San Juan del Sur / Ometepe Island 🇳🇮

We are on the way from San Juan del Sur to Isla de Ometepe. I'm sitting squashed on very small seats in the chicken bus - former American school buses that connect various places here in Nicaragua and Central America. The good thing about it is that almost every route costs around $1 per trip, no matter how far. The not so good thing about it is that the buses are actually made for small people, such as school children. Who would have thought. However, they diffuse their charm. And I like traveling that way.

Previously we traveled with a small shuttle, which cost us about $50 more, but also saved us 10 hours of bus travel. Often only the larger cities are connected here, since Monteverde is in the middle of the rainforest, the onward journey was a bit tricky.

In any case, we should also mention the Taiwanese woman on our shuttle, who apparently understands neither Spanish nor English. So I imagine traveling would be really interesting without being able to even begin to understand, let alone speak, either language. But that shouldn't be my concern. Anyway, we were on our way from Liberia (CR).

When she suddenly jumped out of the shuttle gesticulating wildly, said goodbye to us with a few inexplicable hand movements and then finally got out on some big street somewhere in Nicaragua and did something. However, there was neither a stop nor anything else that seemed useful to us. Anyway, she seems to have an idea. So let's let them go. The prize for the most outrageous person, however, goes to the Dutch couple who unfortunately also had to take the same route as us. Because each of her sentences began with: I am curious about.

It's always strange to cross borders in these countries, so this one was also a bit strange. When we arrived in Peñas Blancas we first went out of Costa Rica and into Nicaragua.

Means: leaving the country, paying money. Enter, pay money. Getting some piece of paper for something, of course: paying money. It's not about the amount, more about the cash. Because it should soon become clear that you can prepare better. We were empty

The fascinating thing for me, however, was that the Taiwanese woman suddenly appeared out of nowhere and of course needed help.

Unfortunately, we set off slightly unprepared, without the necessary tourist card and with too little money. And then got stuck right between the borders. Luckily we meet dhinesh, a guy from India who is super nice. And pump us the money we need to get into Nicaragua and not have to go back to get money. Lucky. But here too we see that somehow it all works.

Gritting our teeth, we had to admit that the curious aunt had a point, but that all her worries were a bit exaggerated.

But well, it worked.

With Dhinesh and Andrea, we continued on together (India and Switzerland) and when we arrived in San Juan del Sur, we first went to a beach, which was unfortunately extended a bit due to the rain. And the next day started with a small headache.

We spent a total of three nights in San Juan sel Sur, which is probably the most expensive and popular surf hotspot in Nicaragua, right on the Pacific. Compared to other hotspots on earth, it is of course comparatively cheap.

We lived in a rather poorer corner of the village, where the people are once again hard to beat in terms of warmth. Our hostel was pretty good too. Intense view and nice breakfast and spacious rooms.

The main thing to mention here is that we took a few surf lessons again. For me it was mainly about overcoming my trauma from Bali when I followed the huge idea of jumping into waves that were way too high as an absolute beginner.

Be that as it may, it was really fun, I could imagine doing it every now and then and the feeling of walking in waves has definitely gotten better. But it won't be my top favorite sport.

Afterwards we go to Isla de Ometepe, an island formed from two volcanoes that looks like an 8 from above. I'm glad we went to Nicaragua! The sight of driving towards the island is absolutely surreal.

We follow the tip and rent a quad; here it should be possible to visit a waterfall and shorten the route by 2/3 if you have an all-terrain vehicle. That's how it is! We spend the first evening relaxing in a small bar right by the lake, but go to sleep early because these days are always boring. The next morning I was even fitter and went to the waterfall in question on the quad bike. I took off. It's fun and we actually get pretty far up, we knew somehow, but it's still impressive how something like this pushes itself up the mountain.

It takes about 40 minutes to walk up the riverbed through the jungle and it quickly becomes clear that the journey was more than worth it. We both jump into the water and I notice that instead of a pleasant massage, I get a set of hot ears from the falling water.

The actual plan afterwards was to visit a natural pool, but karma wanted it differently. So we just turned off because we were hungry and mentioned that there was a nice bar with food here at Playa Mango. Dhinesh and Andrea are sitting there without an appointment and we spontaneously go on a kayak tour into the mangroves and stay on the water until the sun goes down. Despite really exciting flora, fauna and small caimans. The most impressive thing about it is the panorama of paddling between two volcanoes while the sky changes into a different color every second.

Spectacular. You can probably still work on the skills of kayaking together.

At the beginning of the text we were on the way to Nicaragua, now we are already on the way to Granada.

Tomorrow we'll fly to the Caribbean, where we'll get various diving licenses and then let our souls unwind. However, the weather forecast is not that good.

In total we will spend another week in El Salvador before we head home.