León, Nicaragua

Our journey from Somoto to León blessed us with our first real experience as to why the local buses are called "chicken buses". Midway through our second bus of the day, the ticket man kindly asked me to shift my bag out of the aisle because someone had just loaded on a huge bag of raw chicken, which happened to be seeping chicken juice down the middle of the bus aisle. In 30+ degree heat. Mmm tasty. Thankfully the rest of the journey passed without incident and we arrived in the colonial city of León by lunchtime.

We'd been recommended a French bakery and cafe called Pan y Paz and needing a decent cheese fix, (cheese is just not the same over here) we dumped our bags and headed there before any of us could get too hangry. We were not disappointed, we all had fresh sandwiches/baguettes loaded with various fillings but most importantly including different forms of cheese. Glorious. It's the little things in life!

Feeling knackered from a full-on couple of days, we took some time out in the afternoon to chill out and figure out our game plan for the next few days. Our base for two nights in León was fittingly named Tortuga Booluda, (Lazy Turtle) which Brian from Somoto Canyon Tours kindly organised for us, due to the lack of wifi to use to book anything ahead. He was somewhat miffed at the fact that we landed the best room, one that so far has escaped him because it's been booked every time he's tried to visit. Classic. Our own private patio and the luxury of our first air conditioned room for the trip was greatly appreciated, especially given that León gets up to the late 30s during the day and only down to mid 20s in the evening. Such a treat.

The lads took one for the team in the evening, cooking for us girls considering it was International Women's Day. A fine job they did, cooking up a chicken and vegetable stir-fry with noodles, complete with sauce from scratch. The other hostel guests were most impressed, as were we. It's been great to be able to cook our own meals from time to time considering many of the hostels over here are equipped with kitchens. Not only a cost saver, but good to get some variety too because there's only so much rice, beans, tortillas, eggs and plantain one can eat! It usually means you can have free drinking water as well, which is so good because it's such a pain to be buying water all the time. Again, being able to drink tap water - taken for granted.

Day two started with some amazing pancakes provided by the hostel, complete with banana and fresh honey. Nom. Tums filled with pancakes, we headed to the stunning Catedral de León, the largest cathedral in Central America. Supposedly there's some confusion around the fact that perhaps it was supposed to be built in Lima, Peru instead. Nonetheless, it's recently been granted UNESCO heritage site status and is undergoing a fresh white paint job which is doing wonders, considering it was clearly somewhat abandoned in terms of maintenance in recent years. For a modest $3USD each we were allowed to climb up to the roof, although not before shoes were removed! The rooftop was a sight that almost felt like you were in Santorini, Greece - except instead of being surrounded by calderas and the Mediterranean, it was the colonial streets of León and its churches peeping out, with some stunning volcanoes in the distance. I have a thing for rooftops and viewpoints, I don't know why - but this was one of my favourites even though it wasn't particularly high.

We strolled around the streets some more and ventured into other various churches along the way. León has many different churches for a relatively small town; subsequently its tourist board is currently trying to get the city renamed as the City of Churches. With the day heating up quickly, we were ready to retreat back to the hostel. Enormous avocados and tomato with fresh bread were on the menu for our homemade lunch - not even kidding these avocados were almost the size of my head. More chill time and planning followed - really fitting into the Lazy Turtle lifestyle.

Mid-afternoon Mike and I got itchy feet so ventured out to explore the streets some more and to find what turned out to be the one of the best ice-cream shops I've ever visited! Let's not talk about how much cash was splashed on these epic ice-creams. Mike of course went for his usual chocolate in a massive helping, (honestly when will that boy ever branch out on flavours) and I tried a combo of a banana fudge and peanut butter cookie dough, plus a passionfruit frozen yoghurt. All amongst a huge waffle cone. Life changing.

Meanwhile, Rich and Cat ventured to what sounded like an extremely bizarre museum about Nicaraguan myths and legends. Head to Rich's blog to find out more about that one!
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Again we'd all hoped to head to a museum that would tell us more about the revolution that was prominent in León, but the museum that covered this was only in Spanish. There were also walking tours about the revolution too but at $20-25USD per person, it seemed a bit steep - particularly after a couple of big budget days. Relying on google and our travel books instead to inform us on this one.

Street food in the form of some huge burgers and hotdogs did the trick for dinner, followed by beers at a bar overlooking a makeshift skate park where some of the locals were trying to practice some tricks. Thursday night is supposedly one of the big nights for salsa dancing at a bar near where we were staying, called La Olla Quemada. We headed down to check it out but didn't get past watching from the window outside due to a fee to get in and just generally feeling inadequate compared to the talent inside! I've never really watched freestyle salsa dancing before, only ever competition dancing so it was amazing to see just regular people getting amongst it. Where and when they learn to dance like this I'm not sure, perhaps at weddings and the like as they grow up or maybe they they had the money for lessons. While walking the streets of León, I saw a young girl heading for ballet class complete with tutu, tights and proper ballet shoes, which is when it struck me that I haven't seen anything like this since we've been over in this part of the world. Most families here wouldn't have the money to send their children to extracurricular activities, so it was nice to see.

We're running short on time, Mike and I are now into our last month of travelling together and we have some other pals coming from London that we're due to meet in Costa Rica in less than a week. Crazy how time flies, so we've got to keep moving. Next stop is another colonial city by the name of Granada via the capital city of Managua. We've done another by minibus and local bus combo. We've had to pay for an extra seat on both buses because we have such large bags, but with proper air conditioning on the minibus for a change and for less than $2USD a seat, we can't complain really. The changeover in Managua was somewhat chaotic though, men running at us from all angles hustling to get us on their buses, to the point of even trying to take Richard's bag from his back! Thankfully this is something we haven't seen too much over here, especially compared to when we were in Asia. Granada, here we come.Read more