I feel like such a debbie downer, and I promise after this post things are going to get better, but I was disappointed by Nicaragua as a whole. I’d had so many people tell me that Nicaragua was 11/10, it was their favourite place they’d visited, double the time you plan to spend there, etc. I’m sure that was all true for them, but I do feel like the hype made my experience worse because the reality for me was far away from the expectation that had been created.

I began on Ometepe Island which is a volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua. Home to 2 volcanoes, it’s an island, within the country. Annoyingly, it rained for almost the entire time I was there which meant I wasn’t able to do much. That was jarring but I met some lovely girls in my hostel who I spent some time with, especially seeing as almost all of us had suffered some kind of scooter injury. It’s the only way to get around the island and almost everyone had hurt themselves on them, (me included minorly, but the story is honestly so embarrassing, I can’t even bring myself to write it). I did do a really interesting chocolate factory tour whilst in my hostel, El Pital. The guy who runs it is truly the irl Willie Wonka and he taught us all about the history of cacao, the properties of chocolate, how they make it and we had a tasting afterwards too. I was silly and didn’t write anything down, but I can tell you that whatever they’re doing to the chocolate we get here is all wrong, because the 85% chocolate I bought as a souvenir tastes absolutely nothing like the dutty, nasty bitter shit we get in this country.

I moved onto San Juan del Sur, (SJDS), as I’d heard it was a good spot to surf and party. I didn’t surf there in the end, (Mother Nature had other ideas), but I did go to party at Sunday Funday… which was trash.

My final stop in Nicaragua was León where I did a walking tour, (shock). Nicaragua is sometimes referred to as the ‘land of lakes and volcanoes’. Whilst top spot for number of volcanos in Central America actually goes to El Salvador, Nicaragua does have the largest number of lakes and the largest lake in Central America. It’s a fairly young country with the average age being just 24. The energy in Nicaragua is a little… off. The country is under a dictatorship which has gotten particularly dictatorship-ey, over the past few years. Back in the day, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, (FSLN), bolstered by students at the time, actually overthrew the previous dictatorship back in 1979. During the 80s, the US got involved and a civil war broke out until around 1990. By this point, there was the fall out from the previous dictatorship, the revolution, US interference, a civil war and a whole earthquake – the country was in tatters. The legacy can still be seen today – 70% of people live below the poverty line, to the point where some 75% of people don’t have fridges. Anyways, the FSLN party that overthrew the original dictatorship were reelected in 2006 and they have been in power ever since…

We visited the cathedral, which is beautiful, especially as the sun is going down and you can get a great view of the landscape. I did the volcano boarding which was an experience and a half. I’d heard horror stories of people really injuring themselves and before you get on the bus to drive to the volcano, they show you a video of someone shattering almost every bone in their body doing it, which filled me and my accident prone self with oh so much confidence. We drove out to Cerro Negro which is the youngest volcano in Central America, being just 175 years old and still very much active. The hike up is only about 30 minutes and, (with someone else carrying your board), pretty easy. Although it looks like an expanse of black lava rock, it’s really pretty in an abstract way, which is my fave kind of beauty. After an almost scarily brief safety demo., we hopped into our orange jumpsuits, covered our faces and boarded down the side of the volcano. I actually did get some speed at the start but I came off the board entirely. Imagine, I’m in a starfish position, sliding down this volcano, dragging the board behind me, panic slowly creeping in. I managed to come to a stop so once back on the board, I decided to take it easy. So easy in fact, that I won the prize for slowest speed down the volcano. Once everyone had made it down, we jumped into the now party bus, stopped off for some food with a local family, headed back to Leon to continue the party, claim my free shot for being a slow poke and wash the black dust off my body.

Out of all the places I visited in Nicaragua, I think León was my favourite. Less of the activities were weather dependent and I learnt the most whilst there. I had the worst wax of my life there but also the best brownie too – high highs, low lows yknow.

Next stop, El Salvador…