So Nicaragua....

Ok so Nicaragua- We started our trip in León, a good 10 hour trip from San Jose, with a swift bus to shuttle switch in Managua. I had read some pretty serious warnings about violence and crime in Managua and had a number of Nicaraguans warn me to stay away as well, so we treated the city like a bus stop, only passed through twice in order to get to León and then to Granada.
The seven of us were exhausted when we got in early evening to León at our hostel, Hostel Sonati. The city though was impressive though from first glance, especially coming from Costa Rica. León was an exhibition city built by the Spanish during the colonial age as a sign of their wealth and control of the area. The massive buildings with fancy ironwork and beautiful churches are still there, if in a slightly decrepit state. León attracts tourist but not enough for the city to really clean itself up. Regardless, I found my favorite church there, the Iglesia Recoleción. We wandered the city for one day, visiting a fabulous art museum located in a mansion of an old home. The next day we made the big expenditure of the trip with a guided day tour that turned out to be well worth the $60 a person it cost. We went volcanoboarding! Yes, we hauled wooden "sleds" up Cerro Negro (an old cinder volcano if anyone is interested) and raced down. Well, in my case slipped, slid and rolled down. I couldn't quite get a hang of the breaking business and threw myself off my "sled" three times, to spectacular effect I'm told. Got a little scraped up, but mostly just dirty. Thankfully our tour included a lovely lunch and swim break at a close by lagoon. After-wards we headed off to visit the ruins of León Viejo, the original Spanish city which was destroyed by a volcano eruption hundreds of years ago.
From León we headed to Granada, the tourist capital of Nicaragua, and its supposed cultural capital. We'd picked up a travel buddy at breakfast an American guy from Florida, named Johnathan, who was headed to Granada that day as well. Once in Granada we split up, but not after being absolutely inspired by all his travels. An unfortunate surprise greeted us in Granada, our hostel(Hostal Mochillas) and in fact an entire section of the city was without water due to a broken pipe. Unable to clean up after our travels, we did a little scoping out of Granada's main park and were able to get up into the bell tower of the main church for a beautiful sunset view of the city and Lake Nicaragua, on the shores of which Granada sits. Granada was beautiful and we enjoyed our wanderings from site to site, church to church. Erin a woman staying in our hostal accompanied us for the day, which was fun. The city was beautiful but I think I liked the feel of León better, there were so many tourists around, some of it because of Semana Santa festivities (we did catch a cool church procession one day),but I think mostly because Granada is a city of tourism.Took a day trip to Masaya, which houses a few famous markets and thus spent a day in a shopping frenzy, the markets where everything you'd expect, crowded and tight with people making the products the were selling in the back along the sides.
Thursday after the guilty pleasure an American-style pancake breakfast at Kathy's Waffle House, we headed off for the Isla de Ometepe. Bus-taxi-ferry-by foot, we finally got to our hostal, a family run affair in a very very small village. The island was amazing, it was formed by two enormous conical volcanoes and it sits in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the 19th largest lake in the world, which might not sound so impressive, but it was a sight to behold. All of us felt like we on the ocean, our room was but thirty feet from the shore, where waves lapped constantly. We took our last full day in Nicaragua to just relax, read, swim, and sleep. It was beautiful. I hope to return to the island in the future and perhaps have the time to climb one of the volcanoes and simply soak up a little more of its atmosphere.
Spent our last night in Rivas in order to catch our bus the next morning. Finished out with classic Nicaraguan meal, very similar to the Costa Rican casado with the gallo pinto, fried plantains, fish and cabbage slaw, though they make their slaw spicy in Nicaragua, which I appreciated. The bus ride back, customs and all went smoothly. It was a quick trip, but eye-opening. Nicaragua was more of what I expected Central America to look like, and served to highlight the high development and tourism of Costa Rica. The people did look a little different and speak differently though not enough to cause problems in communication, the history of the two countries has been radically different. I think I've had a very simplistic and unified view of Central America-its geography culture and people. Nicaragua was a lesson in just how much crossing a border can change the land and people. Now I´m looking forward to visiting Panama and seeing the differences there.