Thursday 13 March 2008

Pop goes the hermetically-sealed air-conditioned bubble!






After 4 days of air-conditioned, high-end comfort on luxury buses and in even more luxurious hotels, we are now back in traveller mode. We had 3 lovely nights at the Hilton in San Salvador and a fab night at the Crowne Plaza in Managua, where we were forced to stay in a suite as they had no regular rooms left. Oh, the life of the budget traveller...

Now we are back to earth, although not with too much of a bump as we are staying in a lovely little hotel in Granada, Nicaragua. Granada is another colonial town, but it's different to the others we've seen so far on this trip as it is much quieter, far fewer Gringos around, and it has a very laid-back, almost Caribbean, atmosphere. We like it a lot.

This morning we went to Volcan Masaya, an active volcano where you can drive right up to the edge and look down in to the smoking crater. No lava to be seen, unfortunately, but constant smoke and a warning on the brochure to park your car facing downhill (presumably for a quick getaway), and to take shelter under your car if the volcano starts spewing rocks. And it is recommended that you limit your visit to 20mins. We were there 45mins, thus doubling our chance of death by lava, but we survived.

It is v v hot in Nicaragua, way hotter than in Guatemala. We don't really know what the weather was like in El Salvador as we were totally air-conditioned, but it looked hot out of the window...

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