So after Becca and I split up and she went to Nicaragua, I went to La Fortuna and had an amazing time there, definitely one of the best locations I have been to on my trip. Of course the people there played a large role as well.
I met quite a few cool people, including two from south Africa, 3 from North Carolina, and a guy from Israel named Dor among others. I became pretty good friends with Dor and the South African Ryan. Every day, we would head to the "waterhole", a huge pool of water with waterfalls and a rope swing, where we would stay for a hand blistering hours of swinging off the rope and swimming as hard as we could to get through a waterfall to sit behind it. It was quite a beautiful place.
Another beautiful place we went to was a waterfall and we were told that the fee was $7.00 to get in and we didn't want to pay that, nor did we have that much money on us, so we decided to sneak around through the jungle and back to the trail at the other side of the toll booth, but no such luck. We got caught at a ravine under the bridge to the trail and had to come up and pay. But they let us In for less than locals pay for $2.00, (which, as it turns out is all it was worth). it was beautiful, but nothing compared to most of the waterfalls that we see in the states. Nonetheless we had a lot of fun swimming under the falls (though not under it cause it probably would have smashed us to death). We tried to swim to the falls as hard as we could but the force of the falls was far to much for us to compete with and didn't make it too far before becoming exhausted.
One day we went on a volcano tour after our dip in the waterhole. The tour was very informativ
e and the beauty of the jungle there was quite striking with a plethora of life everywhere you looked including a baby yellow viper, sloths, monkeys, birds with large "bag lady" handbag nests and many more. One of the spider monkeys we saw doing acrobatics in the trees had a baby on its back, and yeah, that was another cool sight. After the Volcano tour, we were taken to a hot spring resort that was simply massive. We smuggled in our own rum so that we could make drinks without paying the $5.00 per drink fe
e, ordered some sodas from the swim-up bar, and swam around in the many, many pools of varying temperatures. We adventured further and further up the hill of pools and found a heli-pad and a small myan pyramid that they built and were starting to build a hot waterslide park on it and further up to where the water was so hot you couldnt touch it for more than a second. We had a great time, and at the end we were taken back to the volcano lookout to see lava, but there were too many clouds so we could only hear it and catch a little red glimpse here and there.
After my great 4 or 5 days in La Fortuna, I headed to Nicaragua with a friend, he went to San Juan Del Sur and I to Ometepe to meet Becca again. I was "waiting" for three days before she showed up and then we traveled around the island, checking it out, and getting screwed over by bus drivers. Alot of the people there were really rude, but of course, most were very nice as well.
The following day, Becca and I climbed, Volcan Concepcion (Conception in English) by ourselves with a little hand drawn map. It was a ahrd climb, but quite beautiful. We took a break for a snack on a mammothly huge tree that had to be at least a couple hundred years old before heading on up the volcano. It took us 2.5 hours to reach the talus and leave the vegetation, and from there, after lunch and hiding our bags, we took another 1.5 hours in getting to the top of the
crater. Some of the way at the top, I had to push becca up the slope by her butt because she only had skate shoes and i hadmy rugged hiking boots. There was alot of sulfer gas spewing from the craters near us and our noses and esophogus´ were burning alot so we had to leave rather quickly. The way down was fun, well at least the firts part. From the top we volcano boarded with our shoes dor a while, hauling ass, and then did some mellow canyoneering down a large canyon going down the volcano until we got back on our path and finished the hike out.
At the end of the hike, there were some little children at the bottom who had been there on
the way up. They were immensly rude, demanding that we give them money. And we said no, we´re sorry and you´re not even asking nicely, and we walked off. Right afterwards, the little girl picked up a decent sized rock and tried to hit us. We had our backs turned and it narrowly missed hitting us. We scolded them and continued on, exhausted, and slighlt taken back by the evil children who inhabitted the base of the volcano like grumpy little trolls.
The following day, I left the island, mainly due to the fact that I had NO money left except the
fair for the ferry. I had been very resourceful in finding food the past few days, but becca still spotted me some cash. I went straight to San Juan Del Sur, where I spent the next few days half-heartedly trying to sell my surf board, to no avail. There were some very beautiful beaches there and alot of cool people that I had a great time with. Two of the people (young lawyers from california) were actually winding up in India at the same time I was planning on being there, so we may meet up in september/october. I also did alot of body boarding in the great waves there. One day
after coming back at sunset from a relaxing walk along the rocks to the point, we had decided to take a dip and had quite a scare when we thought that our friend had gotten lost and/or drowned and the entire hotel staff and guests were on the beach watching as we reinacted a baywatch episode, swimming frantically out past the waves to find her. As it turned out she was a pretty accomplished swimmer and swam out there al lthe time, but she had failed to inform us of that little fact. None the less, it made for quite a lot of excitement, and we were very amped up afterwards.
I left San Juan and headed for Granada, a beautiful, colonial city where I spent one full day. I stayed in an amazingly beautiful hostel called the oasis for $7 a night. I met Ryan there randomly at the hostel we stayed at and at one point we went up this huge church tower for $1. On the way down we noticed the ropes to the church bells and they told us we couldn't ring the bells so we actd like we were going to anyways (see pic below). The hostel was more like a resort, with wicker, indian-looking chairs and tables and fine woodworking everwhere, and even a pool and free DVD usage among other things. It was very comfortable, but I forced myself to leave and head to Leon the following day with my frined from La Fortuna who happened to be staying at the same hostel.
When we arrived in Leon, it looked like a sunami had just hit, all the streets were flooded and cars were backed up for blocks and we had to get out of the bus and walk for about 15 blocks through the downpour and 8 inch deep water in some places, to our hostel where I stayed for 2 days. We checked out the market one day on our walking tour of the town, and it was the nicest market i´ve seen yet, it was massive, and not too congested, fairly clean, nice people, decently priced, and had an amazing assortment of fruits and veggies id never seen as well as a great looking cafeteria of fresh prepared foods. I also watched X-Men III in the theatre for $2. Since this is where I currently am, I will leave it here, and I will update with pictures ASAP.
couple days ago and am now taking my advanced training, which I will finish up today and start some specialty training soon to get my master scuba diver certification, which requires that I have rescue diver training as well as 5 specialties. Obviously, I am greatly enjoying my time here and scuba diving is absolutely amazing. I feel incredibly comfortable in the water and all the skills come naturally to me, at least so far anyways. The people here are great, and though the island itself is expensive, this is one for the cheapest places in the world to for certification and diving and I am having a lot of fun with the people here. Its interesting, because everywhere you go, you mostly see tourists, mostly white people, and they are all here to dive. Hundreds of people and all you here them talking about is there diving experiences. It is really great. Yesterday in the advanced course, we went down to a wreck of a haliburton ship and swam 
around it in 100 feet of water and then if a section called peak performance buoyancy where we played underwater Frisbee and tried to take each others masks and fins off and turn off each others air. We also took our fins off and did matrix moves in the water where we kicked off each other and flew backwards doing backflips. We also did a little course where we had to swim through squares and hoops and knock little weights over that were resting on the sea floor with just our regulators (the piece in your mouth that provides you with air) without touching the ground. One of the first dives I did I got really sick in the water and wound up throwing up when we were about top descent our second dive. Immediately, I was surrounded by tons of fish who, within seconds, ate all of my soften. Which though gross, was pretty cool and I felt great afterwards and had a fantastic dive where we saw a free swimming sea hours and a giant more eel and some more amazing fish I ha
ve no idea what they were called.
