Adventure Unknown

From Antigua, we booked a tour to take us through parts of Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. This gave us a nice break from constantly having to check and organise transportation between cities and work our way through border crossings between countries (neither of which are ever straight forward over here).

Honduras

Copán in Honduras was the first stop after a 4am departure on the first day of the tour. We arrived there early in the afternoon to check out the town and go for a drink before having dinner. It was the first time we tried Pupusas – a typical Salvadorian dish widely available across Central America. The hotel had a nice communal area which was the perfect setting to teach everyone on the tour a card game we were taught at Lake Atitlan. Little did we know that everyone else in the group would love it such we had to play it every single night for the rest of the tour! The next morning we went on a guided tour of the Mayan ruins of Copán which are famous for the sculptures and carvings. This was really the only stop in Honduras, even though we went through a small part of Honduras again on the way from El Salvador to Nicaragua.

El Salvador

In El Salvador, we had 2 stops on the tour: Suchitoto close to the borders with Honduras and Guatemala, and El Cuco on the coast – the first time we were on the Pacific Ocean since Peru almost 3 months ago.

Suchitoto is a popular weekend destination with Salvadorians from other parts of the country and felt very authentic – besides one other small tour group we didn’t see any foreign tourists there. We checked out the (man-made) lake and went for a hike to a (dried out) waterfall with volcanic rock formations. As per usual, Joe and Julian attempted to give Eliza a heart attack by climbing up the volcanic formations.

In El Cuco we stayed in a beach resort and mostly just relaxed and played our beloved card game. It was also the perfect setting (apparently) for our fantastic tour guide Fernando to introduce us to a local tradition for NYE and / or birthdays: get drunk, stuff a piñata and have fun smashing it. Turned out it’s a great tradition! On the way to Nicaragua, we stopped and learnt how to make typical Pupusas in a cooking class.

Nicaragua

Our first stop in Nicaragua was León, a city which has a lot of history to offer and we spent most of our time walking around enjoying the architecture and beautiful murals.

To get to Granada, we had to take the public colectivos and stuff all the luggage in the little aisle between the seats. Whilst we were fairly used to the lack of personal space on colectivos and chicken buses at that stage, it was quite the experience for most of the other people in our group! From Granada, our tour guide organised a shuttle bus to Volcán Masaya where we were able to watch magma in the crater for a while – an amazing experience which photos and videos can’t really do justice!

The tour finished in Granada and after staying for another night and hanging out with most people from the tour, we made our way to Lake Nicaragua to take a ferry to Omotepe Island. Unfortunately, we weren’t aware that buses run on an extremely limited schedule on the island on Sundays, and on top of that we were told some incorrect information by some locals. So, after wasting 2 hours to wait for a bus that didn’t exist, and another hour on the side of the road to trying to hitchhike (not easy when most people on the island get around by scooter or ATV), we eventually got picked up by a friendly truck driver who took us to our hostel. Unfortunately, there was only 1 spare seat in the front, so Joe and Julian had to jump in the cargo area. After almost 10 hours and catching 8 different types of transportation (2 taxis, 4 buses, 1 ferry and the back of a truck) we eventually made it to our hostel.

Omotepe Island consists of 2 volcanoes and the main thing to do there is hike up to the top of them. Unfortunately, the peaks were completely covered in clouds the whole time we were there so we decided to go on a bike ride, go cayaking and swim in a pool with natural spring water instead. This was also the last stop we had with Joe, who went straight to San José in Costa Rica to fly back to New Zealand.

We continued on our own to the Pacific Coast again, to relax for a few days in a nice Airbnb near San Juan del Sur before making our way to the border and into Costa Rica.