Nicaragua - Return to Sanity

The border crossing from Honduras to Nicaragua on Saturday 5th November was shambolic in the extreme. The customs and immigration officials varied between friendly, apologetic and jobs worth. We didn't break the record for time taken to get through the chaotic mush that calls itself customs and immigration, this time it only took one hour forty minutes, the record being two hours between El Salvador and Honduras.

Cowboy on the road to Leon

We then headed for the city of Leon, some three hours drive from the border and checked in at a little colonial place called, appropriately enough, Casona Colonial. Leon is a colonial city with something of a proud albeit rather chequered history as it was the headquarters of the Sandinista rebels in the 1980's.

Sunday was an interesting day. We set off to try and find Leon Viejo near Lago de Managua. This was Nicaragua's original capital established in fifteen something but apparently it was run by a variety of extremely wicked governors and their hit men who did unspeakable things to people and therefore by way of divine retribution the local volcano had a mighty big eruption and covered the whole place. It took them three hundred years to find it.

We went the direct route to Leon Viejo as directed by Matron (also known as the verbal manifestation of MapsMe) which turned out to be a sporting little road although undoubtedly direct. The road started as a perfectly good dirt road but then the going deteriorated and got worse and worse and at one stage we were driving along what could best be described as a small river bed. Unfortunately the small river bed was about four feet deep and about four feet wide with steeply sloping sides and therefore it was necessary to try and keep the vehicle on the sides rather than letting one side go down to the bed.

The biggest challenge was a series of drops which were a little alarming and at this stage Alan asked Sue if she would get out of Lucy so that he could concentrate on getting through this hazard without having her squawking in the passenger seat. She said later that she would not have wanted to be in the vehicle anyway because apparently it tipped over so far that she thought it was going to fall onto its side. Alan then admitted that the thought had crossed his mind as well.

We both agreed that this was probably the most extreme test you could put a 4WD vehicle to but, in the event, Lucy behaved in a superlative way using low ratio and diff lock and she clawed her way out of the trouble that Matron had got us into.

When we finally reached Leon Viejo it was closed (we think probably because it was national election day) so we went to have a look at the lake instead and Volcan Momotombo (the one that buried the city) looming on the far side of the lake.

View of Volcan  Momotombo from Lake Managua

On Monday we went volcano surfing! To do this we went to Volcan Cerro Negro which is a very young volcano, in fact it's all black because it hasn't had enough time to get enough soil to allow vegetation to become established. It is quite an interesting climb up which takes about an hour and then you can surf back down it on the other side. Surfing down it involved putting on a jumpsuit, a pair of armoured gloves and some goggles and then they sat us on boards which looked a bit like toboggans without any runners and off we went. We whizzed down this powdery black basalt stuff with clouds of volcanic ash flying past our faces. Alan went at a rather greater velocity than Sue who frustratingly kept getting great piles of volcanic ash in front of her toboggan which slowed her down, then when we reached the bottom we looked as though we'd just done a day's work down the pit, our faces were so black. So, that's something else to tick off the bucket list!

Caldera of Volcan Cerro Negro

Sue volcano surfing down Volcan Cerro Negro

Tuesday was a day of culture and we wandered around the city to look at the various churches and the cathedral which is apparently the largest in Central America. We went up onto the cathedral roof which is pure white and has something of a Greek look about it. There was a pretty good view from the top and we could see a bunch of volcanoes, some of which were busy smoking away.

Interior of Leon Cathedral showing lovely mahogany finish

Lion guarding Leon Cathedral

View from  the bell tower, Leon Cathedral

Bell tower detail

Sue on Cathedral roof

On one corner of the square there was a mausoleum where there was a very powerful and touching mural which portrayed Nicaraguan history from the Spanish Conquest to the most recent revolution.

Happy ending in final part of mural depicting Nicaragua's history of war and destruction

Market day in Leon

On Wednesday we went to the coast, about half and hour's drive from Leon, to a place called the Reserva Natural Isla Juan Venado although it's not actually an island, it's a long spit of sand with mangroves on the landward side and a 22 kilometre long waterway weaving its way through the mangroves. We hired a boat, a boatman and a guide just for the two of us and we had a three hour bimble around the waterways.

Royal gulls, Isla Juan Venado

Osprey, Isla Juan Venado

Woodcutters with their boat full of firewood

Mangrove swallows

Very large spider

American Pygmy kingfisher

The boat trip was very good and we saw a lot of birds, then on the way back our guide took us across the spit to the seaward side where we called in at the turtle sanctuary. The way this place apparently works is that volunteers go up and down the beach at night looking for where the turtles lay their eggs. Then, to stop the eggs being taken by poachers or predators, they dig them up and put them in sand inside large sacks until they hatch. Once they hatch they are kept in a large plastic bucket until nightfall and then they are re-introduced to the ocean and hopefully go on to lead happy and active turtle lives.

Saving the turtles

Dog and vultures fighting over a fish

When we got back to Leon and set off to go and find some supper we ran slap bang into a carnival. We were told it was to do with the various university faculties each having their own floats and there was a great deal of noise, lots of flashing lights, lots of scantily clad girls and a band with the usual oompah instruments. To begin with we thought it was an ice cream sellers carnival because we could hear the band blasting away but down the road came about a dozen ice cream sellers all running in a shoal towards us. We then realised that they were just intent on getting the best position to sell ice cream to the crowds but to begin with we thought that they were the focus of attention!

We left Leon on Thursday 10th November and drove fairly gently to Granada which is quite a splendid colonial city situated on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America. The plaza and the cathedral and the surrounds in particular are well proportioned and well designed and it looks very much as though there's been some grand Spanish colonial plan involved in the creation of it. We stayed in a lovely old place very close to the central plaza which is owned and run by a convivial Irishman called Gerry.

We rose in reasonable order on Friday morning and set off to have a look at Volcan Masaya. Now this is one of the few volcanoes in the world where you can actually see the red gurgling hot lava down inside the caldera. We could actually drive right up to the rim where there was a small wall separating us from the caldera although it was quite a long way down to where the red stuff was gurgling and bubbling like a devil's cauldron. There was also a lot of steam and sulphur fumes coming up off the molten lava but it was a pretty amazing sight.

Fumes from the caldera, Volcan Masaya

Molten lava inside the caldera

Having done that we went to Laguna de Apoyo which, by way of a change, is situated in the caldera of an extinct volcano and is almost completely spherical. We had a bit of lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake and then found somewhere that had kayaks of sorts which we rented. We paddled along for an hour or so and then had a swim. The water was very, very clear and cool and very refreshing after the humid atmosphere outside the water.

Close to the lake shore where Granada is situated there is an archipelago of, we are told, 354 tiny islands called Las Islatas. Apparently, they were formed when the adjacent volcano blew several hundred thousand years ago and deposited great lumps of basalt in the lake which became the islands.

We were up early on Saturday morning to take a boat trip around the islands with a very pleasant guide called Mani. Many of the islands are occupied by local fishermen and boatmen although a number are privately owned by foreign and local oligarchs who build big homes there and then keep them for weekend and holiday escapes. The islands themselves are a bit of a dream really. About a mile away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Granada are these wonderful basalt islands covered in vegetation, loads of mangos and guavas, and they are full of birds and also a few monkeys. Apparently the howler monkeys can swim between the islands.

Osprey at Las Islatas

Spider monkey, Las Islatas

Great tailed grackle

Whilst we were there we met a bunch of fishermen who had been out on the lake for about five days and had returned with a good catch, including four or five huge tarpon. We don't know how big the fish were because they only had the heads left but the heads were about four times the size of ours. Apparently they keep the heads to make fish soup; waste not, want not!

Fisherman with head of very large tarpon

Washing day on Las Islatas

Fisherman with casting net, Las Islatas

We left Granada on Sunday morning to drive 60 miles or so southwards to catch the car ferry at San Jorge to the Isla de Ometepe, an island with two volcanoes on it, situated in Lago Nicaragua. The ferry port was called the Che Guevara terminal and many of the benches were emblazoned with some of his better known political exhortations. The first one was completely lost on Sue. It said "Vamos por mas Victorias". She, bearing in mind the local beer is called Victoria, thought that it said "Let's go for some more beer"!

Tortilla seller on beach at San Jorge with view of Ometepe

Once on the island we found a lovely quiet spot to camp by the lakeshore where we had a palm fringed deck to sit out on and watch the birds, listen to the water lapping on the lakeshore and a glorious view across the lake. We spent a relaxing couple of days exploring bits of the island (for once deciding not to climb the volcanoes) before returning to Granada on Tuesday 15th November.

Finca Sumaria, the campsite on Ometepe

Sunset at Finca Sumaria

Charco Verde - a lake on an island within a lake!

View of Volcan Concepcion, Ometepe, taken where the road crosses the airport runway

Wednesday was a gentle day looking at the sights which Granada has to offer. None of the buildings are particularly old as the city was sacked so many times by various pirates, ne'er do wells and free booters. The cathedral featured the usual lurid Catholic stuff but also included some rather nice ceiling frescoes, a couple of which were direct cribs from the Sistine Chapel and a charming one of Noah's Ark. The convent which was also ransacked a number of times is now a museum.

Ceiling fresco, Granada Cathedral

And on the eighth day God went ten pin bowling

Iglesia de la Merced, Granada

View of Granada Cathedral from Igelsia de la Merced

We left Granada on Thursday morning and headed off around Lake Nicaragua again, this time in the opposite direction with the aim of visiting the rather more remote part of south eastern Nicaragua. The 200 kilometre trip was largely uneventful, a good road made slightly more interesting in that we encountered large herds of cattle being driven along it in the other direction.

Nicaraguan cowboy herding cattle on the main road

There was also a little moment at a police check where we were pulled over because we had apparently overtaken something on one of the speed bumps. Well, Alan overtakes things on speed bumps all the time because Lucy's suspension is such that we can go over them quite quickly and other people virtually stop. Anyway, he decided that this was a good excuse to stick his paw out. He told Alan that he would like 800 Córdobas (about £25) and he took Alan's driving license and the two of them had a little bit of a stand-off for a while. Alan tried the charm offensive and told the policeman what a wonderful country Nicaragua was and how much we enjoyed it whilst fingering his United Nations passport (40 years out of date) and ultimately he decided that it wasn't worth the trouble trying to screw us for a 25 quid bribe so he gave Alan his driving license back and off we went.

We stopped off for the night at the lakeside village of San Migueleto. The highlight of this place was the walk out onto the jetty which extended across an area of wetland where we saw twenty or thirty different kinds of bird as well as a beautiful sunset.

Family group of purple gallinule

Purple gallinule

Sunset on Lago Nicaragua from San Migueleto

We completed the last 50 kilometre leg of our journey to San Carlos on Friday morning without incident. San Carlos is a port town in the south eastern corner of Lake Nicaragua where the Rio San Juan links the lake to the Caribbean some 200 kilometres away. There wasn't much of interest in San Carlos but we found it to be comfortably shabby and whiled away our time quite happily until Saturday morning when we pottered down to the municipal boat dock where we then had a three our boat trip down river to the village of El Castillo, our next stop.

Did you ever wonder what happened to Winnie the Pooh?

There are some rapids at El Castillo which were the main impediment to the ravages of Henry Morgan, Horatio Nelson and others on their way up to sack Granada. As they could not take their ocean going ships through the rapids they had to trans ship into smaller rowing boats and continue up river in that fashion. It didn't seem to stop them though.

View of the river from El Castillo fort

The rapids at El Castillo

In 1675 the Spanish built a fort on the top of the hill in a very commanding position and quite clearly they could have bombarded anything within the range of the river and no doubt frequently did. This however didn't stop it getting sacked approximately every twenty years, once by Nelson who occupied it for a while until most of his crew died of malaria and so nearly did he.

El Castillo is a charmingly shabby village with narrow paths that wind up and down and around the hill whilst the rapids and the fort give it a pervading sense of history.

El Castillo high street

View of El Castillo from Rio San Juan

View of fort from the river

Local housing, El Castillo

A relaxed Nicaraguan

Another relaxed Nicaraguan!

We were up at half past six on Sunday morning to take a trip into the Reserva Biologica Indio-Maiz, an extremely large and well preserved rain forest although we were just in one little corner of it. It took us about half an hour to get down river to the start of the park at the mouth of the Rio Bartola and then we had four hours or so wandering around in the jungle with a very pleasant and knowledgeable guide, Gustavo, and enjoyed it hugely.

A jungle bunny

We saw all three species of monkey found in Nicaragua, namely howler monkeys, spider monkeys and white faced monkeys (known locally as Cappuccino monkeys). Now most of the residents of Nicaragua have been very friendly and welcoming. Not so the spider monkeys. One particular group we came across kept breaking off branches and slinging them at us from the tree tops as if to say "get off our land". Mostly they missed!

We found a couple of poison frogs, one of them green and black and the other red and black and apparently the indigenous people who live deep in the forest wipe the slime that the frogs exude from their skin onto the blade of an arrow and this is enough to kill any animal it hits. Gustavo did mention that if you pick the frog up and get the poisonous slime on your skin that's fine as long as you don't get it into a cut in which case you die.

Arrow poison frog, highly toxic!

A stay beside a mighty river like the Rio San Juan would not be complete without a fishing trip and that is exactly what we did. We met up with our boatman at 7am on Monday morning and then we took off up through the rapids and commenced fishing.

For the first hour nothing much happened at all. We solemnly went up and down the river and it was quite tranquil. The kingfishers flew past, the coconut palms nodded over the banks of the river, the cattle grazed, the sun was in the sky and all was well with the world. And then suddenly, bang!
The bang, as it turned out, was a tarpon of apparently about 150lbs in weight which proceeded to jump out of the water and show us just how impressive a fish it was. Sue asked what it felt like and Alan said that it felt like he'd caught a whale. Then after about five minutes of reeling and heaving the fish came off.

All was quiet for the next hour or so and then bang, another bloody great tarpon! When it finally jumped it was probably about the size of Sue but a great deal heavier. The boatman said it was 90 kg which would make it about 200lbs. Alan fought this one for about twenty minutes (apparently it can take up to two hours to bring a tarpon of this size to the boat) but then it gave a rush and straightened out a treble hook and was off. Alan said he didn't know how the fish felt but he was knackered! He did have another a little later which felt as though it was a tiddler of about a hundred pounds but it only stayed on for about a minute. So that was 3 nil in favour of the fish.

The boatman, a jovial fellow, kept punching the air and shouting "Tarpon, bueno!". Alan said he hadn't enjoyed a tussle with a fish as much in his life and we went back to the landing stage with him feeling very satisfied.

We came back to San Carlos from El Castillo yesterday (Tuesday 22nd November) after a brilliant few days in this beautiful and remote part of Nicaragua. We had one more river trip up the Rio Frio from San Carlos this morning and were rewarded with close viewings of countless birds and monkeys.

Pelican and cormorants, Rio Frio

Blue heron, Rio Frio

Passerini's tanager, Rio Frio

Mangrove swallow, Rio Frio

Anhinga, Rio Frio

Jeuvenile tiger heron

Osprey with breakfast

Howler monkey (definitely male!)

Black crowned night heron

Our plan is to cross the border into Costa Rica tomorrow. However there is a hurricane warning out for Central America and 'Otto' is due to make landfall in south east Nicaragua/north east Costa Rica sometime tomorrow. The forecast is being updated regularly and it may or may not be downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane to a severe tropical storm. So, for the moment we are keeping our options open as to whether we sit tight or get on the road again. Having been quite smug about the glorious weather we are having compared to UK we are now not quite so complacent!

Gerry, the proprietor of our hotel in Granada, told us that Nicaragua is the 'land of the not quite right'. That didn't seem to us to be entirely fair because it's a great deal righter than Honduras was. The roads are better, the people are more cheerful, the driving is a great deal safer although arguably the country is not as folded or as mountainous, at least not in the parts that we have visited. However, we have found things 'not quite right' around Rio San Juan. Things quite often aren't fitted properly or are broken and there were several power cuts. In restaurants the staff cheerfully brought us out the menu, only later to tell us that there was only one thing available, usually fish or chicken. It all just added to the charm of the place really. We have very much enjoyed our time in Nicaragua and take pleasant memories with us on the next leg of our journey.

Honduras - Land of the Dodgems

Our last night in El Salvador was spent in the little town of La Palma, just a stone's throw from the border with Honduras. La Palma is known for its artwork and many of the buildings are decorated with a very particular stylised form of bright painting which we found most attractive.

Ethnic wall art, La Palma, El Salvador

Ox Cart, El Salvador

This is how they dry the maize in parts of El Salvador and Honduras

The border crossing into Honduras on Tuesday 18th October was the most tedious we have experienced so far. Exiting from the El Salvador side was very straightforward (as it had been when we entered) but once we got through to Honduras then things changed down several gears. The final part was for the importation of the vehicle and involved being passed through several people, then a chap having to fill in about 15 forms, all in long hand, but he still needed to refer to his computer which kept breaking down. The whole process took two hours but at least everyone was good humoured!

Our first night in Honduras was spent in the town of Santa Rosa de Copan, some 50 miles from the border, and then we set off on Wednesday for Copan Ruinas.

The roads here are interesting. In England, of course, we drive on the left and in most of Central America they drive on the right. In Honduras they drive on both sides of the road. The reason for this is that there are so many huge potholes and people avoid them by suddenly swerving over onto your side of the road when they're a couple of hundred yards away. Sue did not enjoy this phenomenon!

Copan Ruinas is a charming town in the hills just east of the border with Guatemala and, as its name implies, very close to the Copan archaeological site. We spent the best part of four days here.

Naturally we visited the ruins, apparently one of Central America's major Mayan centres and yet another World Heritage Site. They are particularly good on the deep bas relief carved stelae showing their rulers in various impossible postures and there was also a very impressive hieroglyphic stairway. There are a number of unexcavated buildings which are still buried in jungle and give an atmospheric feel to the place.

Carving of Mayan Chief, Copan

Carving of Mayan chief looking more like a Chinaman

Ball court, Copan

Pyramid of the Skulls

Serpent head carving

Scary torch bearer

Unexcavated ruin

Intricate carving of bird and fish

The high point as far as we were concerned was the abundance of scarlet macaws. The scarlet macaw is the national bird of Honduras and there is a breeding/release programme in this area which is why there were so many. Alan was particularly delighted and quickly got his telephoto lens out - he's been missing his birds!

Pair of Scarlet Macaws at Copan archaeological site

Pair of Scarlet Macaws

Alan was up at 5 am on Friday morning to go out with a local ornithologist for a few hours. They saw a huge abundance of birds but they were all too far away for Alan to photograph (Cal will be disappointed). We also visited Macaw Mountain which is a bird park and nature reserve specialising in the the rehabilitation of birds, particularly scarlet macaws, that have been either confiscated from private owners or given up voluntarily.

Copan River in the early morning

Pensive peasant farmer, Copan Ruinas

We left Copan Ruinas on Sunday 23rd October and made our way eastwards to Lago Yojoa, one of the largest natural lakes in Honduras. We found a really lovely place to camp in the grounds of a beautiful bio-park and coffee farm. There were a number of very beautiful trees and shrubs, small swimming pools, and a river which looked like a smaller version of the River Dart, quite bumpy and noisy with lots of rocks. There were also some giant bamboos, the like of which we're never seen before. We camped in a little clearing in the trees and the sound of the rushing river sent us off beautifully to sleep.

Campsite at Finca Paraiso, near Lago Yojoa

River at Finca Paraiso

Large spider

Small person, very large bamboo

On Monday we went in search of the lake which we found by means of kayaking from a very pretty canal which feeds into the lake. The canal didn't look like a canal at all, it had reeds at the sides and quite a lot of bird life and fishes skittering around and we paddled some little way to the lake and then turned left. In the distance we saw a collection of roofs and what looked like a bridge so, in the hope that it might turn out to be a restaurant, we set off in that direction across the lake. It turned out to be a little hotel complete with a restaurant where we had a very nice lunch before setting off back across the lake. A total of three hours paddling so we felt we'd had a bit of much needed exercise.

View of Lago Yojoa from the top of the hill at the campsite

On the road again on Tuesday to make our way to the coastal city of La Ceiba in the north. A long but uneventful journey although Alan had to have his wits about him the whole time due to the seriously deranged Honduran drivers who don't follow the normal rules of the road and are quite unpredictable.

Our main reason for coming to La Ceiba was to make the crossing to the Bay Islands for some diving and snorkelling. La Ceiba itself doesn't have much to recommend it, we found it to be untidy and rather smelly and all the streets are full of rubbish and/or water and it has a generally shambolic appearance. However, we pottered around on Wednesday, having found out about ferries to the islands, and visited a little village further along the coast where there was a nice little restaurant right on the ocean and some thermal springs nearby which Alan flopped around in for a while.

The delights of downtown La Ceiba

Fisherman with a very good sense of balance

Butterflies having happy times on our windscreen

Canoes at La Ceiba beachfront

We stayed at a nice place called Casa de Espana which was run by a delightful chap called Pablo who couldn't do enough to be hospitable. He allowed us to park Lucy in the yard at his house, cooked us a very nice meal of garlic prawns on Wednesday evening and drove us to the ferry port on Thursday morning.

The ferry trip to Roatan, the largest of the Bay Islands, took one and a half hours and then we set about hiring a car and finding somewhere to stay. Roatan is about 40 miles long, running East to west, and 3 miles wide with only one main road so it didn't take us long. We found a nice little hotel on the north side of the island at West End immediately overlooking the sea.

The Caribbean Sea was not in good humour. For our entire stay it was crashing against the coral on the shore in front of the hotel and throwing up large columns of spume with the spray frequently reaching our first floor balcony. However, we enjoyed going to sleep with with the door to the balcony open and the sound of the waves as accompaniment.

How the other half like to travel

Caribbean behaving like the North Atlantic

We spent four days on the island. There was a very good Botanical garden with a lot of specimen trees and shrubs where we saw some beautiful flourescent green humming birds. It had a trail that went off up what they rather grandly called a mountain but was actually something between a pimple and a hill. It was however quite a nice stroll up through the forest area and when we came out on the top there was a wonderful view over the northern part of the island.

View from the top of the hill, Roatan

View from the top of the hill showing the reef, Roatan

Sue in grove of palm trees, Botanical Gardens

Very busy leaf cutter ants

Emerald humming bird

Humming bird picking its nose

The Western end of Roatan is quite well developed for tourists but the Eastern end is much more remote with beautiful views from coast to coast which we could see from the road on the island's hilly interior. We had a look at the fishing village of Oak Ridge with all its wooden houses built on stilts around the edge of the harbour but we didn't find the locals very welcoming. So we left there and drove our little hire car along a dirt road (with Alan occasionally forgetting we were not in Lucy as we bounced over pot holes) until we came upon a little restaurant fronting a classic deserted Bounty Bar beach.

Market at Coxon Hole, Roatan

View of North of Roatan Island

Sheep grazing (but what on??), Oak Ridge harbour

Ship wreck from Hurricane Mitch (1990's), Oak Ridge harbour

Local houses, Oak Ridge

Washing day, Oak Ridge

Home sweet home, Oak Ridge

Slightly battered home, Oak Ridge

Classic Bounty Bar Beach, Roatan

Alan finally got his diving trip on Sunday although the weather was too rough for Sue to go snorkelling. There were seven other people booked to go on the dive trip but in the event all the others cried off because of the poor weather, leaving Alan to have a dive boat and dive master all to himself.

He had two dives and saw a lot of interesting fish but the main attraction for him was the beautiful coral and sponges, of which there were many different varieties of all shapes and colours.

Our stay on Roatan provided a very relaxing respite from the travelling and needless to say, we ate a lot of wonderful seafood whilst we were there. Alan had lion fish for the very first time and pronounced it to be excellent. Lion fish have become somewhat of a nuisance in this part of the Caribbean as they are aggressive predators of other fish and there is a general campaign to try to reduce their numbers, mostly by serving them up in restaurants!

Sunset from our hotel balcony, Roatan

Wreck, Roatan

We got the ferry back to La Ceiba on Monday 31st October and dear old Pablo and his wife met us as they had promised and brought us back to their hotel.

The rain started in ernest at about four o'clock and continued until we went to bed. The road outside the hotel which has a kerb of about six inches soon was a river and shortly after that the footpath itself was under about six inches of water. Most vehicles were turning round at what was now a lake but we watched a cyclist with a child on the front of his bike who peddled manfully through about eighteen inches of water.

The Pico Bonito National Park, the largest national park in Honduras, is very close to La Ceiba, so we decided to take a look on Tuesday. We followed the Rio Cangrejal until we came to a hut where we paid a dollar each to access the park via a hanging bridge high across the river. A strenous but satisfying walk took us up and up on a rocky track through some very jungly stuff to a very impressive waterfall and then back down on a different path, three and a half hours in total to complete the circuit. It definitely wasn't a little stroll in the park.

View of waterfall from the road, Pico Bonito National Park

Hanging bridge, Pico Bonito

Looking at the waterfall and spray from below

The old man cooling off in the spray from the waterfall

The Rio Cangrejal is supposed to be a mecca for white water rafting and kayaking but we didn't see any and Alan said that the white water (which was actually a very muddy brown) was probably about a grade 5 and above even his pay grade.

We left La Ceiba on Wednesday to drive back south and stopped again at Lago Yojoa at the beautiful campsite where we had stayed on the way up to the coast. Unfortunately, we discovered that the mattress and duvet were soaking wet so we could not camp after all. We are not sure how the interior of the tent got quite so wet but there was a great deal of torrential rain whilst we were on Roatan and Lucy was parked at La Ceiba, so we guessed it seeped in under the tent cover somehow and through the fold in the tent floor. The only other accommodation they had to offer us was a cabana for 7 people which cost us $100 US instead of $5 to camp!

We got on the road again on Thursday morning and drove to Comayagua, the old capital of Honduras, where we stopped for the night. In an effort to get the tent dry inside we erected it in the hotel car park, much to the bemusement of the security guard.

Today is Friday 4th November and we have had a very long drive to Choluteca, a town without any redeeming features other than it is about 40 kilometres from the border with Nicaragua. We conducted a little survey between ourselves on the way here and have ranked the Hondurans in first position for being the most dangerous drivers we have encountered on our trip so far. Alan is currently enjoying a well earned beer after five hours solid driving on these awful roads.

All being well we will cross the border into Nicaragua tomorrow. We also hope that we are finally coming into the dry season in this part of the world, it's about time!