Honduras and Nicaragua

Honduras and Nicaragua

As you may be able to tell by the title somewhat less happened in these weeks then in the rest of the trip.  A large part of this was due I believe in the flight we took from Vietnam. Make that 4 flights and 2 Wednesdays. Yes 2 Wednesdays. We went back in time enough that Wednesday lasted forever. And I didn’t get to sleep during any of it. 46 hours of travel…. And a few naps later we landed in Tegucigalpa and were standing in the reception of what was supposed to be a nice hotel beside a bus station with somebody who spoke English.

None of these things was true.

Needless to say it was a bit of a hassle to work out what was going on and how to fix the situation. Our newly purchased Spanish phrase book was like gold at this moment and we eventually got to bed.

By the time we navigated the buss to the coast the next day all we wanted to do was sit on the beach and sleep for the next 3 days…. So we did.

Yes. That is the story of Honduras annoying bus transfers and sitting on the beach. It was very nice beach. Well the sand was very nice and the water would have been nice if not for the excessive amount of dead plant matter in it. Overall though it was good beach time. After the beach we had similar problems trying to get to Nicaragua. With the help of the guy at our hotel we planned out our rout from laCeiba to Managua… only to find out once we got to tagusigalpa that the bus only departs on Friday every other week…. Well it was that week but it was Tuesday. Why does this happen? Are you not a bus company? Why is this not written anywhere? In the end we treated ourselves to a nice hotel with a pool and continued to Nicaragua the next day.

Once in Nicaragua we realized that unless you want to take a chicken bus the only option to get from city to city is to higher a car. At this point being fairly annoyed with transportation and feeling more and more sick we opted to just take a shuttle to a ferry port so we could escape onto omneteppe island.

This is a smallish island in lake Nicaragua. It has 2 volcanos. One is active and one is dormant.  We stayed at a really nice camp ish style hostel. They had some of the best oatmeal ever on the breakfast buffet and a lot of very comfortable hammocks. It was definitely time for some quality lounging.

Aside from the quality hammock time we spent some time riding our bikes across something that could be roughly called a road. Well if you want to be mean to self respecting roads everywhere. More like mud with boulders in it. But regardless it was bumpy and hard to ride on. We eventually made it to this water fall place and hiked up to see the splendour of water falling off a cliff.  The next day I was still feeling sick so we went kayaking to what can only be described as the place where they sing kiss the girl in the little mermaid. It was so beautiful. They called it a swamp but that word really doesn’t do justice to how beautiful and green and full of birds and viney things this place was. It took us an hour to paddle to the magic kingdom and another hour and a bit to just float through and marvel at how nice it was.  The following day erin hiked up a volcano. Still feeling sick and really not in the mood to go for a hike I spend almost the full day in a hammock. I was very proud of how little I accomplished that day and good times were had by all. On our last in Nicaragua we went for a 2 hour walk down to a place called the water eye. It was basically a natural spring were they built a pool out of natural rocks and sand around it. Boy was it nice. The water was exactly the temperature you would want it to be. Cold enough to be refreshing but not cold enough to make you gasp at all when you jump in. it was crystal clear and the trees / rocks all over the place made it feel magical. This place was for sure worth the walk.  On our way out of Nicaragua we had to first catch a speed boat from our hotel over to the main ferry terminal. This seems like a fairly routeen procedure. Now it should be noted that we were running late because they had a lot of trouble locating erin’s boots and laundry.  When we got to the ferry terminal I suspected that we were going to dock get off the little boat and then get on the big boat… as it tuns out they just like to skip the middle man. More or less we just pulled up beside the ferry and they opened a door in the side of the boat and we climbed in this way… yeah I was shocked too. The weirdest thing is it seemed like they had done this before. Not just once or twice but like this was the standard…. Oh Nicaragua. You make me laugh.