13, lucky for us

We awoke to find that our volcano neighbour had behaved himself all night and we’re awoken by the sun piercing through the bug screens. On mornings like this, which is almost every morning, we do sometimes wonder how we’re ever going to be able to return to “normal life” without going out of our minds every time the alarm goes off and our eyes open to the dark dusty ceiling; again. These days it’s a jungle, or desert, or a volcano, or the ocean, or mountains, or a river etc. One day we’ll have to return to “Oh, Cecil the seven legged spider is in that corner this morning, what a lovely change”. And then Cecil will die and what will be the point of even getting out of bed.

Shopping for food remains an every two or three day event. Because we mustn’t run out of the essentials.

Our plan is to visit another active volcano, but this one you can drive to the top for a whole 15 minutes before having to leave and make way for the next wave of people. The prime visit time is the evening where you can see the glowing most prominently so we kill some time at another local attraction, a DINASOUR PARK!  The hours just fly by when you’re gawping in awe at these concrete wonders, and imagining the fear of being pursued by one if it were made of flesh, bone and cold cold blood.

A local came to say hi. Dogs seem recently more drawn to us? Did they find out we’re a soft touch ever since we nearly adopted Muchacho a couple of episodes back? 

Volcano time, and en-route there is a museum with far more information about mantles, cores, continents, ocean crevices and all sorts of other such earthly features that you never cared all that much about. But, in keeping with Jenjen’s Cocoloco coconut fetish, a continental plate named “Plate Coconut” appears to be just off the coast…. We set sail next week.

There is also an exhibit to portray the fine taxidermy skills of the local population. Exquisite? No, divine.

Take my strooonnnggggg hhhaaannndddd.

To ensure that nobody ruins the experience of inhaling toxic sulphurous gasses whilst at the volcano, smoking is appropriately forbidden.

Time to go and enjoy our 15 minutes of lava goggling, but we find rather than the usual hundreds of cars per night we heard about, they are down to less than a dozen as a hangover of the unrest that came months ago. Score (for us). No time limit, we can stand for as long as we want dangerously close to this unpredictable bowl of boiling molten rock utterly hypnotised. The red darkens as crusts form before being overcome with a fresh glob of lava boiling up from below, over and over and over again. Lava lamps aren’t that far from the truth maaaannn, you don’t know, you weren’t there.

Apparently this was dubbed “The Gates of Hell” by the 16^th century Spanish, and before the Spanish, back in the day, young woman were sacrificed to appease “Chaciutique”, the goddess of fire. And we think Frodo sacrificed a gold ring into here or something as well?

Nicaraguan history involves plenty of political turmoil, and one attraction managed by the boy scouts is a castle prison thing from the revolution from a while back some time ago in the past what happened before now. We get a quick tour of the cells and meet a whole bunch of bats, and see a whole lot of graffiti. Not sure why it’s the scouts in charge of this place… probably best not to ask too many questions...

A nice view from the top, in all directions. We also find out that the history of this castle goes back further than we knew, back to the mystical time when Transformers came to the earth to do whatever they did.

More local traffic, this time self-preservation is apparent and that redundant form of media, compact discs, are being used as reflectors so you don’t hurt the donkey.  I think the one on the top right was Spice Girls, Jenjen recognised the 1s and 0s of her once favourite album.

Starting to stink, we head towards water for the long overdue weeklyish cleansing. On our way we get pulled over for the fourth time in a week at a police checkpoint. This one begins the same as normal, passports, license, vehicle import paper but includes an extra which we hadn’t been asked for before, “seguros”. That word rings a bell, isn’t that what the guy at the border kept saying before getting frustrated and walking away from us shaking his head? But what could it mean? Oh yeah, the mandatory insurance we accidentally don’t have. Uh oh. We play dumb, unbelievably convincing to the point where some might argue it isn’t even an act. Every time the policeman says seguros, Steve looks around confused, then says “si” and points at a different piece of paper. At one point even resorting to pointing at the Mexican import sticker on the windscreen. The policeman is getting angry, he doesn’t like this game (maybe because he isn’t very good at it) and every repeat of the request rises slightly in volume and firmness. He even muttered the work “imposible” which we took to mean “keep up the good work dummies, you’re winning”.

Ok, final try, we are asked for the thousandth time, Steve nods again pretending to suddenly realise what he is asking for and points at the Canadian insurance paperwork clevery disguised in English, especially the bit that says “invalid outside of Canada and the USA”. Unfortunaly it expired two months ago and numbers aren’t disguised. Fortunately this goes unnoticed despite the intent scrutinty the paperwork undergoes as we sit with our fingers crossed in our uninsured vehicle. A reluctant nod, the paperwork returned, we are free to go and by golly go we did.

We make to the lake and it is a gorgeous lagoon in a collapsed volcanic crater. Slightly salty pristine water surrounded by steep jungle. Weirdly it was possible to swim with your eyes open without any stinging or discomfort, perhaps perfectly matched salty chemisty to eye juice? A number of hostels and hotels live on the shores some welcoming nomads like us. Dogs have certainly learned we are a soft touch, easy targets for begging and scrounging. They watch us intently.

The owner told us his charges for use of the facilities, but generously suggested we tip the caretaker for parking and not pay him directly as the caretaker is “very low income” with a sad shake of his head. This coming from the mouth of the person who employs him! We nod in sad agreement at what a pity it is he doesn’t earn much money, if only something could be done about it.

Sometimes the blog is uploaded from a grotty carpark round the back of a supermarket where homeless go to pee, and other times it is from somewhere just a touch more exotic. Last time was the latter, now you see the lengths we go to just for you. We accept gratefulness in all forms, love, hugs, beers and even Facebook likes.

Still watching.

In the evenings is the best time for poaching a local delicacy. You must be stealthy, they usually hide high up in the trees but occasionally you hear one rolling in the bushes. They are hard to track down, so here you can see Steve in a half filled swimming pool scouting out this rare treat. COCONUTS!

Free kayak and paddle board use? Yes and yes. Jenny falls in love with paddle boarding and spends at least as much time stood up paddling as she does lying down floating in the sunshine as a reward for all the standing up paddling she’s done. Well deserved, we are on holiday after all!

On our reluctant way away from this blissful lake we get waved at in a “slow down idiot” kind of way, which isn’t that uncommon but in this case was for a bonafide reason. We lunged up onto the pavement and stopped for some crazy parade of people all dressed up marching through the streets in the middle of nowhere. It was pretty cool to see especially as we had a front row seat by mistake.

Suddenly it is our last night in Nicaragua and it is raining. It’s pretty serious, even the ducks are sheltering under a porch.

Another exotic fruit, this one is being examined by a funky looking monochrome squirrel. Either that or he squeezed under the vans leaky engine. Intrigued, we crack open our own fruit recovered from a pile under the tree to find that it is absolutely vile and gets immediately spat back out with that face being made that everyone always makes when they eat something disgusting. Did you just make the face to remind yourself of the face? Lesson learned, if the locals leave them in a pile you probably don’t want it.

Next border, Costa Rica. We make it without being stopped and asked for insurance again, or crashing and needing insurance... The process is painful, the huge number of “helpers” seem to do great business with people coming through quite happy to spend their dollars to save themselves the time and hassle and have someone run around collecting stamps for them. If it wasn’t for these helpers we suspect the process wouldn’t be so broken, they’re like a neck brace left on for too long such that you can’t remove it else your head would fall off. Or maybe it’s just that we don’t speak Spanish that makes life hard.

We left our van beside the police tent to ensure it was carefully watched whilst we stumbled around trying to track down the right person with the right signature for a couple of hours.

And finally we made it, into Costa Rica. It’s more expensive here but seems well set up for people like us. For example, we weren’t allowed to even cross the border until we had bought insurance. Good work Costa Rica, good work.

Map still a few days into the future for you