Stories from the Road

OK , so I'm back a few days later... Going to try and condense a few things, maybe. We've been diving and eating and drinking every day and well.. it takes it's toll on you and you have to nap, so not alot of blog writing has been getting done. So here we go.....
  So on the bus to Managua, actually at the border, this small, older asian woman comes up to me and asks me if  I speak japanese, in japanese of course. After my brain explosion, cause really how do you survive in a spanish speaking country on only japanese? and cause shifting my brain over to japanese really hurts. Anyways somehow I understood she wanted to know how much the exit tax was and was I paying it too. Huh pretty good for me I thought...and then tried to stay as far away from her as possible, so I wouldn't have to speak any more Japanese.
   Surfing lessons on my birthday, sounded pretty good, knew I would probably suck , but hey if you wipe out it's only water right...unless of course your lucky like David and land on a stingray, cleared that up right away ...no stingrays where were going, thought they were lying to me, but went with it anyways. Ok so drive down the worst dirt road in nicaragua, and that's saying alot right there, for an hour, ahh did I mention an hour, finally get to the beach.. it's beautiful. Nice little house with a great little outdoor veranda to relax on with a great view of what looks like GIGANTIC WAVES for us to surf...check with the boy...dude those waves look big...confirmed, not imagining big waves , they are BIG waves. I'm OK , It would be bad for business to kill the nice tourist man, right!? Then again the beach is deserted and we're an hour by bad road away from anything...OK never mind that , what could go wrong? Turns out the 2 guys giving you surf lessons are from Nova Scotia , that could be bad , I'm not really sure, I think they have waves on the east coast, not really sure since I've never been there. Everythings fine, sort of stereotypical, 3 surfer dudes working as little as possible in order be able to surf everyday, by taking tourists out to your favorite surf spot and spending a couple of hours making sure they don't drown or generally kill themselves, then have some lunch , a bunch of beer and then off to surf the rest the afternoon while your charges are free to drown, or generally kill themselves without supervision. All joking aside, I was going to say that a few sentences ago but I just couldn't help myself, they were good guys, the beach was beautiful, we only surfed on the wash after the waves broke, they didn't even try to teach how to surf the GIGANTIC WAVES before they broke AND we all got up on our boards, for varying stretches of time AND we had beer. All in all a good birthday...Have I said this yet??? OH MY GOD LEON IS STINKING HOT. How many more days are we staying here?
   Hmm..not very condensed so far. OK what comes to mind when I say VOLCANO BOARDING, nothing right, cause it sounds absolutely stupid , what about if I say BOARDING DOWN AN ACTIVE VOLCANO, THAT JUST ERUPTED 3 YEARS AGO AND STILL HAS TREMORS EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE...even less right, then what about if I say YOU ALSO PAY FOR IT AND YOU HAVE TO HIKE UP IT FIRST. Now you probably say wow great marketing. I have to say this was pretty darn fun, being an active volcano was pretty cool, smoke coming out of the vents was kinda surreal , but going down was just a blast. Looking down, it looks pretty steep and of course your dressed like the stupid tourist that you are, the speed record is just over 50 mph, not sure I got anywhere near that, all though I have to imagine that at 50 mph the piece of plywood that your sliding on is getting ready to burst into flames. Oh and just in case you didn't break anything the first time they LET you hike up and slide down a 2nd time , which of course we did , cause we're suckers for good marketing.
   Off to Little Corn Island with thousands of pounds of luggage and oh by the way, on the flight to Big Corn, you can only check 30lbs of luggage and have 1 carry on, how do you say screwed in spanish, so after paying for the overweight , which worked out to a little over a one way ticket we're off to Big Corn, where that night is opening night for the Caribbean World Series. So the plan is to meet Davids friends from the dive shop at the game, watch the game and then take the ferry back in the dark to Little corn, after dumping off our luggage at the ferry, which we hope will get taken somewhere we can find it again when we get back. Off to the game between the Caribbean Allstars and Managua, Managua is getting no love. It seems like the whole island is there, the crowd is loud and raucous, cheering for the allstars, we get some fried chicken from the street vendors outside the stadium, ohh my god best baseball food EVER!!! The allstars go up by 3 runs in the 1st inning and never really let it get close. Its a pretty fun atmosphere, everyone seems really into the game, quite different from a mariners game. Then the game ends and we're off to the ferry for the ride back to little corn , I really wish I could write something funny here but nothing really happened, the water was basically smooth as glass all the way there and it only took about 30 minutes, oh and our luggage was at the hotel waiting for us.
  OK I'm going to sign off for now, By the way I have been getting eaten alive since we got to central america by every bug imaginable, I have been and still am covered in bites...just wanted to say that. If I get some time tommorrow I will continue with our adventures here. Love to all and the best to you all.

older man

  Ahh... so we're in Leon now, sitting in the hostel, drinking cuba libres ( cause they don't have vodka here...why exactly are we staying here?) listening to led zepplin's battle of evermore, on the planet's slowest internet connection, still getting my USA Today delivered to my kindle everyday however, so it works, Carrie's here next to me, reading I think her 5th book on her kindle and David is in the hammock behind me...asleep. I have no idea how he sleeps through all the noise.
   So the bus trip from hell to get here wasn't quite that , turns out the bus stops in Leon before it gets to Managua, so saved that back and forth and about 4 hrs....probably could have saved some money too if we knew what we were doing. Piled into a cab with all our luggage , I'm not kidding here, we now have 4 large backpacks , 2 med sized ones and 3 small carry on type day bags...thank you PADI. Ok so this doesn't usually work, The 1st hostel was pretty cheap, had a private bathroom and well looked genarally nice (again just to clarify...they don't have any vodka here!!!) and had a room for the 3 of us. Not really sure how David feels about sleeping with us, but it's cheap.
  That night we walked around a bit and pretty much just crashed. We explored the city the next day, I love grid cities by the way, why would you plan a city any other way?  cough cough Rick? Leon is much bigger than Granada and there is definitely more to do here, but I think I enjoy Granda's small town feel and quiantness more, both cities are quite similiar though and STINKIN HOT you have to take a shower after you take a shower..it's a wet heat blah blah blah said in a scott pontin voice.
TO BE CONTINUED.......