As seemed to be the pattern throughout our trip we found ourselves travelling from Costa Rica to Nicaragua on a Sunday, but not just any Sunday. We had arrived at the Nicaraguan border on the Revolution Celebration weekend meaning there were no local buses travelling onward and the taxi drivers lurking about were charging way over the odds to get anywhere useful. Afterng, so we spent the night in Rivas, which turned out well as we were able to get a great streetside BBQ for tea. 
The next day we hopped on a chicken bus (an old American school bus converted for public use by doing absolutely nothing at all to it, apart f hanging around "umm"-ing and "ahh"-ing for a while a super-mega-bus on its way through stopped and we managed to convince the driver to let us hop on for just a few dollars. We were too late to complete our journey to the coast that evenirom occasionally giving it a lick of paint and covering the driver's window in various stickers, stuffed toys and/or pictures of Jesus) over to the Pacific coast of Central America and the Nicaraguan surf town of San Juan del Sur. We spent a couple of days recovering from our journey while swinging about in hammocks, but the beach isn't that great so we hopped back on a chicken bus through Rivas to the port town of San Jorge.
Our destination was the lake island of Ometepe, formed by two volcanoes joined. An hour long rough ride in a wooden lancha boat took us to the main town where we got straight back on a chicken bus to Charco Verde, a small collection of hotels on a black sand beach. As soon as we checked into a hostel a heavy downpour started meaning we couldn't do much for the rest of the day. After a night being woken up by (the creepiest) bugs (ever) crawling over us we decided to escape and move to a different part of the island. It turned out to be a wise move, as we stayed in a place set in a garden full of butterflies with a private stony beach. We chose to stay in hammocks in an open sided hut in the garden surrounded by nature. There were wasps building nests in the ceiling and one night we were visited by a tarantula, which left after being poked with a stick.
We spent a few days lounging around catching up on some much needed rest and un-bending our knees after all the chicken buses in our hammocks. We visited the local restaurant for a meal of tipico (meat, chicken or fish with beans, rice, fried plantain and salad) as the sun went down behind the larger of the two volcanoes turning the sky into a brilliant rainbow of reds. We visited this restaurant a couple of times, but our first was the most entertaining. As we approached we heard someone greeting us with a chirpy 'Hola!', although we couldn't see where it came from we returned the greeting only to realise once it was said over and over again that it was a talking parrot. While we were waiting for our food a woman brought out a monkey on a chain who ran around doing flips off the fence, followed by a puppy chasing a kitten all over the place. We returned to the hostel and lay in our hammocks sipping rum enjoying the evening and the millions of fireflies lighting up all around us.
I had grand plans of climbing the closest, and smaller, of the volcanoes but after deciding every morning to set off that afternoon, rain would come in after lunch and I would put it off for another day. Finally on our last full day, after a morning of rain, the afternoon was clear and, although there wasn't time to climb to the summit, I made the two hour hike up to a viewpoint about halfway up. It was a muddy walk through some jungle but once it opened up I was afforded with great views over the entire island. Making my way back down I spotted lots of monkeys playing about in the trees, dawdled to look at some ancient monolyths and once back at the hostel went for a swim in the lake.
The following day we were back on the bus, boat and another bus to Granada. The buses were pretty hellish, the first one stiflingly hot that went all the way round the island before heading to the boat terminal and the second was ridiculously crammed. They were forcing at least 3 adults onto a seat designed for American schoolchildren, Nikki was being repeatedly kicked by a baby and having her arm whacked by a guy outside before we set off, while I shared a seat with a woman and her 3 children. At one point we went through a town holding a rodeo which made progress slow as they were using the one through street as the parade ground.
Granada is a pretty colonial town on the north shore of lake Ometepe. We spent a few days wandering the tree lined streets, relaxing in the park and exploring the market. One night there was a music festival in front of the bright yellow cathedral and we hung about to watch for a while and witnessed a booty shaking competition. We also saw a school drum band rehersing in the plaza one day with accompanying dancers. One of the best things about Granada was the amount of street food on offer; snow cones, BBQ sweetcorn, tortillas and some of the best hotdogs ever - topped with various sauces and jalapenos.
Unfortunately as its a pretty touristy town there are a lot of beggars around which can start to grate after a while, especially when they come up asking for food while you're sat in one of the may pretty outside restaurants. We eventually got around to sending our huge stack of postcards home which we had been picking up along the way. After a few days we moved to Managua where it rained lots trapping us in our room and after a couple of days we were on a long distance bus to El Salvador.We had made the decision, due to the recent political unrest in Honduras, to get a direct bus through the country to El Salvador, and due to the ungodly hour we had to set off from Managua, we ended up sleeping through most of it. Once we arrived in San Salvador Nikki drove a hard bargain with a taxi driver to get us across town to the local bus terminal. Annoyingly in Central America there are numerous bus companies, each with their own terminal and usually they are scattered all over the place. We were catching a chicken bus out to the coastal village of El Tunco. We asked the conductor to let us know when we were there but after about an hour we got worried when we started driving past signs for El Tunco. We asked the conductor if we were supposed to get off, but he said something about the road being windy and just to wait a little longer. Eventually he told us we had arrived at...El Zonte. We told him we were supposed to be in El Tunco and he told us we'd passed through and should have got off earlier. He mumbled something about crossing the road and catching a bus back if we really wanted to. We waited for 45 minutes but no bus showed so we thought we'd better find some accomodation as the sun was dropping quickly.
We asked at a couple of places and found a nice looking resort within our budget. We waited a couple of minutes to be shown our room only to be led out of the resort and down the road to a grotty little shack full of giant spiders, ants and a in house bat clinging to the ceiling. We were too tired to care by this point so went and got some tea the fell asleep on our (surprisingly comfy) bed held up by breeze blocks.
We spent the next day playing in the resort pool and on the amazing black sand beach with huge crashing waves that was used by only a couple of small resorts. We had planned to head up to Guatemala after a couple of days but hadn't had enough beach action. We eventually caught a bus back to El Tunco and checked in to a hostel run by two Salvadorian surfers happily living up to the surf dude stereotype. The beach at El Tunco wasn't as nice as El Zonte and it was a lot busier, with lots of locals coming here on holiday. Every building in the village was dedicated to supporting the tourist boom, with surfing as one of it's main activities on offer. 
Mark decided that he was going to become a Surf God in the next couple of days so booked a one hour lesson and hired a board for the day. He wasn't as bad as we both thought he would be (he trips up on flat surfaces a lot so balancing on a moving board seemed like a no no) he managed to stand up the first few times and caught the waves right into the shallow waters. Boyed by his success we returned to El Zonte beach where we'd been told the waves were good for beginners. When hiring the board the surf shack convieniently forgot to mention the huge waves that had come in that day and were promptly swallowing even the most seasoned surfers. After being thrown about washing-machine style for a while Mark admitted defeat and we spent the afternoon splashing in the pool and sipping fresh, icy lemonade. 
We'd found a nice restaurant back in El Tunco that hadn't completely sold out to the tourist trade and sold good, cheap food that we'd visited for the past couple of nights. With the image of a nice prawn cocktail in mind this evening we'd decided to try a 'seafood cocktail'. A cold dish of snails, prawns, bits of fish and other unidentifiable creatures swam about in a murky brown liquid that was, for some reason, accompanied by a packet of crackers. The crackers were nice.By now it was our final week and we thought it best to get moving but not before a spot of early morning surfing. We had pretty taxing journey up to northern Guatemala involving a bus back to San Salvador, a taxi to the bus station, a bus across the border to Guatemala city, a 10 hour, icy air-conned over night bus to Flores, a mini bus into the town centre and a collectivo out to Tikal: a large area of Mayan ruins and our final desination that day.
We were having a pretty rough time already as we were so exhauster and everything was costing a lot more than we'd previously been told (entry to the Tikal park was now three times the price we'd expected). We were in need of a cash machine and the driver out to Tikal had said he would take us to one on the way only to forget and drive the hour our to Tikal leaving us penniless. After his steadfastly refusing to take us to the promised cash machine and us steadfastly refusing to be left here without any cash he agreed to lend us the entry money to the park and helped us find some cheap accommodation in the form of hammock space. We whipped out our Amazon hammocks once again and set them up under the open sided hut and promptly fell asleep.
That afternoon we bought our (extortionately priced) tickets after 3pm which allowed us to go into the park that evening and again the next day. This worked out well as all the shuttle buses herded the tourists who weren't staying in Tikal back to Flores at about 2pm and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We'd decided to explore the Grand Plaza that evening and left the outlying temples for the next day. The Grand Plaze consists of two temples facing each other surrounded on either side by smaller but more splayed structures. We were able to climb more of the structures which gave us views of other temples poking out above the deep jungle. We strolled back through the jungle to our accomodation and got some tea before crashing back asleep in our hammocks, but not before we shooed another huge spider out into the jungle. The next morning we returned and wandered off along a different path which took us past Temple V with it's rediculously steep steps and Temple IV which is the highest in the complex and gave great views for miles around. We caught the bus back to Flores, with the driver remembering to stop at a cash point this time. We were dropped off at the bus station where we had a six hour wait, in the most uncomfortably designed bus station ever, for another icy air-conned over-night bus back to Guatemala City.
We had been advised by many people that Guatemala City wasn't a nice place to spend our last few days. Luckily, we'd be able to get a 45 minute shuttle straight to the airport on our day of departure from the near by pretty, Colonial town of Antigua. We caught a shuttle straight from the bus station to Antigua and once we found a room and inspected the strange rectangular shape in the corner, decided it was the long forgotten sight of a bed, and collapsed for a few hours (we hadn't slept in one since El Salvador four nights earlier). 
One of the main activites in Antigua is strolling aound the cobbled streets and taking in the artisan markets which flow readily into the towns local food market and make for some interesting sights and excellent street food. We spent a day wandering through the markets looking out for small gifts in lieu of birthdays we'd missed and looking at dramatically ruined churches from an earthquake in the 1700's. We found a cafe with an extensive book swap and traded our huge stack of six books for two and sat sipping fresh lemonade and relaxing in the cafes pretty atmosphere. Mark had heard of the near-by active Pacaya volcano which was possible to climb with the help of a guide. The loose volcanic rocks made for a difficult up but a fun slide back down. He saw lava flowing freely out of the side of the mountain while trying not to melt his feet or singe his leg hairs of the red hot rocks that were visible in the cracks of the earth. At one point the guide decided he could manage without his walking stick and shoved it deep into the 700ºC lava where it instantly burst into flames as it travelled along with the flow of lava.
Today is our final day and after an amazing, unforgettable year we board our flight tomorrow morning with mixed emotions and an eight hour layover in Miami. 
See you all really soon! x
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