Granada, León, and Cerro Negro

I hadn´t realized so much time has gone by since my last post.

Well, on the 5th, I woke up early with a British guy doing the hike with me named Tom, and we met up with our guide. He took us on this trail up the 1600 meter Volcán Concepción, and it was an extremely steep climb. The trail literally had wildlife covering it, so we had to duck under branches and swipe away at brushes in the way. A couple of times I rubbed up accidentally against a plant that has a defense mechanism that stings your skin and then a small rash develops, but as long as you don´t scratch it, it goes away. As it did about 10 minutes later. It was pretty weird though. It was about an hour and a half literally climbing up the ridge of this volcano. I loved it. Once we got towards the top, there were so many dense clouds that our visibility was literally only about 5 meters, and the wind was blowing super super hard. Like hard enough to make me regain my balance and step with more authority so as not to get blown away. We climbed to an elevation of 1200 meters, so we were only about 400 meters away from the peak of the volcano. And once the clouds disappeared eventually, we could see the entire island of Isla de Ometepe, all the way across the lake to the port town, as well as the gigantic side of the volcano, almost to the peak. We ate the snacks we brought up with us and played around with the fierce wind, walking up a bit where the wind was really blowing, strong enough so that if you leaned into it, the wind actually supported your weight and balance. It was super cool. We walked down, got to our hostel, I showered and took a 3 hour nap, then began to party. There were a group of Canadians on the island who organized a movie (Shrek 3) and then a party with a DJ to raise money for the people on the island. So Tom and I and a couple locals went to the party and had a fairly decent night, not too late. I was wiped out from the exhausting hike.

The next day, I wanted to go see the San Ramón Waterfalls in San Ramón on the other part of the island. So Tom and I got on a bus that said San Ramón on it. An hour later, we were in another town just on the other side of Concepción instead of on the actual other side of the island, in San Ramón. I didn´t want to spend the whole day getting there and miss a night of partying in Granada, so instead Tom and I just walked to a nearby beach, went for a dip, and then just caught a bus back to Moyogalpa. We then took the ferry back to San Jorge, then from San Jorge to Rivas to Granada. I checked back into the Bearded Monkey and met up with all the people I had met the last time I was there. One guy from London named Sam was getting people together to party because it was his birthday, so I knew it was going to be a late fun night in Granada. We went to this club called Cafe Nuit that had decent live music and lots of locals, but there were about 15 of us around a table just drinking and talking about the most random stuff. When the club started to close, we decided to find this bar on the beach that was open 24 hours. The walk was far. At least 5 or 6 kilometers, which is even farther when you´re drunk. But it was super fun. We eventually got to this bar and stayed there until the sun came up. Then we caught a cab and got back to our hotel around 6ish. It was a ridiculous night to say the least. The sky from the sunrise was absolutely gorgeous. Because we were on the lake facing west, it was literally the best sunrise I think I have ever seen. Pinks and oranges and reds all mixed together to paint a landscape that would make anybody speechless.

The next day I sat around recuperating from the night before, really not doing much of anything besides reading and playing chess with random people. By the time night came around, I was ready to go out but every single other person was too wiped out and drained from doing what we did last night for 3 nights straight. So we just chilled watching a movie.

Then, I woke up, watched the Wimbledon Finals (great match) and made my way to the other cultural city that rivals Granada as Nicaragua´s prettiest, León. I checked into the Big Foot Hostel and signed up for a volcano tour for the next day. I was trying to figure out what to do when I overheard some guy telling another guy about a poker game going on around the corner. I sort of butted in and invited myself along, but they were cool with it. It was taking place at a tour company called QuetzalTrekkers, a non-profit organization that takes people on volcano hikes and donates all the money to charity. The guides were the ones running the poker game, they were mostly volunteers from American and Britain. The buy-in was 100 cords, and it was a cash game. 2 rounds of Texas Hold ´Em and one round of Omaha. After the first hour, I clearly had the largest chip stack. After a while though, I got tired and began to play poorly. After 4 hours, there were only 3 people left who had money and we decided to call it. I walked out with 450 cords, a very fun night with lots of good card-playing and interesting conversations.

The next day, Monday, I walked around the city for a bit, checking out the Parque Central, the church in the park, which is the largest in Central America, and grabbing small bites to eat. A bag of fresh mango is only 3 cords (less than a dime) - absolutely delicious! The church was very old but beautiful. What was more striking was its mere size and architecture from the outside, it´s just absolutely enormous. The town of León really isn´t that different from Granada. I think I like Granada more because there is more color to the buildings and it´s a bit smaller so there are more churches, which make it a bit more nice. Also it´s right on the lake which is awesome for partying. When 1 rolled around, the tour started. There were about 20 of us, and we all got into the back of pick up trucks which took us out of town and on a dirt road for about 45 minutes to the volcano. On the way, we passed by small houses and the children that saw us would wave and literally scream at the top of their lungs at us. It was just hysterical, passing by these kids that would just go AAAAHHHHH when we drove by. The volcano is called Cerro Negro, which is actually a name for a mountain, but technically, it is an active volcano. We grabbed our volcano boards, which were basically just planks of wood, our orange suits (which made us look like prison mates) and began the 40 minute climb up the volcano. The climb was not that bad at all, and the smell of sulfur and the feel of the steam coming out of the volcano made the whole experience that much more intense. Eventually, we got to the top, where we could see other mountains and volcanoes and just fields of green. Next we walked to a nearby crater and literally ran into it. Just ran right into the bottom of an active crater. Some people didn´t know where the path was though and ended up slipping and sliding down, and one Irish guy tripped and literally rolled down a bit. By the time he got to the bottom, his back was all scratched up. It looked hideous. Luckily, I got a good picture of it at its worst. The climb up though was the hardest part. The inside of the crater was really loose gravel so each time you took a step, it was like stepping in sand and your foot just sank down. It was like taking one step up and going down 3. So it took forever to go up the 120 meters that we ran down in about 15 seconds. Then it was time to board down the volcano. After learning how to sit and brake on the board by our guide, we walked to the edge and saw the steep steep drop. This was where the Frenchman (I forgot his name) rode a mountain bike to break the land speed´s world record. His bike ended up snapping in half and he suffered broken ribs, arms, etc...We were all really anxious to go after that story. The total distance is about 400 meters, and the guide said one guy she did it with got down the whole thing in 22 seconds, going 60 km/hr. That was the fastest she´s seen someone do it. 22 seconds! That´s so long. When it was my turn, I braced myself and headed down. I picked up some damn good speed, but my board started to turn and when I tried to readjust it, I ended up tripping a little. That wasn´t so bad. I had about 300 meters left to go, and so when I got back on, I was going straight, no brakes, picking up major speed. I was definitely going between 40 and 50 km/hr when I hit a big rock and went flying. I made it to the bottom though in one piece. Only after I got to the bottom did I feel burn on my arm and saw that I had scraped some skin off my arm pretty badly. That´s ok, makes for a good story. Got it going down an active volcano!!! Sitting down in the back of the pick up truck on the way back also let me know how sore my tailbone was after that experience. I´ll manage though. That night, the same guys that ran the poker game at QuetzalTrekkers ran a Quiz or Trivia Night at the hostel/bar/restaurant across the street from my hostel. They do it every Monday night, to raise money for poor children in the town. I joined a team with a guy I met who goes to Dartmouth named Zach, and also on the team was a guy from Med School, a Spanish business teacher working with the Peace Corps, a high school Spanish teacher who was valedictorian of his college, and a graduate from Penn State. So overall, we felt our team was definitely the most educated. The questions varied from movies to math to sports to Nicaraguan history to random insignificant trivia. One question was where is Jim Morrison buried, and Zach turned to me and said, "Who´s Jim Morrison?" I blew up in his face for a comment like that, but after the whole thing was over and done with, we had come from behind and were tied for first. The major questions we got wrong were ones on Nicaraguan history (like how many political parties there were in Nicaragua in 1990 and who the president was in 1909), and those were the questions that the other team, a group of Nicas, got right to get tied up with us in first. The first place prize was a bottle of rum, while the second place prize was a bottle of wine. We all wanted the rum, obviously. It was weird though, because normally they come up with a tie-breaker question, but because the two teams were one entirely of gringos and another entirely of Nicas, we each didn´t want the question to be biased so the other team knew it easily. Then a coin flip was suggested. I hated this idea, to leave it all up to chance. But the Nicas kept insisting. It was actually quite humorous to see the cultural differences between our two groups. Us, the educated American/British group, screaming to use our intelligence and a question as the tie-breaker, and the Nica group screaming to do a coin-flip. Eventually, the people running the event decided it would be best to just do a coin flip. The Nica group picked a side, the coin was flipped, and it landed on our side. We won the rum!!! Whoooooo, it felt damn good. My first Trivia Night in Nicaragua with a victory. We got some coke and killed the bottle in good style!!! It was a really fun night.

I decided to stick around here one more night because the guys are having another poker night, so I figured I´d leave León with a bit more money for the rest of my travels, then I´m going to go to Masaya to check out the volcano there and the infamous market which is great for shopping. Then I´m going to San Juan del Sur for some surfing and hanging on the beach. Then I´m going with Zach all the way south in Costa Rica to hike Costa Rica´s highest mountain, Cerro Chirripó. He has to leave soon and I really wanted to do it, just not alone. So it works out perfectly. I´ll try and put up more pictures soon, as I have taken a lot of them.