Learning to Surf in San Juan del Sur

Ashley and myself resting for a minute...i don't think red is my colour
Clearly cows also like surfing in Nicaragua
There has been two recurrent themes on my one year trip, that I keep bring back to this blog.
One is why do I do the things that I do, what do I put myself through the shame of a toilet door falling on me in India, or the physical pain I went through to climb volcan Concepcion.
The other theme, is that I am starting to like too many adrenaline fuelled hobbies, that cost a lot of money, mostly cos I can only practise them away from home, such as diving, mountain trekking, etc...
And now, thanks to Ashley and my grand idea of spending to days in a surf town I got a new one.
God I love surfing.
Resting for a minute with my instructor Hugo

I am clumpsy, with no sense of balance, so before I managed to ride one wave I hurt myself plenty of time, though mostly the only thing that got hurt was my pride.
A wave just breaking behind us

Why do I put myself through this? How did I end up, at my age, in a little surfer town trying to stand on a far to small board flying on some wave? Should I not be doing something else?
But I guess the point of this trip is to discover new things, to try other stuff away from those that took me down the wrong path.
And once you manage ride one wave, the adrenaline rush is awesome. I don't want to leave. I want to stay here and do it again.
I guess it does help that I met Ashley and a few others here, sharing with people experiences like that, is still better than experiencing it alone.

Another Crazy Bus and Visiting Leon in Nicaragua

Cathedral of Leon, the largest in Central America


Another quiet street in Central America, low rise buildings, and blue skies

Just when you think that you've seen the strangest thing yet on a bus, that you have met the craziest person, a new experience will bring you to new levels of weirdness or just plain bonkers.

Coming into Nicaragua on a chicken bus, I was amazed to see a man selling pills that help treat bad backs, sore necks, all types of pains...and constipation....how he could connect the two was beyond me.

But the best was yet to come. Once he finished his sale, another older man stood up, and started preaching into an imaginary microphone! He was preaching the word of God, getting more and more into it, his right arm flapping around, as his left hand had to, obviously, hold on to the imaginary microphone.

Once he finished telling us about God, he took out a long coffee filter and started walking up and down the aisle trying to collect money for his mission.

I was stunned...it was the craziest thing I had ever seen.

I was talking to my current room mate, Ashley from Oz, and I felt like an idiot. Now I understand why a lot of people don´t want to do chicken bus......they don´t speak Spanish, doh!!!

So they can´t really get around.

Some do prefer the comfort of the tourist buses or shuttles, but others are just worried about ending up in the wrong place

I am now in Leon, Nicaragua, and it's a really nice colonial town. Not as refurbished and restored as Antigua so it has a much more real feel than Antigua or even Granada.

Another pic of the Cathedral, the light changing rapidly

This is a student town with speakers in the streets pumping out political messages, as the confrontation between the Left and the Right heats up in Nicaragua. Funnily enough, for all the arguments, I have not heard the same level of stupidity that you hear when the Republicans criticise Obama or the Health Care program.

My next project is to get down to San Juan del Sur where Ashley is going to show me, or at least he is going to try to show me, how to surf...