CLIMBING VOLCAN MASAYA

Sod it, I haven´t climbed a volcano in a couple of days....

Apparently cars are told to park facing away from the active Volcan Masaya incase a quick getaway is required.

(NEARLY) ROBBED IN GRANADA

I nearly got robbed last night in Granada, after breaking two of my golden rules of travelling: 1) don't walk about places I don't know in the dark and 2) don't talk to anyone with more tattoos than teeth.

It happened around 8pm. Although it was already dark, the streets of Granada were still alive with the fiesta celebrations of the afternoon Feria in the town. The rain had stopped, and I decided to venture back out of my hotel to find some dinner and take my first look at the towns malecon (beach promenade).

I was walking down the busy main street looking for some traditional food to buy amongst the market stalls selling hot dogs and hamburgers for the (far too) many American's in Granada, when I found myself having to correct a group of guys that had mistakenly called me a Gringo.

- 'Soy Escoces.' I shook my head indignantly at them, which as it turned out, was enough for them to shake my hand and pat me on the back and act as if we were life-long friends.

- 'Hay desmasiado Estadosunidense en Granada.' the apparent leader of the four smiled back at me with gleaming teeth of gold - there are too many Americans in Granada. Which was of course all he needed to say for me to shake him by the hand and pat him on the back, and indeed almost enough for me to ask him when his mothers birthday was so I could send her flowers: in my opinion, there are indeed too many Gringo´s in Granada, Nicaragua´s most visited colonial town.

His name was Ju_____. I can only remember the first two letters of his name now, probably because I was too busy staring at the tattoos on his arms at the time.

We continued walking down towards the Promenade for a couple of minutes, Ju______ chatting cheerfully with me as I smiled back and walked with my hands in my pockets to ensure my wallet and camera didn't accidentally fall out during all the back-patting and hand-shaking and pretend playing of Scottish bagpipes.

Suddenly, three policemen waving truncheons appeared out of nowhere. They asked me if I was with Ju______ and his three amigos, and I explained that we had in fact met minutes earlier. The policemen did not seem surprised. As my four new friends were told to sit down on the pavement kerb, one of the policemen informed me that Ju____ had his friends had been overhead hatching sinister plans to rob me further up the street, just before we met.

Resisting the urge to reply 'No Shit Sherlock' to the policeman, I instead checked my camera and wallet were still within the white knuckled grip of my left and right hands in my pockets, then shook my head and said - 'No quiero problemas.' I don't want any problems. - 'Y no tengo problemas con ellos.' I added, motioning towards my four friends remonstrating their innocence on the kerb: I don't have any problems with them.

 

The policemen shook their heads and shrugged, and my friends on the kerb gleamed their golden teeth, but I think it was the right thing to do. I will be in Granada for another couple of days, and the last thing I need is bad feeling with the local pickpockets on top of the bad feelings that a local hotelier already has with me for sitting on her table.

Later on, I actually bumped into Ju______ in the street as I was eating my dinner, and although hands were shaken and apologies issued by him for the local police force's impudent mistake in suggesting that he and his friends had anything other than honorable intentions in walking me down to the malecon, I personally thought Ju_____ took our friendship a little to far by then asking for a bite of my corn on the cob.

TWO FERIAS IN TWO DAYS IN NICARAGUA

Sometimes things go wrong despite the best of planning, whilst on other occasions thinks turn out perfectly with absolutely no planning at all. The latter happened twice this weekend when I rocked up in two towns in Nicaragua to discover their local Ferias were being celebrated whilst I was there.

LEÓN - Saturday 14th August

Summary:  Fireworks, sweets being handed out to children at churches, young men running around the main square under bull-like wooden contraptions that shot fireworks out at the screaming crowd, dancing dolls with Nike trainers

GRANADA - Sunday 15th August

Summary:  A procession of three thousand cowboys on horses, a woman balancing a bottle of beer on her head, a drunk man dancing with the horses, me getting caught yet again in the pissing tropical rain.

A BROKEN TABLE ON CALLE LA CALZADA, GRANADA

I counted 24 passengers on the minibus from Managua to Granada today, which included two people standing like hunchbacks, the ticket collector dangling precariously out of the open door, an old woman with 3 dozen eggs on her lap and an extranjero with seriously cramped legs and grave concerns that his rucksack that had been loosely tied on the roof would not still be there when he eventually arrived in Granada.

The old woman next to me was concerned about the thirty-six huevos on her lap being broken. I was more concerned about the two between my legs being permanently damaged, squeezed as I was between the old woman and a sullen girl that didnt want to tell me the time it would take to get from Managua to Granada. With less legroom than on a Ryanair flight for the uncomfortable one hour journey, I could hardly feel my legs by the time I limped off the bus in Granada to discover there was a Feria in the town this weekend and all the hotels were fully booked. 

I staggered from hotel to hotel trying to find a vacant room. It was in a posada on Calle La Calzada whilst I was waiting for a young girl to find out if they had any spare rooms, that I had the inspired idea to rest my legs and rucksack by sitting on a metal table. Ten seconds later, the table exploded underneath me. Another ten seconds later, I was backing out the posada as the young girl and a couple of other young people stared at me and each other with open mouths, as I mumbled somrthing about the available room being too expensive for me and I would prefer to stay elsewhere.

I have since been told by the owner (when I was spotted walking down Calle La Calzada without a care in the world after checking into another hotel) that I need to pay USD 35 for the table. Telling her I had no money and would have to return to see her later, I intend to keep a low profile for the rest of my time in Granada, and steer clear of Calle La Calzada. I am now a fugitive on the run in Nicaragua, all because I sat on a table.

SLEDGING DOWN VOLCAN CERRO NEGRO

WELCOME TO NICARAGUA

- 'GRINGO.' I hear a loud shout as my minibus pulls to a stop in the small pueblo of Guasole on the Honduras side of the border with Nicaragua. Followed by a stampede of about twenty money-changers and tricycle taxi drivers sprinting towards the open passenger side window of the minibus in which I have been sitting.

Large bundles of money are waved under my nose. By the time I finally manage to force my way out of the minibus door, my rucksack is already sitting waiting for me in the luggage compartment of a tricycle taxi. The driver wants to charge me 1 USD to cycle 300 metres to the border. Then he wants to charge me 10 Honduran Lempiras (30 pence) to cycle me 299 metres to the border. Then he rides alongside me as I walk the 299 metres to the Honduras-Nicaragua border. The midday sun is beating down mercilessly, and my t-shirt is soaked by the time I get to Honduras immigration and the tricycle driver has sworn at me for not giving him a tip for riding the 299 metres alongside me as I struggled in the heat with my rucksack.

I am already in a bad mood about being called a Gringo by the time I have passed through Honduras immigration, decide to change the Honduran Lempiras I still have in my wallet into Nicaraguan Cordobas and realise I don't know what the exchange rate is and am therefore about to be completely ripped off. I am in an even worse mood when I then get to the Nicaraguan immigration office and the bored looking official behind the counter tells me I need to pay him 12 dollars. I am not a Gringo, I mutter to myself. Why should I pay in US dollars to enter a country in Central America? Why should I pay anything when there are no signs in the office to suggest there really is a entry fee that is supposed to be paid?

- 'No soy estadosunidense.' I shake my head firmly. - 'No tengo dolares conmigo.'

The immigration offical stares back at me blankly, and tells me again that it will cost me 12 US Dollars to enter Nicaragua, and to step aside so he can serve the large queue standing behind me. I step aside, cursing Nicaragua in general and the moustachioed git behind the counter in particular, whilst holding my soaking wet t-shirt out to stop it sticking to my stomach. Then I slip the twenty US Dollars that I still have from my roadtrip in July into my passport and rejoin the back of the queue.

- 'Dame su nombre.' I slide a piece of paper and a pen across to the bored moustachioed immigration official after he has smugly taken my US money and stamped my passport. I tell him that I am Scottish not American, work for the British government and will be following up with his superiors on why I need to pay in US currency to enter Nicaragua, particularly when there are no signs on the wall to suggest an entry fee is necessary, and he has just given me a receipt for two dollars.

This tips the moustachioed immigration official over the edge. He slides my pen and blank piece of paper back across the counter, says a few things that I don't understand, culminating in one sentence that I do: that if I didn't want to pay the 12 US Dollars to enter Nicaragua then I should not have ()$·/%"!·$ come to the country.

I put my pen and paper back in my pocket, pull my wet t-shirt out from my stomach again, smile ruefully at the queue of wide-eyed Latin Americans that have been watching the extranjero arguing with the moustachioed immigration official, and then quickly hurry across the border into Nicaragua before I can be extradited for being a tight-fisted Scotsman.

 

THE BUS DRIVERS OF HONDURAS

After more than a week of scuba diving and topping up my suntan on the Honduran bay island of Utila, it feels good to be on the move again, as I travel by bus down through the mainland to Leon, my first intended destination in Nicaragua.

I can only hope that I arrive in one piece, having already come to the conclusion that Honduran bus drivers are by far the most recklessly dangerous that I have come across thus far on my travels through Central America. Last week I enjoyed a white knunckle ride  across from Copan Ruinas across Honduras to La Ceiba, as the driver at his lunch (which involved both a plate and a knife & fork) as he drove the bus around sharp bends on high mountain roads, sometimes on two wheels. Today, I discovered that driver was actually the Honduran bus driving equivalent of Driving Miss Daisy.

On the bus journey from La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula this morning,  I watched as the driver drove nose to tail at about 70 mph behind a petrol tanker ,and quietly presumed he must suffer from longsightedness as the explanation why he could not read the 'DANGEROUS - HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. PLEASE KEEP DISTANCE' warning about ten inches in front of his nose as he waited impatiently behind the petrol tanker for the first (inopportune) opportunity to overtake.

Overtaking is where most of the recklessness occurs on the roads of Honduras, I noted on my bus this afternoon from San Pedro Sula down to Tegucigalpa, as I watched the driver overtake other motorists on blind corners whilst writing text messages on his mobile phone. The etiquette on the roads of Honduras is to sound your horn as you begin an overtaking maneouvre, so the vehicle you want to get past slows down to give you time to get in front of it just before the vehicle coming the other way hits you, or at the very least to move over to the side a little bit so that three vehicles can fit on the  two lane road.

This etiquette worked well several times today in avoiding several high-speed head-on collisions, but on the downside, the constant sounding of the horn meant little sleep for the hungover extranjero trying to catch up on the little shuteye he got the previous night between celebrating his recently acquired PADI Rescue Diver certification, and getting up at the ungodly hour of 5AM this morning to catch a ferry from Utila.

Instead I sit awake, rolling with the swerves, bucking against the last-minute hand braking, and wondering. Wondering if fatal bus accidents happen a lot in Honduras. Wondering if the bus companies in Honduras know their employees are recklessly endangering the lives of passengers on a daily basis. Wondering if I will get to Nicaragua tomorrow in one piece without having to put my recently attained skills in Emergency First Aid into practice somewhere between Tegucigalpa and León.

TOO MANY PEEPUL ON DA I-LAN OF UTILA

On my third or fourth day on Utila in Honduas, there was a massive bang as I was walking down the main street on the island, and when I looked up, there were sparks shooting from an electricity pole and a smoking electricity cable lying in the street.

- 'D'ere too many peepul on da i-lan.' I overheard one of the locals shake his head in rueful explanation.

D'ere could have been one less peepul on da i-lan if I had been directly under that cable whet it fell to the ground, I remember thinking to myself at the time.

Then last night, there was a power surge in the Mango Inn where I am staying. The lights started dimming and brightening erratically, followed by smoke starting to come from one of the electric fans in my dorm room. A couple of televisions in the private rooms had also apparently exploded I soon found out.

There are too may peepul on da i-lan.' the receptionist shook her head at me when I went down to tell her about the fan and check out the hotel in advance of my early start the next morning to catch the 6AM ferry back to the Honduran mainland.

- I'm leaving tomorrow if it helps.' I waved my dorm key at her helpfully. 

Judging from the look on her face, it wasn´t going to help. Or perhaps it was because of the smell of burning rubber from her computer hard-drive, and the long queue of other guests standing around her desk complaining about exploding televisions and smoking fans.

BUNK BEDS AND SEA SICKNESS IN UTILA, HONDURAS

I'm in Utila now, one of the Honduran Caribbean bay islands located at the arse-end of the worlds second largest barrier reef. Honduras is one of the cheapest places in the world to do good scuba diving, and so I have come to do my Advanced PADI certification as I start making my way down to Panama City to catch a flight over to Colombia at the end of the month. 

Its costing me USD 299 to do my Advanced PADI course, which essentially gets me the 5 adventure dives and theory tests you need to do to get Advanced certification, a couple of extra free dives and four nights accommodation.

Unfortunately, the accommodation is shared dormitories. Unfortunately the shared dormitories are bunk-beds. Unfortunately my bottom bunk is foot to foot with Peter from Chicago. I hope I don't touch feet with Peter from Chicago during the night. Peter may well be hoping the same thing, and if he's not, he should, and probably will be, if/when he sees the state of my scabby feet. In Peter's favour, he is a short-arse and his feet do not stick out the bottom of his bunk-bed. Against Peter, is the fact that my feet dangle out significantly from my bunk bed, dangerously close to his bed. I will sleep diagonally in my bunk-bed to minimise my dangling. That is the sort of guy I am.

I haven't slept in a bunk bed in a long, long time. Actually that is a lie, I slept in a bunk-bed 8 weeks ago when I made the fatal mistake of leaving it to my friends to book all the accommodation for our US road trip, and thus ended up invariably sleeping in bunk-beds, the floor and on one night an upside down tent. But apart from that, I haven't slept in a bunk-bed for a long time, and I don't intend to make a habit of it after Utila. I don't think Peter from Chicago will either, if/when he sees the state of my scabby feet.

Prologue: This morning I did my two free dives. They were largely uneventful apart from the sighting of one poxy small sting ray, and a near-sighting of a whale shark, the largest fish in the world. Oh and I was sea sick on the scuba diving boat, in water that was about as choppy as a jacuzzi on its lowest bubble setting. I hope my PADI instructor didn't notice that, or if he did, that it doesn't mean I automatically fail my Advanced PADI certification, simply for being a woose.

HEAVY RAIN IN HONDURAS

It rains really heavily in Honduras, my old Guatemalan home-stay neighbour Kelly messaged me from Copan Ruinas a fortnight ago whilst I was still in Guatemala. Pah, I recall snorting with derision. It might be heavy rain for someone from Portland, Oregon - but it certainly won´t be heavy rain for someone from Glasgow, Scotland. Plus I always have my pac-a-mac in my rucksack if it starts to chuck it down, I remember thinking, before promptly thinking no more about it.

Today I found out that it does actually rain heavily in Honduras, and indeed much heavier than I ever remember it ever doing in Scotland. I first noticed the sky getting dark just after I left Sepultura archaeological ruins to walk the country road out to where I had seen a 75% Coke 25% Copan Ruinas signpost the previous day, whilst passing on my bus from San Salvador. That´s funny, I thought to myself as I looked down at my watch. It didn´t normally get dark until about 18:30 in Guatemala or El Salvador. It was only 16:00.

A few minutes later, the heavens opened. And I mean fully opened. Shall I keep going? I asked myself, as I threw my plastic macintosh over myself in a  pitiful attempt to keep myself dry. Pitiful, because the rain was already coming in horizontally, vertically and pretty much every other degree angle in between. I kept going. I really wanted a photograph of that Coca Cola Copan Ruinas signpost, even if I did get a bit wet in the process.

By the time I got to the Coke sign and took my photo, my trainers were making a noise as I walked, the noise of water between my toes. My plastic pac-a-mac whipped in the wind, as rain-water streamed down the back of my neck, and large articulated lorries and buses sped past me at alarming speeds.

After I had taken my photo and started walking the 4km back down towards my hotel in Copan Ruinas, the rain had already started to form a fushing river flowing parallel to the side of the road. The irony of an empty plastic bottle of Coca Cola flowing past me towards Copan Ruinas was not lost on me.

A Honduran good Samaritan in a 4X4 truck with tinted windows stopped not long afterwards to see if I wanted a ride back into town. Unfortunately for both him and me, he had greased back hair and a moustache and generally looked like one of the Mexican drug gang members I have seen far too often in the news since I started travelling, normally being paraded in a pair of handcuffs at a police press conference as the latest arrested member that will shortly stand trial in the Mexican courts, accused of killing rival gang members and stupid extranjeros caught out in heavy rain.

- 'Ya estoy mojado.' I smiled and politely shook my head, not looking him directly in the eyes in case he really was prone to violence and thought I was trying to stare him out. I am already wet.

As the truck pulled off, I grit my teeth and continued walking. I don´t know why, but I suddenly had the theme-tune to Bergerac in my head. I hummed the opening music to the eighties Jersey based police show starring John Nettles to myself over and over as I walked the last few kilometers in soaking wet, abject misery.  

On the positive side, at least I got my photo. 

A TARZAN IMPRESSION IN COPÀN, HONDURAS

Much as I enjoy travelling by myself, it would sometimes be good to have a travelling companion, for example when you come across a great photo opportunity to swing like Tarzan on a jungle vine in Honduras.

There was nobody else around in the jungle, so I decided to use my mini-tripod and the ten second timer facility on my camera. There was nobody else around in the jungle, but I decided not to undress down to my underpants for maximum Tarzan effect, just incase somebody suddenly appeared out of nowhere and I looked like a complete twat.

As it was, I still managed to look like a complete twat ...

COPÀN RUINAS, HONDURAS

Not as good as Tikal in Guatemala, but definitely still worth a visit....

HONDURAS, SPONSORED BY COCA COLA

The presence of the US's two biggest carbonated water producers was noticeable in both Guatemala and El Salvadaor, however here in Honduras, the Coca Cola and Pepsi branding is everywhere. Large logos adorn almost every inch of exterior facade of every supermarket, pupuseria, restaurant, comedor, bar and pub that I have walked or driven past in a bus since crossing over from El Salvador on Sunday. Some are professional advertisement hoardings and signs, whilst most are amateurish, handpainted efforts.

A lot of bus stops are painted bright red and have a coke bottle painted on them. Many walls are the same colour for the same reason. Yesterday I walked past a hairdresser whose front was nothing than a door and a wall with massive coke logo with peluqueria written in insignificantly small letters above it. Today on the way to Utila, I crossed a bridge over a muddy river that had burst its banks,  but what I noticed first was of course the large pepsi advert sticking out the middle of the swollen river. Almost every town I have passed through since entering Honduras has a sign that is 75% Coke and 25% the name of the town - but that is a different story. If the local consumption is anything to match the fizzy drink giants marketing presence, Hondurans must have really rotten teeth.

BRIGHTLY PAINTED WALLS IN LA PALMA

I don´t know why my USD 7 hotel room in the El Salvador border town of La Palma reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh but it does. Perhaps its the red tile floor and wooden beam ceiling in my tiny bedroom, or the homely patterned blankets on the tiny wooden bed. It cannot be the seat in my bedroom, as that is plastic garden furniture, and there are definitely no sunflowers to be found.

Or perhaps it is just all the artwork in the streets. The artwork that in fact made made me decide on the spur of the moment to stop off for a night in La Palmas as I drove past in the bus, before crossing over into Honduras. Artwork which again leaves me wondering why local councils back home don´t fork out on a few tins of paint and get local artists to brighten up dreary backwater Scottish towns with colourful murals, to attract the tourist trade and inject some money back into the local economy in places that might not otherwise be visited.

It certainly seems to be working in El Salvador, as La Palma profited by .....

USD 7 spent in a hotel

USD 2 spent in a grocery store
USD 1 spent in an internet cafe
USD 1.40 spent in a cake shop

.... a total of USD 11.40 from my wallet, in my visit to what was with hindsight, essentially a shitty, backwater town with some colourful paintings on its walls.