La Luna Llena de Nicaragua

New stories, new stories! And a big tanx to all your nice remarks that I read on my weblog, you don´t know how fun it is to read these warm words!

Costa Rica is the place where I am right now, to be more precise: San Pedro, a suburb of San Jose which is the capital. Stefany, my travelfriend, works here in a radio-educational project from Liechtenstein and I was invited to come over for a few days. We were so happy to see eachother again! She works at this very moment and I explore the town and shoppingmalls :) Quite fun to be in ´normal´ shops after some months. It´s really obvious for me that I´m in a better developed, richer environment now, for the western-classy clothes people wear, the enormous amounts of christmaslights and the wellfunctioning internet.

Let me tell you about the first place I visited in Nicaragua after my delightful weekend in Antigua, which was Granada (pic at right, you see they build the christmas tree at the left, a happening that gathered the whole town for two days in the central parque). I was quite happy to be there after a two day busride through El Salvador and Honduras, although I had good fun with some people there. It´s funny how it works travelling alone, cause you never really are. On the one hand, there are the other backpackers with who you get in contact very easily because you have the same interests and problems (exchanging money at the border, find a good place to sleep, a safe bus etc etc), on the other hand you have the native people who usually are quite interested in who you are and where you´re from and with whom I can practice Spanish conversation. So, after talking two days I was quite exhausted ;)

Granada is a beautiful colonial town, with a nice church and processions of the a statue of the virgen Mary every night (a ´costum´ carried out by the churches in town), quite a big happening with fireworks and music. Baby´s, pubers, mothers, grandfathers with walkingsticks, the whole family is present. Fireworks are all around every place I visit and OH the noice it makes. People would laugh very loudly about tvspots like ¨Je bent een rund als je met vuurwerk stunt¨ because you can get it as easy as candybars and do anything you want with it. I visited a museum, walked around and had fun with other travellers in the hostel, watched somes movies. Quite relaxed.. So it was time for a bit of workout.. that I found on Isla de Ometepe, a gorgeous wild natural island in the Lake of Nicaragua, consisting of two vulcanos. In Hacienda Merida, the hostel, I found a nice bunch of people that I did a mountainbike tour with, hiked the vulcano, played cards with and watched la Luna Llena at the dock on the lakeside. These sporty things were quite challenging for me. That´s got probably to do with the fact that we started too late mountainbiking to a spring, so we had to return in the dark. There´s hardly any light on the island, and the track was only uphill-downhill ´on the rocks´.. Fortunately the fireflies led the way but could not prevend some crashes with blooded knees. As for the vulcano-hike (which was supposed to be ´good fun´, thanx Brent and Shawn): 9 hours of climbing, crawling through the mud, over and under trees (see green pic left), 7 degrees, rainy, no view and an immensely steep descend to the foggy craterlake - it was only later that I found out people died here - with TOO SMALL shoes... is not really my thing.. Ofcourse I was very proud I climbed this 1500 m steep high vulcano (see pic right down). And I didn´t know how soon I´d pack my backpack to head towards San Juan del Sur, at the south of Nicaragua.