WARWOUNDS AND TARZAN

Ok, here is the not so short but ever so sweet update on what we`ve been up to for the last few days... grouped by key activities, level of danger and adrenaline experiences and overall satisfaction levels...

LEON

The beautiful colonial town of Leon was characterized by three distinguishing characteristics:

1. VOLCANO BOARDING ROCKS! Chris, Karla and I, along with some highly spirited Swiss Misses summited an active volcano before storming down it on wooden boards at speeds of about 45km-h, it was awesome! Another traveler got some representative video of the experience, check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk1kVJeETVo. Not only did we look smoking hot in our yellow jumpsuits, but we acted the part too!
2. THROWING SEVEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF SMOKE
Like our man Dupree in You Me and Dupree, my sister assisted Chris on our first night in Leon to get the number of the hottest Nicaraguan local in town. We then proceeded to hang around Leon for the next three days to ensure our boy can make good during a beach rendezvous on the Tuesday. That he did, we have now been officially been christened WingMan and WingWoman extraordinaire, in fact we have lost the pleasure of his company as he has headed back to Leon to take things further with the lovely Ingrid. We feel like proud parents... Leon was a great party, I clearly had way too much Rum catching up with good mate Frank, but hey, a man`s gotta do what a man`s gotta do...
3. Finally escaping the rampant kids running around with their drums making conversation impossible and having some awesome steak on the last night, me and Sis left Chris to his romantic pursuits and headed down to Volcanic Isla de Omepete on Lake Nicaragua. Fighting off aggressive locals all the way (getting from bus A to bus B entails rugby scrumming about 20 guys who want to bundle you into their more expensive taxi) and doing the overcrowded local bus thing, we finally ended up on the island in a beautiful spot with great service, a lovely beach and a towering volcano over us.

ISLA DE OMEPETE

The beautiful Isla is composed of two islands with Volcanos in their centre. In ages yonker they were fused by a small stretch of land, we spent one night on Island 1 and then took a 2 hour bus to travel to another spot on Island 2 (a 20km ride, but the roads are godawful). Great rustic spot with nice hammocks and good sunsets, we settled in and waited for Chris to arrive with more war stories. Duly, the next day he pitched up and we got some bikes to go check out a beautiful nearby volcano. After a gruelling hike, they decided to leg back the 2kms to the hotel while I thought it is a really really good idea to try and circumnavigate the island with about an hour of daylight left.

Reaffirming my MENSA membership, after about an hour of cycling, I realized I had both overestimated my own abilities and the remaining sunlight, and underestimated the length of road to get round the island. To make a long story short, I also had no water, and proceeded to get a Coke at the local village. The shop in question had no change, I wasted about another half hour hunting down change for the lady, and fell myself to smithereens in the process. My last half hour of sunlight was spent bleeding off my shoulder and cramping in the legs, the sun sets around 17h30 around here... but I felt I was getting there, at least I was no on the exact other side of the island past halfway.

Pitch black darkness ensued, and after about an hour slowly cycling down the awful road with only the fireflies for companionship, I got to a small local town. An English speaking local helped me call Chris and Sis at the hotel to let them know I am still ok, then we proceeded to devise a plan to get me the last 15km to my hotel. Now understand, there are virtually no vehicles on the island, the nearest taxi was about 2 hours away and I was full of skin wounds dammit, this requires some TLC! My new best friend calmed me down with a beer or two, I was about to bravely hit the road in the darkness again when we elected to go with plan b.

This entailed me getting onto the back of the motorcycle of his mate (who had been having the beers with me) with me hoisting my bicycle on my back. So we must have seemed pretty comical... for the next three kms we were speeding down the road (way too fast), a local with a gringo behind him with a bicycle on his naked back in turn... definitely my most interesting voyage. Luck is a lady with a pickup truck, and I managed to find another lift for my last 10kms home... when I got back sis had kept dinner for me, a clean up swim and a size beer later and I was good as gold, overinflating my ordeal to the amusement of the rest of the crowd. As it was our last night with Chris`s companionship, lots of rum was necessary, and this also meant we did not make our intended 4 o´clock departure the next day...

BORDER CROSSING!

We eventually made it to the Costa Rican border by bus, ferry, taxi and foot, got our bus down to Las Juntas (the closest town as far as we could tell to Monte Verde, our next stop). Three hours later, this bus drops us off in the middle of f/&%king nowhere, we decided to splurge on a taxi and push on to the mountainous town of Santa Elena, close to the cloud forest of Monte Verde and the next pulsating activity, namely canopy ziplining through the cloud forest. After a bit of trouble finding overexpensive accommodations rounding off our 12 hours of travel, we collapsed in bed.

The canopy ziplining this morning was all we expected and more... vertical drops into the jungle of more than 100 feet as you speed across about 300m to the other side of the raving. There was also a massive swing where duly we did the Tarzan holler and almost wet our pants, especially my sister who is a screamer...

We did a strong morning, and now as I write this mail we are back on the road and ahead of schedule, we hit San Jose tonight and hope to still catch some turtles, sunset cruises and river rafting fun before she heads out on Thursday and I continue my travels...

Take care sports fans!