Nicaragua

We had to hotfoot it straight through Nica at first in order to pick up our van... This meant spending a night in Managua in transit. Not much to recommend the town, it was hot, dusty and seemed pretty dangerous. Luckily this was the exception! At the Costa Rican border we spent the day walking back and forward in the heat with immensely important (I gather) pieces of paper, in order to re-enter Nicaragua with the car. This meant a 1 hour vacation in Costa Rica, purchasing a nonexistent bus ticket and most of a day spent in perjury between nations.
When we were able to hit the road, we headed for Maderas near San Juan del sur. The van immediately began to repay the debt with super cheap camping right on the amazing beach and the freedom to come and go as we pleased.

The Howler Monkey family at Maderas were fun to watch, disturbing to listen to.

"Cafe la revolucion" was right in front of the beach. They did wood fired pizza, which was a nice change from camp food at times.

Great waves at Maderas. The giant lake Nicaragua sits in the south between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. A nice by product is that the lake induces constant offshore winds about 350 days a year. Great for surfers, bad for people who don't like sand blown in their face.

Our Econoline. Looks small in this pic but its massive! We'll do more of a rundown on it next post.

Cooking pancakes for Laura's birthday breaky. The camping gear came with the van too. 

Wine and Pringles with the sunset for a perfect birthday treat.

And we got one of these!

After the coast we headed north to Granada, the old Capital. Its been sacked and burned 3 times by pirates and once by the self proclaimed "emperor" William Walker of the US. The lake is connected to the sea which made Granada the most important port in central America at the time. There are 2 volcanoes on one of the 365 islands in the lake, but this is Mombacho on the mainland. The eruption of Mombacho actually created all the islets when most of the top blew off the volcano into the lake!

An islet.

The remains of the Original Presidential Boat, now an old man lives in it. No, he's not the President.

No he's not the President either. This guy lives on the aptly named isla del monos (monkey island). A local animal carer rescues the monkeys from circuses etc. and re-habilitates them here.

The only unrefurbished building in the city is apparently this church. It's survived earthquakes, volcanoes, fires, pirates and Americans.

Laura in the bell tower.

Looking out toward the other major (definitely refurbished) church.

Car breaking down too often? Try new "horse".

Granada definitely hasn't lost the colonial look. 

Right now we're in Costa Rica, camping our way down the Nicoya peninsula. Writing from a bed in an actual room in Montezuma!