Two nights in the university town of León

Paddy and I had planned to make a short stop in León, the second largest city in Nicaragua, on our way to Las Penitas beach on the Pacific coast. After Kalle and Sina decided to join us, it turned into two nights. The four of us had already chosen a hostel on the outskirts of the city, where we had booked a four-person room. After getting rid of the flood of incredibly pushy taxi drivers at the bus terminal and arriving soaking wet at the hostel (it had been pouring rain so heavily for about half an hour that the streets were flooded, then we had blue sky again), it quickly became clear to us that the four-person room would be quite cozy - it was hardly possible to put down our 4 backpacks, so we decided to book the adjoining room with a shared bathroom. At these prices, why not indulge ourselves :) In some hostels, you actually save only a few dollars if you sleep as a couple in a dorm. The only remaining mystery is how the hostel owners manage to make the rooms appear so spacious in the photos.

In the evening, the four of us wanted to explore the city a bit. Before that, we treated ourselves to a bottle of Flor de Cana, the most famous and delicious rum from Nicaragua, at the hostel, before heading into the city to get something to eat. In Nicaragua, it is quite common to set up a grill on the roadside and sell homemade food. However, the vegetarian options (Kalle and Sina are also vegetarians) usually consist of Gallo Pinto, salad, and if you're lucky, fried plantain or a slice of grilled cheese. Even though I'm otherwise very satisfied with that, we were extremely pleased with the selection of vegetarian food we had at the first stand - for the first time, I was faced with the difficulty of choosing what to eat, which was actually quite nice :)

After dinner, we went in search of a bar and quickly found one despite it being a Sunday. I'm not sure if we will ever get used to the music that is playing everywhere here (Raggaeton), but it gets better with every beer ;) In any case, we had a cool evening in our first Nicaraguan bar, played many rounds of Dobble with Kalle and Sina, and watched the people dance. What can I say, the people here can definitely move. And they do it a lot, willingly, and often very physically ;)

After a very restful night in León (it was way too hot in Granada and the fan sounded like a circular saw), we wanted to explore the city a bit the next day. Paddy immediately spotted a store with NBA jerseys, so he had to buy one, of course. León's most famous attraction is the roof of the white cathedral in the center, which we definitely wanted to see. Unfortunately, Kalle and Sina decided against it because the entrance fee was $3 - after a year of traveling, the two of them were pretty much at the end of their budget. Paddy and I went up to the roof of the cathedral together and didn't regret it - the view was great and the roof was simply beautiful! Unfortunately, Paddy had broken his sunglasses at the beginning of our trip and we missed them a lot on the cathedral - because of the white color and the sun, it was so bright up there that you could hardly keep your eyes open, so we took turns using my sunglasses. On a part of the roof, you even had to take off your shoes to avoid damaging the paint. Furthermore, as often happened, we had the roof all to ourselves - traveling in the off-season has its advantages :)

As mentioned before, Nicaraguans are the absolute masters of snacks - on the streets, you have no trouble getting a variety of snacks for little money. After ice cream, Quesillo (tortilla with cheese, pickled onions, and sour cream, a typical Nicaraguan snack - sounds tastier than it actually was), and filled Churros (which were delicious), we returned to the hostel.

In the evening, we took advantage of the oven (how much we were looking forward to having an oven) and made pizza. After that, we went to the cinema because Sina really wanted to see 'Joker' and had asked if we wanted to join. Luckily, the film was shown in English with Spanish subtitles, so I also had the chance to understand something :) A very good movie, highly recommended! The next morning, it was time to say goodbye to Sina and Kalle, who took an 18-hour shuttle to Guatemala in the evening. For us, it was finally back to the beach :)

For some reason, it has been a recurring theme on our trip that one of us, usually Paddy, gets a rash in various parts of the body. As long as it stays like that and we are spared horror stories like bed bugs in the hostel, we won't complain :)