island in Lake Nicaragua)(island count – 5), considering the boat schedule we extended our stay to four nights there, then took the ferry an hour to the mainland, from there, a 4 hour bus trip to Managua, where we scored this sweet computer. From there, it’s a 5-7hr bus trip (depending on if the bus driver tricks you onto the wrong bus…and how many marching bands are on the highway for independence day) to El Rama. The road ends here and it’s an 1 ½ hour boat ride down the river to a town called Bluefields on the Caribbean coast. Because of previously listed circumstances, we missed the last boat to Bluefields and we posted up in a cheap hotel next to dock with tickets for the 5:30am boat in hand. You see, the boat to the Corn Islands only leaves twice a week…if we miss this sucker tomorrow, we will have to move onto Costa Rica…I have confidence!
So anyway…been having a lot of fun lately…and lots of exercise, I wanted that to be my theme for today’s blog actually. As you readers know, we have been quite active for the entire trip but finding gyms to do regular muscle building exercise has been tough…but, we have been on quite a roll lately. Starting off in Alegria (flower capital of El Salvador) while Sophia was handcuffed to the toilet (food poisoning) I had plenty of time to exercise…I started with a jog to Laguna Alegria…which had to be the steepest jog in history. Next day, I jumped on Mens Health.com and copied down 2 body weight exercise routines…I had done some of these back home but had forgotten how effective they are! 2 days later, we landed in Granada (which I think Sophia wrote about as well) and there we found a complete personal wellness center called Pure…we cruised our Scooters over and had an awesome workout! I did the fitness test workout…pure torture…pull-ups, dips, pushups, sit ups and squats…just ask Jeff or Mario and they will tell you all about it. The difference when exercising here is the humidity, even when I went to the gym in Texas, it has a/c! Here, you leave the gym looking like you literally just came out of a swimming pool! The next day we came back, Sophia did Yoga and I did weights and then cardio (there was a puddle of sweat next to the treadmill when I finished!). After completing our second round of Spanish class (class count -3, Spanish, scuba & surfing) in Granada we were off to Ometepe Island…a four hour ferry ride later we arrived, about 25 tourists with big backpacks all walk off the boat and towards the 2…yes 2 taxi’s awaiting our arrival…Sophia and I end up in a compact passenger van with seats for 7 and 11 people crammed in (that includes one guy on the roof)…about 10 minutes into a super rough road, we bottom out real hard and the van is done, time to strap on the packs and hike into town, in the dark (and yes, the driver insisted we still pay for the ride…it was only $1 per person). Next day, we move into Hotel Santo Domingo and continue the exercise by renting mountain bikes to cruise the island…turns out, most the roads on the island are serious off roading, tons of rocks, mud, steep hills, it was wild! Besides the fact the bikes were horrible, ie, almost no brakes and broken derailleur’s it was great riding. Left me with sore, swollen hands and a preference to stand for a couple days, but still awesome and some of the best mountain biking I’ve done in years. At this point, we had already committed the next day to the 8hr + hike to the summit of volcano maderas. Sophia is gonna cover this so I’ll leave it to her.
With that…I Think I’m done for today…we have lots of boat riding tomorrow so I’d better rest up…this isn’t one of those nice Catalina Express boats…this will be closer to the kind you would rent to go fishing in lake Loveland. So wish us luck!
Brett
