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San Juan Del Sur

Since the world didn't end, it was time to find a nice place to spend Christmas. Enter San Juan Del Sur. Truth be told I kind of left Ometepe to get away from the party, and to rejuvenate on the beach. I managed to get one night of rest, but the following day the entire party from Ometepe had followed me to the coast and so the madness continued. Before I knew it I was signed up for a pub crawl with dozens of familiar faces from the days before. 

San Juan Del Sur

Christmas is a strange time in Nicaragua. In the days before loud parades would fill the streets in the middle of night/early morning, complete with drums and singing. For weeks the sounds of fireworks filled my ears day and night. On Christmas day, 7 people from our hostel and I banded together and hired a boat till sunset. Loaded with supplies of beer, rum, and oreos we set off. We did a little fishing, some snorkeling and stopped at a private beach  where we could relax. 5 Hours later we returned to port, napped for some time, than rejoined the Fiesta. By this time DJs from the festival had arrived in town and began to do their thing at a club next door. 

The next morning I found myself at the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border. Since passing through a couple weeks earlier, I thought I would have an edge crossing back into Costa Rica...Wrong. I could deal with paying the 25(Nicaraguan) Passport handling fee, but after a long way in a lineup at the next window I was informed about the 2 dollar(50 Nicaraguan) exit tax. "I'm sorry, you must pay in American dollars." Why? neither of us are American, neither of us are in America. Why can't you just take your own currency...? A sketchy of currency exchange through a fence, back in line problem solved. Now, just to pass through Costa Rica customs and I'm good. "Sorry sir, you must show me your flight confirmation before I can let you in." I was going to try and solve this problem with money, when he told me there was a computer in a car rental shop across the boarder. So I had to cross the boarder to walk to a car rental agency, beg them to use there computer to print off a flight confirmation, cross back over the boarder, show the piece of paper so I could cross back across the boarder into Costa Rica...

Next day caught my flight, now I am happily freezing my butt off in Calgary.

Volcano boarding and the end of the world!

Leon is an old Colonial city in Guatemala, which like most in Central America have fallen into disrepair. The  city is littered with endless markets and cool old churches and monuments. I have never been overly interested in architecture  and besides the odd comment like "that looks cool," or "neat," that´s often all I take from it. I stayed at the BigFoot hostel  which for 30 bucks gives you a bed to sleep in, breakfast in the morning, take you volcano boarding, a victory beer, 2 mojitos, and then the owner lets you try his home-made liquors, and then there is even a bar shuttle(that may or may not be a rusty old truck you can jump in the back of) that takes you around town all night. 

Lets just be honest, I came to Leon to slide down an active volcano on a toboggan like piece of wood.

Saftey suit

Just like fresh powder

After Leon I was drawn back to Ometepe to an end of the world music festival that was happening in the shadow of another active volcano Concepción. On this trip I met with some of the crazy people on my trip. Together we danced on for two days with little to no sleep. After the first night walking home a local man approached my friend and I and told us we would never make it back to town and set up a tent for us. in the morning (an hour or two later) came his wife made us a spectacular breakfast.

Day or night the party went on...

Illigal in most parts of the world, this super caffeinated energy drink will kill you. Kill you, or allow you to dance to electronic music for days without sleep. 

To be honest I was more afraid of this stuff killing me, than the end of the world...

Ometepe, Nicaragua

The price of traveling around Nicaragua is more adorable. A bus from the boarder to Rivas, a taxi to San George, and an hour boat ride to the island of Ometepe works out to be about 4 bucks. I can dig it. 

The ferry was pretty much just an overloaded, top heavy death trap... but the price was right. I watched two men carry an older gentleman across a plank of old wood onto the deck. The plank had a huge crack in it and the man the fear of the devil in his eyes as the plank moved and bent with the waves smashing the hull.

Ometepe

Ometepe is a pretty bad ass island. Its made up of two volcanoes, in a big lake, in the middle of Nicaragua. Its a very spectacular looking place. Before I knew it I was on the back of a motorcycle on the way to a hostel. The next day I decided to rent a motorcycle and check out the rest of the island. I was cruising along when a very tiny lady flagged me over. She was speaking in Spanish very quickly and all I could understand is that she wanted to go to the hospital. I figured she was a nurse or that she had a terrible illness that needed to  be treated. Either way she hopped on quick as can be and to the hospital we went! about an hour later I was once again flagged down by this tiny woman, this time she was rambling on about a church. So once again she nimbly hopped on the bike side saddle and I found her a church.

My near collisions over the 4 or so hours I spent driving are as follows:

• Dog sleeping on the road
• Large pig darting out of the forest
• Stray horse
• 20+ bulls being herded by 6 year old on a horse
• Marching band  

The day ended with a visit to Ojo de Agua. A dammed up stream that flows from the Medares volcano forms a sort of natural swimming pool. The volcanic water is said to be really good for your skin, and potentially have healing powers. I don´t know if it was the water or the ice cold beer, but it sure made me feel good!

Ojo de Agua

The next day was spent mostly climbing up Concepción volcano. Trees would shelter us from the sun for the lower half of the hike but once we broke tree line there would be only sun... sun and loose volcanic rock. Hot sulfuric steam leaked out of cracks in the rocks as the top drew closer. The summit was spectacular. Rising air coming from the east turned to cloud, and swept down the west face disintegrating just as fast as it had formed. The wind was so strong I could barely stand. Unseen forces swirled cloud, dirt and rocks in circles in such a way I have never experienced before.

   

Concepción summit (stolen from Youtube)

My diet on the island consisted mostly of plantain chips and fried chicken. The woman next to the hostel (dubbed chicken lady) supplied the whole city it seemed with e cheapest and most delicious chicken around.

Another early morning and its time to be off again! 

Costa Rica!

Arriving in an airport in Central America is always exciting. Even when you know what to expect, it still seems to overload the senses. I opted to book a hostel that had an airport shuttle as to bypass the madness. My conformation email read`` walk past all of the yelling cab drivers and wait by three pay phones on the right. A man named Alex will drive you to the hostel.`` Pretty straight forward. After locating Alex I was dropped off at my hostel. After talking to a couple fellow Canadians in my room I decided to join up with them and head to the beach first thing in the morning.

Santa Teresa is like a surf bum`s dream. Even though there are lots of people around all of the time you barely notice it. The beach goes on without end. I tried walking for a few hours in one direction just to make sure. Although most of my time was spent at the beach, the more notable experiences are a combination of liquefying fruit to combine with rum, late night beach fires, and skinny dipping in amazingly bright phosphor luminescence. There was also the 5 AM wake up where a howler monkey decided to do his thing in the tree my hammock was attached to.

Santa Teresa

After a few nights at the beach I decided to make tracks to Nicaragua where life seemed to be a little less expensive.It seems like every bus that leaves a remote place down here has to leave at some on godly hour in the morning. The fact the my Ipod I was using as a clock and an alarm broke a few nights before also adds the excitement of never knowing the actual time. Luckily a friend woke me up 10 minutes before the bus was coming. I hurried down the road to the bus stop without realizing how badly I needed to use the washroom. With nothing open at 6 in the morning, and with buses often 5-10 minutes late I decided to cross the road and head into woods to take care of business. As I was locating some non poisonous-looking leaves I watched as the bus zoomed past and down the road. Back to the beach! 

Catching the later bus, I met up with some friendlies heading to Monte Verde. Not a place I was meaning to go to, but since night was falling and I happened to be in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like buying a few beer and sharing a minibus to a town with a place to stay seemed like a good idea. Costa Rica has a lot of neat things, but it always seems like you have to pay a tour company to see any of them. Our group had decided to go zip lining, which I don´t usually find that entertaining but I figured I´d join in. Off to Extremo Canopy we went. The tour was pretty typical, but at they reverse your harness and strap your feet up so you are flying face first superman style. The cable is 1KM long and 500 feet above the valley below.

Kind of hard to grasp the height, but it´s pretty intense when you are forced to look straight down the whole time. They also stop you only seconds before you collide with a wall at 80 KM/hr.

our hostel owner also took us to a cool ficus tree. The tree starts as vines that climb around the tree, then smothers it out. the result after a couple hundred years is a tunnel-like tree that you can climb up.

Ficus!

After a few days in the mountains I decided I would make my way to Nicaragua, where I had intended on going all along. Catching the bus in the morning (4:00 am!) I made my way to the boarder. The bus drivers in rural areas remind me of school bus drivers. Often they would stop outside a house and honk the horn a few times. Moments later someone would come running out to catch the bus.

The Costa Rica/Nicaragua border was probably the most confusing boarder I have ever crossed. There seemed to be an endless no mans land in which you had to pass. Show your passport to 5 different people, walk for a KM, pay a stranger a dollar, walk through a hole in the fence, cross a busy street and you are in!

One semester down!

So, one semester complete, and I´m still alive! Just in time for Kicking Horse`s official opening weekend. A couple friends even came over from Vancouver (transplants from PEI) to join in! Coming from the east coast I always sort of assumed that ski hills were... well, hills. Boy was I wrong! It seems you can snowboard down entire mountains! Kicking Horse is basically a breeding ground for fresh powder. Just to clarify, powder on the east coast are the few centimeters of snow that land on top of the densely packed ice.Real powder is a magical soft substance that when you fall, it gently hugs you and after a cartwheel or two it places you back on your feet and sends you on your way. With almost a month off and a season pass in hand, it would be a great opportunity to get to know the slopes, but with the ever growing temptation of traveling to new places I would need to catch the bus to Calgary for my flight to Costa Rica that left early the next morning. 

Panorama, top of Eagle Eye Express , Kicking Horse 

Compadres

Greyhound might be the worst form of transportation over. Has anyone ever taken a Greyhound bus and said ``Wow! What a reliable and affordable service! And their staff are friendly too!`` In my experiences they typically break down in the dessert for several hours, or the staff wont sell you a ticket for the next bus because they close in ten minutes and they have already counted their till.

End rant. 

I arrived in Calgary just after midnight ( Greyhound was over an hour late, grrr) and was promptly picked up by a good fellow I know (another PEI transplant) and immediately taken to one of the coolest music venues Ive ever been to. The music was sort of folkish, with a strange, strange twist to it. There was a little French guy(I think...) who I wanted to be Johny Cash that I really enjoyed play. There was a bonfire and they sold black IPAs and warm cider. The rules seemed to be that you were not aloud to talk at all or you would be quickly``shhhd.`` The other option was that you could yell loudly at people and they had to respond with gibberish.

That was followed by going to one of the worse venues I have ever been, were bro`s got in fights on the dance floor and bad djs played hip hop.

The night ended on a high note with my buddy giving me possibly the best avocado on the planet. 

50 minutes of sleep later I was putting on my only sweater and a small jacket that was(and still is) two steps away from being a piece of garbage. I stepped outside and after realizing it was -20C, I came back in and borrowed a small blanket and wrapped it around my torso under my garbage jacket. A 30 dollar cab ride and two flights later I was in San Jose!

Hawaii pt. 2

Typical tourist photo at Pearl Harbor

Typical Japanese one maned suicide torpedo...

Pretty much any direction you look towards the ocean in Hawaii its probably suitable for a Windows desktop background photo.

 After a few days on Oahu I went over to Maui to meet a good friend of mine (who apparently is from Hawaii.) The next few days are sort of a blur or snorkeling, foosball, Korean karaoke (yes there is a difference) and diving. I didn't take pictures of any of these things because I'm a slacker.

I did how ever take some photos of this:

This is a loco moco, typical Hawaiian breakfast which consists of:

1. bed of rice
2. large hamburger patty
3. three fried eggs
4. fried onions
5. fried mushrooms
6. side of macaroni salad
7. slather everything in gravy

Shave ice is also pretty awesome - start with a base of ice cream, cover with shaved ice, sugar syrup, and some sweet cream. Amazing.

The trip wasn't all fun and games though, I did learn some stuff. For example, The state of Hawaii eats more spam per capita  then any other state in the US. They love it so much they even have a "spam jam" in Waikiki every year, complete with a spam parade. I'm not even really sure what that means... But it exists, look it up!

And welcome back to Canada....