Day 34 - Casa Abierto, Leon

Leon had been a pretty cool town, so we were thinking about 1 more night in Nicaragua. We could make the border in about 4 hours, but our 1st destination in Costa Rica was preferably to be Tamarindo, which was still another 3 and half hours, which meant another night in Nicaragua before we crossed the border, would be good. We had a few recommendations to check out San Juan del Sur, which is only about 20 or 30 minutes from the border. Having sorted out our route for the day, we grabbed a very nice breakfast for a very reasonable cost at the Hotel Casa Abierto, and whilst packing up the bikes, we met 2 other bikers from Panama City that are travelling north. 2 lads on Kawasaki’s. A 650 KLR and a 250 KLR. They are heading up to Cancun, where they will leave the bikes for a year, and then fly back to carry on their journey further north to Alaska. Nice work boys, rubber down! Our first stop for the day was to be the Masaya Volcano, which is in the largest National Park in Nicaragua. It meant that the route would take us very close to Managua, a very large city and we much prefer to stay away from large cities, particularly after the Guadalajara experience. It had rained the night before, in fact the rain had been next level downpours, but it hadn’t helped to keep the humidity and the heat at bay, we were still pretty warm. So, when we ended up riding through the outskirts of Managua in ridiculous traffic with smoke vomiting buses and crazy drivers, and pulled up at the entrance to the National Park to find that it was closed, we were not very pleased. No reason that we could see, other than the Park was closed. It would have been ok if there wasn’t so much cloud cover as we still couldn’t see the bloody volcano. We still have to see a full volcano on this trip, which is bonkers. Not much you can do about a closed National Park or low cloud cover, so we pressed on for a little spot called La Virgen, where we would be on the shore of Lago Cocibolca, a massive inland lake. We made good time, in fact at 1 point we were pulled over by the cops for speeding. As we couldn’t really understand the telling off that the officer was giving us, and we could see his frustration growing as we didn’t understand his rant in Spanish, he ended up just letting us go with a warning, we think! Further down the road, we pulled off so that we could see the lake. We also only had about 20 minutes ride to San Juan del Sur, so we found a little bar/restaurant with a few fellas watching the boxing on a really crappy TV with shit signal. They explained that the bar wasn’t opened, but Jorik did some smooth talking, and we got a couple of cans of Tona, the local beer. It was a spot that looked like it had potential, but there were a lot of wind turbines about, which also suggested it got really windy. The trees looked pretty windswept and the whole place looked like you would be fighting a losing battle to try to keep it maintained to a high standard. It was cool, but just a bit blown out! Whilst finishing off our beers, a tonne of tourists arrived on a bus and flooded down to the beach, so we were glad we got some pictures before they arrived. The bar didn’t open for them, and once they left, we jumped on the bikes and headed for San Juan del Sur. We were aiming for a hostel called Pachamama, which our friend Louise had recommended. But as per our standard procedure, we pulled up at a bar on the beach and had a swifty whilst checking the map and asking for local advice. It looked like Pachamama was a good recommendation and as the hostel was just around the corner, we jumped back on the girls and headed over once we had finished our drinks. It was a great hostel, but we were back in a dorm with 6 beds, although there were only 4 of us in there. Of course, we completely took over all the space in the cramped dorm and luckily the other 2 lads were happy enough about sharing with a couple of old fellas. It turns out that on a Monday, the bar at Pachamama is closed. In fact, the whole town of San Juan del Sur is pretty quiet on a Monday. Sunday is Funday in San Juan del Sur so the few people we did meet, were all pretty much recovering from the night before. We met 2 young English lads from Reading, Will and Luigi, who have been mates since about 6 years old and are travelling through the Americas on a jolly. Will is having a massive trip from November until October, pretty much a year off and started out in Peru (I think). His mate, Luigi, has only been travelling for about a month, but should see them through for the next couple of months. Nice lads and we had a lot of fun with them. So much so, that Luigi, in a rather drunken endeavour, climbed on Jules and then fell off, and Jules knocked into Cassy, and snapped the jerry can bracket. The last remaining fixed jerry can bracket on the crappy jerry cans. it wasn’t a big deal and we had it strapped up in no time. However, Luigi had cut his toe when he fell off and pissed blood all over the bar area in the hostel where we had parked our bikes. San Juan del Sur was a great little town and a great call to stop in there before pushing on for the border the next day.