Granada is a really cute city!  All of the buildings are old colonial style, and they’re painted bright pastel colors. Plus they have tons of great little cafes, restaraunts, and shops. I spent most of my time in Granda just wandering around, drinking tons of coffee, and just chilling out.  I also got a nice massage from a place called Seeing Hands, that is located in the Euro Cafe.  There are three blind guys that work there.  They give excellent massages that are pretty cheap too!

Unfortunately leaving Granada began the beginning of the worst day of my trip!  It all started when I got on a minibus bound for Managua (the capital of Nicaragua).  (btw, I was taking the mini bus because it was supposed to be safer than the normal bus.)  Anyways, I was sitting on the bus waiting for it to leave, when this family got on.  They were being really annoying.  They were talking really loudly, and the kid was running and jumping all over the seats.  Then the mom leaned really close to me to scream out the window at people on the street.  Then all of a sudden, they just packed up at left.  Of course, naive me, I didn’t really think about it until the bus was moving and we were leaving Granada.  That’s when I noticed that my purse felt a lot lighter than before. My wallet was missing!  It had to have been that annoying pushy lady.   Luckily all that she got was about $40. 

But to make me even more annoyed, the bus man (who I’m pretty sure was in on the whole pickpocket thing) totally ripped me off on the bus fare.  The lady had stolen all of my Nicaraguan money, so I had to pay with a $20 bill.  The guy gave me an awful exchange rate and charged me triple the normal price on top of that! Then to piss me off a little bit more, after haggling with the taxi drivers (which I was really not in the mood to do), I arrived at a great little hostel in a safe part of town.  Unfortunately the hostel was completely full, and there weren’t any other reasonably priced places to stay in that part of town.  So I ended up getting a room at the bus station hotel (the Tica Hotel), which was fine since I had a 5am bus the next day. 

I spent the rest of the day trying to cheer myself up with a trip to the mall, a bad Ben Stiller movie at the theater, and a slice of pizza.  Things started to look up the next day, but of course there have to be bumps along the road when you are travelling. 

I just spent the last 3 days on Isla de Omtepe, which is a volcanic island in the middle of one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world.  It´s a great place and I really enjoyed my 3 days there! 

Getting to the island is more of a pain than I had thought it would be, since it is only about 50-60 miles away from San Juan del Sur (where I was before).  So I thought it would take at most 3 hours to get there, but of course I was wrong!  Getting those 50-60 miles involved taking 3 buses, 1 boat, and 1 taxi!  But I eventually found a tiny little hospedae in Santa Cruz to stay at.  (My first choice El Encanto was full, but they were nice enough to drive me to a little hospedae-restraunt down the road.) The owners didn´t speak a word of English, but I some how got by just fine.

I meet 3 other people (Karla and Vanessa from Oz and Marty from the States) who were going to be on the island the same time as me.  We all wanted to do pretty much the same things, so we hung out together most of the time.  The first activity we did, was climb up Volcano Maderas.  (Well, actually we only climbed half way up to the view point, but who´s counting.)  It was a great time, but it got very slippery, steep, and muddy at the end.  Coming down was even more of a challenge!  Karla and I ended up falling in the mud a bunch of times, ensuring that everyone (especially our guide) had lots of laughs!

The next day, Karla, Vanessa, and I went kayaking.  It was incredibly beautiful!  We saw a bunch of interesting tropical birds and some great scenary.  (We didn´t see any of the crocodiles that were in the river, but that was fine with me, since we were in little kayaks!)  Then that afternoon, I went horseback riding along the beach to a natural springs pool on the island.  It was very fun!

So far Isla de Omtepe has been my favorite place on the trip!  It was such a relaxing place, with hardly any other travellers around.  I didn´t want to leave.  But there are still tons of things to see and do in Central America, so I did make my way to Granada this morning.  Granada is such a pretty colonial town.  All of the buildings are painted bright pastel colors and it is really a charming place.  I´m not sure what I´m going to do here yet, but I´m sure there will be fun things to do around here!

It was an epic journey to get from Panama City to San Juan del Sur.  It involved 4 buses, 2 border crossing, and a night in Liberia.  I took a 15 hour overnight bus from Panama City to San Jose, Costa Rica.  It went quite smoothly and Expreso Panama had great buses with reclining seats, movies etc., so it was a comfortable ride.  As soon as we got into San Jose I jumped into a taxi and went to a different bus station, so I could catch a second bus to get to Liberia, Costa Rica.  (San Jose´s bus stations are the most unorganized thing ever.  They have at least 15 different stations all going to just a few cities each!)

Public transport to and from the Nicaraguan border ends at 5pm, so I ended up having to spend the night in Liberia.  (Jenny and Stacy are familiar with this exciting town, since they were sidetracked here while trying to fly to San Jose.)  The next days travel was supposed to be very quick.  Just 45 minutes to the border, cross the border, then about another 75 minutes to get to the beach.  But of course things weren´t so simple!  The border for getting into Nicaragua is the most confusing I´ve ever seen.  First it is basically a kilometer long maze, with absolutely no signs (in Spanish or English).  Then to actually get your passport stamped, you have to wait in a massive line.  With only 1 window!!  Plus the line was formed on a dirt street-parking lot, and it was really windy.  So I was constantly being sandblasted!  Fun, huh.  (Well, its all part of travelling.  It can´t all be easy.)

Anyways, I made it to San Juan del Sur (a cute little beach town in  south western Nicaragua, on the Pacific coast.)  It is was worth all of the hastle!  The beaches are goregous, the town is really cute, and my hostel is great (Casa Oro)!  The first day I just relaxed on the beach. Yesterday, I took a truck out to one of the more remote and beautiful beaches. And last night I went out to watch the sea turtles at La Flor Reserve.

When we first arrived at the reserve, we got to release some babies that had just hatched that day.  (If they try to make it to the water during the day, birds and other animals eat them.)  They were so adorable!  Two of them kept coming back to me, and one even started climbing onto my shoe.  We also got to see a few mom´s that were coming to lay eggs.  One had her flipper biten off by a shark, so the reserve people tried to help her dig her nest.  And we also watched a second, healthy one.

Today, I´m headed off for Isla de Omtepe, which is a volcanic island in the middle of a huge lake in southern Nicaragua.  (It is one of the top 10 biggest fresh water lakes in the world.)  Then I´ll be off to Granada.