Bad boys galore

Hello, is there anybody still out there reading these reports?

After a super long travel day once again across land and water in a manner that I am fast becoming accustomed to, I finally arrived at the beautiful volcanic Island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Ometepe was formed by two adjacent volcanoes, Madera and Concepcion, erupting and forming a land bridge between them. At 16,000 feet, Concepcion is the bigger of the two and is the only one still active though there is no immediate concerns about its stability, at least not for the moment.


The minute you cross the border into Nicaragua from Costa Rica you immediately notice the huge drop in the standard of living but also the lack of urgency that simple lifestyles always seem to generate. For the visitor, this translates into an inexpensive place to visit but a hard place to travel around due to the lack of any effective infrastructure, and a transport system that wouldn't be out of place in a Flintstones movie. This stark contrast between to neighbouring countries is further highlighted when you realise that Nicaragua doesn't appear to have hot water anywhere and an electricity supply (where it exists) that breaks down several times per day leaving whole cities and towns in darkness.


Ometepe is one of the wealthier places as it receives lots of visitors each year simply to see the volcanoes and to swim in the lagoon created by its beautiful waterfall, which in the ever increasing temperatures as you head North through Central America, is a treat not to be missed. Although this is a wealthier part of Nicaragua it is still very poor and it's normal to see women washing the families clothes in the local stream, children with no shoes and to encounter begging for food. Other than climbing the Volcano and bathing in the lagoon the only other thing to do here is to relax with a cold beer on one of its many lovely beaches all of which I reluctantly had to try. You know how time flies when you're enjoying yourself and all too soon it was time to move on and check out the Capital, Granada.


Granada is a city that seems to be undergoing a huge face lift but at the moment it is like a building site with areas that don't even have a road, just a mud track. Other than the numerous markets and some great little nightspots there is not much to write home about in Granada and likewise with my next destination, a sleepy little town over the border into Honduras, called Comayagua, which does boast the worlds oldest working clock but not a lot else. The clock is said to be 800 years old so at least the locals have had their monies worth out of it.
As you probably will have realised by now I love meeting the locals and one of the best ways to do this is by visiting little Island communities so you'll not be surprised to hear that my stay in Comayagua was very brief as there is another Island drawing me ever closer into it's bosom. The Island in question is called Roatan and yes it has beautiful clean beaches, brilliant snorkeling, wonderful turquoise water and a Rastafarian pace of life, but slap my thighs with a wet piece of Haddock, I'll suffer all that for a few days in the interest of travel. After a few chill out nights at one of the local bars which is illuminated only by candlelight, and a DJ's whose decks were apparently having a bad case of the hiccups, it was once again time give shank's pony a bit of exercise and trundle my way across another border to Antigua in Guatemala via a overnight stop in Copan.


Antigua is a great place to visit with its bustling Mayan markets and a bit of a special "Bad Boy". The bad boy in question is of course a huge, active volcano; the special thing about this particular volcano is not just the fact that it is constantly active but that you can also go right up to the lava flow in relative safety if you have the bottle and heat resistant skin. Unfortunately I can't for the love of me remember its name but I can tell you that to see this baby in action is absolutely unforgettable. Perhaps just as unforgettable is the breathtaking bus ride just to get to the foothills of this amazing natural phenomenon. Setting of from down town Antigua in the early hours of a typical muggy Central American morning, I was fairly confident of what to expect on the one hour journey' having become used to being a reluctant participant in Latin Americas unbridled version of the Wacky Races. As you sit there Rubbing your hands and grinning to yourself I can picture you all shaking your heads and thinking - this is not going to be a typical run of the mill journey, and how right you would be - as the hurricane said to the palm tree " hold on to your nuts baby this is no ordinary blow job" When will I ever learn? The bus to the Volcano doesn't have a timetable, just a fixed fee for getting there and back so the more times the driver can do it in one day, the more he earns. Simple really, but when you see the state of the "crashed many times" buses and see the mountain roads that they have to travel on to get to there destination, given that there doesn't seem to be any speed restrictions or even if there was there was nobody there to enforce them, it doesn't really instill you with a great deal of confidence. I sat in the aisle seat of the bus as I wasn't keen to look out of the window down to the sheer drops of hundreds of feet on parts of the road that surely weren't wide enough to accommodate two vehicles passing each other in opposite directions and definitely not at breakneck speed; but they did! The amount if times I, and other unsuspecting passengers, where flung out of our seats and ended up floundering on the floor defies description, but it did make for some great opportunities to get intimate with the locals, share a few laughs and practise some superlatives in my best Spanish.


Arriving at the Volcano safely was a fete of achievement in its own right and as I stepped of the bus I was convinced that having survived that experience there was no way that this Volcano could hurt me - I was invincible.Climbing up to where the lava flow safe to view took a couple of hours through surprisingly thick jungle. I was surprised by the density of the jungle because I'm sure, like me, you would assume that any vegetation growing on the side of a constantly active volcano would be destroyed or at the very least scorched or stunted. The reason became clear as I reached the lava flow which wasn't coming from the crater of the volcano but from a fracture in the side of it which directed it down a valley away from the jungle. This fracture in the Volcano's side is also the reason that there is no danger of the Volcano suddenly erupting as it acts like a safety valve on a pressure cooker, effectively releasing any build up of pressure in a controlled manner. Standing just a few feet from flowing red hot molten lava is awe inspiring as you suddenly come to realise that the world was not formed millions of years ago, but is actually still being formed now and I was there witnessing it happening. The heat radiating from the lava is unbelievable so I couldn't stand near it for more than a couple of seconds and when I threw my walking stick into it, it just reduced it to ashes almost on impact. Another indication of the intensity of the heat was when suddenly vegetation nearby just burst into flames spontaneously, so although I was safe from an eruption I still had to keep my wits about me and keep a watchful eye on what was going on around me. I don't have any idea of how long I stood hypnotised by the sheer beauty of this volcanic lava flow but I did know that there were a lot more volcanoes to see on my travels and that this one would take some beating, so it's there I'm going to leave you with the image of me slowly roasting like a pig on a spit, and head off for Panajachel on the banks of Lake Atitlan for a couple of days.