Day 165 to 166 - Nothing on in Leon

Leon

Day 165

Our next main destination from here is Guatemala, but to get there by bus you need to travel through Honduras and El Salvador, which are known for not being very safe. We spent the morning looking in to the options. We ended up choosing the Tica bus, which goes through Honduras and into El Salvador on the first day, spends the night in San Salvador at a hotel owned by the bus company, then continues on to Guatemala City the following day. It was a shame to just sleep the night in San Salvador though, so we decided we should also spend the next day there to do some sight seeing before continuing.

After sorting that out we then booked to go volcano boarding, where you "surf" down the side of a volcano on a plank of wood. For this we went with Quetzal Trekkers, for a couple of reasons - first, you get to do the volcano twice, and secondly all profits go to support underprivileged kids.

There had been a big thunderstorm overnight so the temperature was more bearable today. We wandered the streets and churches and generally felt more positive about León. The Museum of the Revolution was closed, but some of the old men that were part of the Sandinista revolution were sitting out the front and one of them showed us in to see some murals and hear some information (in Spanish) on the history of the place. We then paid to see the top of the cathedral which was quite different from any other we had visited, with white  domes and towers that you could walk around.

There was supposed to be a free walking tour at 4pm, so at 3:45 we turned up and were told to come back in 15 minutes. At 4pm we returned, only to be told that the tour had left and we should wait until tomorrow! We sat not far from the starting spot while waiting and didnt' see a group, so we think they may have just cancelled it but didn't want to tell us, it was all a bit strange.


Around 9pm that evening we received an email telling us that the volcano boarding had been cancelled due to lack of numbers, shame we weren't told earlier as we would have booked with someone else .... León really doesn't want us to experience much!

Day 166

This morning we went to the Museum of Myths and Legends which was based at the old jail that had held and tortured many political prisoners during the civil war. The jail was filled with mannequins, life sized and larger, made up to represent many of the Nicaraguan myths and legends, including one memorable figure of an ugly woman with huge breasts who smothered men to death.

We spent the rest of the day taking it easy in the heat, and doing some research into our planned destinations over the next couple of weeks.

One of the things you have to love about the local people in Central America is how like the Aussies they don't like to use too many unnecessary words. When you meet people here its not the normal buenos días, buenas tardes or buenas noches  - just "buenos" for all times of the day, makes life so much easier as you don't have to think about what time it is before greeting someone!