Granada - Nicaragua

Next we headed south down the coast towards Granada, Nicaragua's oldest town which sits right on the waters edge of Lago de Nicaragua. More polished that Leon, we loved the architecture, the 'taxi' horse & carriages and the buzzy nightlife!

We arrived into Granada late evening and after almost finding ourselves on the street, we found a 'sweaty' hostel close to the center. Still, Granada's main street had a great atmosphere & we had a fab evening due to some tasty typico, a couple of bottles of local rum and some great company of course. We met Ben and Ben, two legendary Thompson air pilots, who were travelling the same route as us - great guys we spent a good week or so with in the end!

The next morning after an eventful night of little sleep and swimming pool antics, Ben & Phillipa hit the local spa and Pete and I did a walking tour of the city before hopping on the lunchtime ferry to Isla Omnitepe! All go...

Pics: Me looking windswept by the lake; Ben, Phillipa & Pete striking a pose; Ben with a cute boy who made him an awesome grasshopper out of grass; partying on the main strip & the cathedral in Parque Central.

Volcano boarding, Cerro Negro - Nicuragua

This was totally awesome! We did a quick hour climb up the back of Cerro Negro - armed with our volcano boards, an orange jump suit & goggles - ready to fly like the wind down the steep sandy slopes. The most active cyndra cone (a type of volcano) in the world, Cerro Negro is 160 years old and they usually go dormant at about 40 years, so you can see why she holds the world record!

Inspired by the world mountain bike speed record being won on Cerro's slopes, volcano boarding was born. Believe it or not, operating one of these homemade volcano boards - sans breaks - is quite complex. Jiggle both feet up in the sand constantly to maintain a 'safe speed', lift your left leg higher to go right, your right one to go left and if you put both feet up on the board, which must be at exactly the same time or you'll crash, you'll go up to 80km p/hr! Oh and don't whatever you do let go of the handle.

Phillipa and I made it down at quite an impressive speed, without any major incidents and laughing all the way - both Pete and Ben went for 'feet-up' pure speed, and pretty much instantly stacked their boards and cruised to the end, which definitely made the girls the winners!

All in all a brilliant day, check out the jumpsuits in these pics. If you don't mind a mouth full of rocks and sand, we'd recommend it!

Leon - Nicaragua

An old colonial town, Leon has a really pretty parque central, plenty of crumbling churches and the biggest Cathedral in Central America. During the 1500's Leon was constantly at war with Granada - another colonial city - for power, until the village of Managua was chosen as the capital to end the feud. Leon is now the main university town and is known as a political hotbed, there's Sandinista graffiti all over the city.

We spent a night in a pretty colonial hotel with a roof garden that looked over the city, so I managed to get some good snaps over the roof tops as the sun was going down. Ben's friend Phillipa, a really cool chick from London town, flew into Managua and taxi-ed it down to Leon to join us on our trip. So we had a few celebratory rums before turning in to get ready for some volcano boarding action the next morning...

Las Peñitas - Nicuragua

First on our whistle-stop tour of Nicaragua was Las Penitas, a small pacific coast community 10kms south of the colonial town of Leon. Coming from snowy NYC Ben was kean to hit the beach!

We had a couple of nights staying in a little hotel, las Palmeras, only a few feet from the beach. Apart from drinking our way through several beach shack cocktail menu's and a lot of local Flora de Cana rum, we enjoyed chilling in the sun, eating lobster, meeting some seriously colourful characters (we won't forget Porter and his 'maid' in a hurry) and hitting the surf.

We took a morning surf lesson with some cool local guys who run the coco surf 'school', a shack on the beach that rents boards. There were some monster waves, but once we managed to paddle out, there was a fair bit of good surfing action going on. Ben was a pro - those summers in Watergate Bay clearly paid off! We fitted in a good day of surfing and finished, as usual, with a few war wounds but nothing a cocktail couldn't cure...

Apart from the sunburn. Due to a severe suncream drought in Nicaragua, Ben quickly turned the colour of his shorts! This was only the start, the next 10 days bought many more aches, pains, and injuries to us all... and lots & lots of laughs!

Nicaragua - Meeting Ben in Managua

Ben flew in from NYC for a whirl wind tour of Nicaragua with us.

We met him at the airport in the capital, Managua - not a place you'd want to stay more then you have too.

We tipico breakfasts in a cool little cafe before heading off to Leon down on the Pacific slope.

Sunset and Surf - El Zonte, El Salvador

What can I say, the surf and sunsets on this beach were just amazing. This was taken at high tide, from the pro surfers judging station on the side of the cliff, we went with the Canadians Justin and Jess to watch the sun go down over the Pacific.

The locals are so good at surfing they can do tricks and epic moves even on tiny body boards!

We had a great time there, it's insanely hot! would defiantly recommend El Salvador for a suf holiday - half of the locals are pros and you can sit on the beach and while away the hours watching their graceful tricks and moves.

El Salvador - Surf Camp

We went down into El Salvador with the Guatemala Surf Camp for three days of intense training.

Maudie was an absolute pro and got straight up on the board, it took me a little more time.... and a fair few falls.

It was wonderful fun and such a beautiful place with black sand beaches, cool pro surfer instructors and warm ocean spray - it's a long way from Croyde Bay!

The people are really friendly and we made friends with a cool Canadian couple - Jess and Justin, and a nice girl from Norway called Annika. All that exercise has toned us up and made the guns more powerful than ever before, we're going to rent boards at every opportunity now!