'If you fall, let go of the board and protect your face. Remember, protect your face!'

And so to Nicaragua. Leaving Utila at 4am, after two days, eleven buses, two nights in less than plesant hotels and three 4am starts, we arrived in the beach town of San Juan del Sur. Right at the bottom of Nicaragua, very near to the Costa Rican border. I was exhausted. the only thing for it, the beach and a cold beer.
San Juan is a surfer town. It's full of gringos, cheap eats and great people. I planned on staying for four or five days. Eventually I left after two weeks. Staying in this awesome hostel called "the Surfing Donkey" nobody wanted to leave. It was cheap, clean, had a kitchen, there was a film room and a pool, morning cannonballs were mandatory, and the staff were cool. And just the name made you want to stay there. 

The best surfing beaches were around a 30 minute drive from San Juan, so after getting a briefing from some of the backpackers about the 'stingray shuffle' (I'll come back to that), we jumped on the truck. At first there was about 10 people, then 12, then 16, and so on until there was 26 people squeezed onto this truck. Now this truck was an open backed standard truck with metal bars on the cab and over the back for surfboards and other gear. To fit everyone in, 6 lucky people were chosen by the driver to sit ontop of the metal bars of the cab. And one of those lucky people was me. I was in for an interesting journey. Now for those of you who are thinking, what on earth?! Should rightly thinl that. The worst danger was being decapitated by unruly tree branches and power lines.. After surviving the journey to Playa Hermosa, I was ready to hit the waves.
Back to the stingray shuffle. Basically, at this time of year stingrays are abundant along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. These things are extremely painful if you get stung and the pain has been compared to that of a severely broken leg. According to the surf instructors the best remedy is to take two shots of rum, place your foot in the hottest water you can stand and then curl up on a hammock with a cold beer and wait out the pain. Luckily I didn't have to try this because I did the stingray shuffle, which involves shuffling your feet accross the sand to ensure you don't stand directly ontop of a stingray cause it will then sting you, and I was lucky. Unfortunately a guy who was with us on the beach got stung and man, he was in pain!
I tried a bit of surfing. And was utterly useless. I could not for the life of me get the pop up. So, I switched to body boarding and had a blast! but fear not, I have not given up on surfing. Machrihanish here I come! By the time I return to Central America next year I'll be pro.....
That brings me to some good news. For a while I've been thinking about taking another year off from studying and travelling some more. And so I decided to defer my entry to University to do just that. And I'm happy to say that I was accepted into Glasgow university to study economics and german starting in 2014. So next year I'll be returning to Central America and carrying on South, finishing up somewhere like Chile or Argentina hopefully.

During my time in San Juan I finally decided to get rid of my beloved braids. This was going to be no easy task, so I enlisted a few friends to help out. Unbraiding my hair with the extensions in it took hours. And as we continued taking them out, we dicovered that dredlocks had started forming. Not good. My whole hair was like this. I had three choices; dread the rest of my hair, shave it all off or try and comb them out. I went for the last option, as I idnt particulary want dreadlocks and shaving off all my hair was a little drastic. Although I had no shortage of volunteers offering to shave my head. Eventually after 2 days of on and off combing, and what felt like half my hair falling out I was dreadlock free and back to normal. I miss my braids but I definitely don't want to have to go through that again...

The time in San Juan went by in a blur of beaches, swimming, cannonballs, bbq's, good food, sunsets and chilling. I made some brilliant new friends and I'll be returning to this idylic spot on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua next year for sure. And when I finally left. Two weeks after I arrived. I was sad to go. It truely was the best stop on the trip.

From there we headed north, through the capital, Managua, not the safest place to take a taxi and onwards to the town of Leon. A large town of 150,000 people in the north west Leon is home to Volcano Boarding. This is the sport where you surf the regions most active volcano on contraption made of metal and wood. As this is exactly why I went to Leon. I was ready to surf Cerro Negro.

We all piled into the truck, signed the disclaimer and off we went. This was another interesting truck journey. The roads were terrible and we were flying along them at wht felt like 100km an hour. Bouncing all over the place, beer in hand, listening to music. The views were beautiful and the atmosphere brimmed with excitement and fear. I, for one, was stoked. I couldn't wait to fly down this volcano. We were told that the fastest recorded descent was 91km/hr. Which is crazy!! I never thought I'd be able to beat that but I wanted to go as fast as I could. Cerro Negro is a large, looming mass of black volcanic rock. We were given our orange boiler suits, goggles and boards. The boards were heavy and extremely awkward to carry. Hauling them up the steep, crumbling rocks in the intense heat was challenging. The volcanic rock acts a bit like sand, it's extremely difficult to walk on and every step you take you slide backwards. On-top of this there was a forceful, gusting wind which caught your board and almost blew you off the volcano. But, if you put your board behind you, it acted like a sail and blew you up the volcano. Handy. Eventually at the top, we stopped to admire the view. You could see directly into the crater of the volcano, it was a large one, filled with yellow patches of sulphur and gas leaking out of the cracks in the crater. Looking out over the plain you could more volcanoes in the distance and a beautiful mountain range behind us.

Once we got our breaths back, it was time for business. On went the orange boiler suits, the goggles and then came the breifing. How to sit on the board, how to stop, turn and what to do if you fell off. The slope was pretty steep, 45 degrees was mentioned, and the ground was nothing like sand. It was rocks. From tiy little pebbles to stones the size of your fist. I would not like to fall off at hih speed on that. The advice was, let go of the board, and cover your face, remember to cover your face. This, would be very important for me, as I would find out later.

We all lined up. There were two runs about 30m apart. I was in the second one. The adrenaline started flowing as I saw the slope I was about to throw myself down on this wooden sled. After the 5th person I was up. The guide shout go and off I went. Sitting myself down on the board, putting my feet on and I was off. Slowly. The start was very slow and then gradually, gradually I started getting faster and faster. Until I was flying. Or I felt like it. The bottom was getting closer and closer and I was steering myself gently and then BAM. Wipeout. My board tipped over. And I was rolling, bouncing, rolling, bouncing down this volcano. All that was going through my head was 'protect your face, protect your face!'. I must have rolled 10/15m because when I opened my eyes and uncovered my face I was at the bottom. And greeted by a round of applause. Apparently my wipeout was a pretty decent one. And I can away with only minor injuries. A few bruises and cuts on the face. Adrenaline pumping through my body, I chucked off the goggles and  went to get my speed. A respectable 47km/hr. Not bad. Getting rid of the boiler suit I sat back and watched the carnage. Some people flew down, others went rather more cautiously almost crawling down the mountain, I wittnessed a few more spectacular wipeouts, but still mine remained top. The top speed from that day was an impressive 70km/hr from a retired american teacher, followed closely by a young, german guy who was miffed someone 40 years older than him did better.

We finished off the day with some volcano cookies, and after stuffing my pockets with Cerro Negro rocks we headed off on the bumpy journey home. What a last day of a holiday. The next day I was headed back to Honduras and back to work. It was a fun filled two months and a holiday I'll never forget!

Photos of San Juan to follow. technical difficulties. Again...

T