Nicaragua - Matagalpa, Granada, San Juan Del Sur & Ometepe

Matagalpa wasn't the prettiest town in itself, but was set rather spectacularly amidst rolling hills of lush forests and coffee plantations. We only had one full day here and we spent it hiking up to the giant cross that overlooked the town, which was a gorgeous walk up through the forest amidst birds and butterflies, to the viewpoint at the top that boasted views of the entire town below and the lands beyond.

Matagalpa

After looking at a map and realising Managua wasn't too far away, we called DHL to see if we could go and pick up our package after all. They kindly obliged and so rather than going back to Leon we rode an hour and a half to Managua, scooped up our package and then headed on to Granada, only forty minutes away and supposedly pretty nice.

To me it was rather similar to Leon in that it was a lovely colonial grid, just a little bit smaller and also felt more open. We walked down to the edge of Lake Nicaragua, and went up the tower of the cathedral to take in views of the city.

The Cathedral

Granada

Throughout our Central American travels we had been told multiple times that we 'HAVE to go to Sunday Funday in Nicaragua'. So as the weekend approached we headed down to San Juan Del Sur for a bit of a fiesta. The place is a renowned party town, extremely popular with backpackers and surfers. We bumped into many friendly faces from our previous travels and all came together for the epic 'pool party crawl' that is Sunday Funday. We spent more than we normally do in 3 days in one afternoon, but we had a bloody good time and got the partying out of our system for the foreseeable future!

Nursing severe hangovers we managed to get ourselves out of the party town that manages to trap so many, and made it to the ferry to take us to the island of the two volcanoes - Ometepe. We got the bike onto the ferry and somehow endured the hour and a half crossing to Moyogalpa. We'd read that if you have your own transport then it's worth heading to the other side of the island, so we aimed for Santa Domingo, the beach on the spit that joins the two volcanoes together. The island was so lush and green, and riding around the base of one volcano to come face to face with another one was pretty lovely. We enjoyed the beach and a dip in the lake before walking to Ojo de Agua - fresh Spring pools that were delightfully refreshing to plunge into. Having both lost our flipflops in the carnage of the weekend we walked the 3km barefoot which turned out to be a lot more painful than we anticipated, but luckily a nice local gave us a lift in the back of his truck on the way back!

Onto the ferry

Ometepe butterflies

The next day was sadly time to say goodbye to Nicaragua and hello to Costa Rica! Where I managed to time getting extremely sick with a 4 hour border crossing...