After two weeks of island life in Honduras my travels (which seemed to be slowly becoming a volcano tour of Central America) continued - next stop, Leon Nicaragua. Leon's a nice little city, full of picturesque old churches, good coffee and home to the new (and some say insane) sport of volcano boarding. I had heard that this was one of the must-do activities in Central America, so I signed up for it as soon as I arrived.
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| One of the many churches in Leon. |
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| Watching the sunset on top of the cathedral |
Volcano boarding involves hurtling down the side of a volcano on a 'volcano-board'. Although we were assured that lots of research went into the design of the boards, they were basically just a sled of a few pieces of wood nailed together. The volcano is question was Cerro Negro a relatively new active volcano (just over a 100 years old) with a cone that is made up of black volcanic sand and gravel which works well for volcano boarding.
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| Cerro Negro. You can see the path in the middle where volcano boards descend |
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| Geared up and ready to go. Nobody ever said volcano boarding was a glamorous sport! |
As I expected, looking at the volcano slope from below, imagining oneself sliding down it, and actually doing it were two completely different things. Once you were at the top, peering over the edge you realized how dam steep it was - think along the lines of a black diamond steep ski slope, but instead of nice soft snow you've got less friendly volcanic gravel to wipe out on! The 'protective' boiler suits and 'safety goggles' (which we couldn't really see out of) they gave us didn't do much to inspire confidence.
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| One of the girls about to head down. If you look closely you can see the truck at the bottom. |
Boarding down the volcano was quite the white-knuckle ride. Steering isn't exactly an option, and with rocks flying at you at high speed you have to guess how fast you're going. As you approach the bottom the there's someone with a speed gun measuring how fast you're going which often resulted in people (myself included) trying to go as fast as they can and spectacularly wiping out - I was still picking gravel out of my clothes days later. Once such wipe out involved Johnny, an English guy I was traveling with, who ended up catching up with the girl in front of him and ploughing into her at high speed. It later transpired that ironically she had been going extra slow for fear of getting hurt!
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| Two people flying down the side of Cerro Nego. |
The next day, thankful that we were still alive, Jo (an Australian girl I was traveling with) and I opted to experience a bit of local culture the following day - a cooking lesson with the locals. The two options on the menu were a local stew or iguana. Wanting to try something different and probably slightly influenced by the effects of the copious amounts of free mojitos we had received the night before, we opted for iguana. This would involve going to the local market, buying the ingredients (including two live iguanas), heading to some local Nicaraguans house to make some tortillas, prepare and cook the ingredients with the family (again, this included two live iguanas) and sitting down to eat the dinner we had made.
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| Shopping for the 'ingredients' at the local market |
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| Making some tortillas |
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| Saying goodbye to Albert the Iguana |
I'm not going to lie, killing and cooking an iguana was not one of the more pleasant experiences of the trip. When you get a burger you're never really thinking about where it came from, but when you're actually the one killing, preparing and cooking the animal you're eating, it changes things. I do believe it was a good experience to have (for me that is, not for the iguana) as these days we're totally detached from where our food comes from.
Dinner was iguana stew, which was actually quite tasty. I'd have to describe it as fishy-chicken with some random vegetables, some of which I'm still not sure what they were. As traumatic as it was I think the whole experience was well worth while - and we got a free dinner out of it!
As we were sitting down to dinner it suddenly dawned on me what day it was - Thanksgiving Day - this was to be our turkey dinner!
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| Mmmm, tasty iguana |
So after spending a day killing and eating animals we decided to balance the karma levels and help save some turtles. There's an organization in Leon who collect turtle eggs to prevent poachers stealing and selling them. They re-bury the eggs and release the turtles once they hatch. They invite people to come along and help release the freshly hatched turtles.
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| Relaxing trip through the mangroves |
We started the trip with a nice leisurely boat trip through the mangroves where P
hillip our guide told us about the area and the program they had put together to help save the dwindling turtle population. The trip finished as the sun was setting on the beach and we headed to reservation where the turtles were being hatched.
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| Getting ready to save some turtles |
When we arrived we found nine hundred baby turtles. They had just hatched that day and were all to be released that night.
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| Lots and lots of baby turtles! |
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| The little fellas were really cute, I was very tempted to stuff a few into my pocket but apparently that's frowned upon in these parts. |
Our job was to carefully gather up all of the little fellas and once the tide was right we released them into the sea. If any of the turtles survive into adulthood they will return to the very same beach and lay over one hundred eggs. I'm quite hoping that all nine hundred of our little fellas are still going strong somewhere.
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| One their merry way - waiting for a wave to take them away |
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| Johnny getting the torch out trying to show them which way to go |
We finished the evening with some fresh seafood and rum camping out on the beach. When I say 'camping' - we were actually camped out under some palm trees in the yard of one of the locals who welcomed us into his beautiful beach-side home.
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| The beach we were camping on. |
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| The view we woke up to |
After spending a few days in Leon, we made a quick trip to the city of Granada and then onto Isla de Ometepe to see out our stay in Nicaragua. Isla de Ometepe is a spectacular island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of lake Nicaragua.
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| Looking at the island from the shore you can see the two volcanoes towering over the water |
The island was so beautiful and there was so much to do there that we ended up staying for nearly a week. It was nice to chill out on an island for a while after staying in cities and doing so much traveling in the previous few weeks. The hostel we stayed in, 'Little Morgans' (owned by an Irishman funnily enough) was nicest I had been on all trip with some amazing woodwork which included a spectacular tree-house with an amazing view.
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| The tree-house in the hostel |
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| The view from the treehouse |
While on the island we got to do some cool stuff such as swimming in fresh springs, kayaking down one of the rivers on the island to see some caiman (like a small crocodile) and we rented quad bikes and toured around the 100 square miles of the island.
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| The view of the larger Concepción volcano from the lake |
But the one of the highlights of the trip to Isla de Ometepe was hiking the Maderas volcaono. Maderas is the smaller of the two volcanoes that makes up the island (only by about 200 meters) but it's one of the few places on the trip we'd get the chance to hike through a cloud forest.
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| Maderas volcano. The top of the volcano is engulfed in clouds |
The hike was amazing. Walking through lush green forests full of mossy trees and rich plant-life. Once we reached the top we were able to hike into the volcano and down to a lake that filled the crater.
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| Jo hiking through the woods with our guide |
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| The lake inside the crater of the volcano |
On the way down we were had an amazing view of the taller Concepción volcano which made up the other half of the island and we even had some howler monkeys to keep us company.
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| The view from the top |
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| Monkey! |
The week on the island was just another example of how beautiful Central America is. Nicaragua, with it's amazing countryside and great cities was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. As per usual we would have stayed longer if we could have but instead we kept moving south to see what the rest of Central had to offer.
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