The Rich Coast

We loved Costa Rica. It was a bit more expensive than we have gotten used to in central america, but we met some great people and saw more wildlife than you could shake a stick at. We also visited a craft brewery!

At the Lake Arenal Brewery Co! At $5 a pint it wasn't cheap, but the beer was delicious.

We couchsurfed in the town of Grecia with Bryan, our awesome new friend. He organised a three day mission with a group of friends to the Liberia area. We jumped off rocks, swam at waterfalls, and did some serious partying. Get in touch with him if you are ever in Costa Rica, his company Free Riders can get you in to some serious adventuring: www.facebook.com/costaricafreeriders

We spent a couple days with a lovely family in Aguas Zarcas. They were the host family of our friend Nighty when he visited 10 years ago. We did our best to converse in spanish for three days, did some hiking, and played lots of monopoly with the grandkids.

Rest of Nicaragua

Some other photos we have scrounged from the Nicaragua archives.

First up, Volcan Masaya. A very active volcano in Nicaragua's oldest national park. The recommended stay at the crater is five minutes due to the huge volume of sulphuric smoke being pumped out. Someone said that it is one of the world's greatest natural sources of greenhouse gas. Maybe someone could Google that and let me know if it is true. There are also some unusual parrots that have adapted to the toxic gases in the crater, and live below the rim (we didn't actually see them, Kellie took a sweet photo of a vulture though, see below).

We also highly recommend Lago Apoyo, a beautiful and unpolluted lake near Granada... unpolluted lakes can sometimes be hard to come by in central america. We spent a very lazy couple of days here. Torrey was doing his best to stream the cricket, settling for cricinfo text updates at times, while the Blackcaps made their historic march through to the cricket world cup finals.

We rounded out our trip with a visit to Playa Gigante on the Pacific Coast. Torrey found himself some waves here, a fairly heavy beach break called Colorado, one hours walk north of Gigante. (We didn't actually get any photos here, sorry! You can blame the thugs who broke into the van- they didn't get our camera, but they did get the charger.)

CSI Nicaragua

From El Salvdor, we decided on crossing Honduras in a day due to time constraints. We have peeps we need to rendezvous with in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Colombia. Vehicular border crossings can make for a long day. Especially when the van's paperwork doesn't seem to be to a border official's liking. The Honduran section of the great Pan American highway also looks and feels like it has taken a lot of mortar fire in the last few years too. Muchas baches.

We met up with one such peep in Las Penitas, Nicaragua. Kellie hadn't seen her friend Mica since her Australian days, about four years ago. He had a couple friends with him called Jeremie and Ali who quickly became our friends too. We had a fun few days at the beach, then headed into the Northern highlands to visit a canyon. We did a five hour walk/swim down the Somoto Canyon, jumping off every rock we could. Then we said goodbye to Mica, who is making his way back home to Vancouver, and to Jeremie and Ali, who we will hopefully cross paths with again as we all make our way south.

Mica, Jeremie, and Ali enjoying the Gladiator on the way to Somoto Canyon

Unfortunately, the van got broken into in Matagalpa. The thieves made off with Torrey's backpack, in which he had unwisely stashed nearly all his valuables. The cops were helpful though in filling out a report, and they took it very seriously and said thefts like this are very uncommon in their town. They even took fingerprints off the van in case someone dobs in the thieves.

El Salvador

We had heard good things about El Salvador, and it didn't disappoint. We spent four nights on the coast, in the surf towns of El Tunco and El Zonte.

Views of El Zonte, a really chilled out surf town.

We visited the capital San Salvador and couch surfed with new our friend, heavy metal and theatre loving Raul.

Downtown San Salvador. These photos actually make it look much nicer than it is, 

as we found it to be quite dilapidated and lacking character.

Iglesia El Rosario, San Salvador. Ugly on the outside, beautiful on the inside.

We hiked the volcano Santa Ana, and were rewarded with stunning views of the crater lake and surrounding volcanic landforms.

Santa Ana volcano and views of Suchitoto, a nice colonial town.

The only place we didn't really enjoy was the southern coastal town of El Cuco. Just being honest here, we can't just talk about our favourite places on this blog. This town is in need of some serious environmental education. We saw a guy throw a bag of household rubbish in the ocean, only to get pushed ashore by waves and get ripped apart by dogs. Plastic trash is not uncommon on central american beaches, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, but this beach is in a particularly bad state.

Anywho, really enjoyed our stay in El Salvador. We got ourselves some cool souvenirs - a new hammock and blanket. They were made in the crafty little town of San Sebastian on one of these contraptions:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hJ6xpSCZk

Back on the Pacific coast

Our last few days with Tori were spent on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. We managed to find the surf town of El Paredon by asking people at every un-signposted turn. It turned out to be an hours drive west of Puerto San Jose on bumpy, sandy roads.

The owners of the new restaurant "El Tiburon" let us camp for free on their section for a couple nights (please go see them for a pizza if you are ever in town). We ran into our friends Sammy and Jesse from Antigua, and spent an awesome couple days with them, lazing by the beach, sneaking into cool hotels, and eating and drinking. The surf was good too.

We then drove south to Montericco, where we said goodbye to Tori with some happy hour Brahva beers, tequilas and micheladas. 

Kellie's two favorite Toreys enjoying the beach

The next day we set off for the El Salvador border. We took a barge 30 mins up river to avoid a three hour backtrack. It was unnerving, to say the least, seeing how little freeboard the barge had when the Gladiator rolled on. Everything worked out though, and we scored what turned out to be a beautiful nature cruise through wetlands with a view of the volcanoes.