I had to stand in a long line to cross the border into Nicaragua. I could tell immediately that this was a poor country because of the dismal state of the buses. We drove through a temperate area and past a fascinating looking huge bare brown cone volcano and into Managua.

Managua is an interesting place because it has a historic city center right on the shore of a huge lake that is totally dilapidated. In 72 there was an earthquake that killed 10,000 people and destroyed the center. But when international donations came the dictator, Samoza stole all of it so they never rebuilt it. So today there are plazas, parks, churches, and government buildings that are broken apart and abandoned. There weren't any other businesses there either, just drunks sitting around. I stayed in a house-hotel in a peaceful little neighborhood not too far away and saw a movie at the local indoor mall. I went to an internet place next to the stadium where they play their national sport, football, and was talking to an African guy who was there on vacation.

I had to do something, I don't remember what it was, but I had to ride to another part of the city and noticed that apart from the traditional center which was abandoned, there was no city center. Just roads leading through fields to the various businesses that a city has. On the ride back I checked out the lake that was near the historic center. It was a perfectly round natural lake surrounded by cliffs. It looked like a comet had comes and punched a hole in to the earth that then filled up with water.

The ride to Granada was nice because there wasn't too much traffic. I stopped off for a tour of a pretty colonial town on the way called Malasia. It had cobble stoned streets and some nice outdoor cafes. Granada was beautiful because of the colonial buildings and friendly feel. It seemed to me as an aspiring tourist town. I stayed in a hotel with a lot of other tourists in it. I rode along the nice sandy beach lining Lake Nicaragua which I couldn't see the other side of. I could see the giant volcano in the middle of it off in the distance.

Granada has a cool history. It was one of the major colonial towns back in the day because the Spanish could take their ships all the way up the river into the lake and park them on the shores of Granada, so it was like a coastal city.

The boat ride to the island was exciting because the waves were really high and it was at night. There was a mentally ill Nicaraguan woman in there who was screaming nonsense in a very suffering voice at the top of her lungs for the entire multi hour journey, but nobody paid attention to her. On that boat I was talking to a German girl named Silka and her Argentineans friends.

The island in the middle of the lake was very primitive. The main city a couple kilometers inland was connected by an unkempt dirt road, and had just dirt roads. The plaza was surrounded by just tiny stores and was very slow. I stayed in a nice little hotel where I met a German kid and a guide who worked at the hotel who took us up the volcano the next day. The guide was a native of the island and was into Tai Kwan do and had traveled around a little bit going to competitions. We got up at like five and walked up the trail through a beautiful jungle trail through some trees with huge leafs. The guide was funny because he was practicing his punches as we were hiking. We dropped the guide and got to the top of the volcano in a cloud were we couldn't see more than a few feet which bummed me because the view would have been awesome. It was also incredibly windy. The guide said it was always like that. For a little bit I could see south to the next volcano which was a little shorter. I wish I had climbed that one too because it has a lake on the top of it, which sounds really mystical. I could see how the two islands were together and remembered how the book said that they were two separate islands when the Spanish arrived but an eruption from the southern volcano caused them to grow together a couple hundred years ago.

The next day I took a boat to the south western part of the lake where the river that the Spanish took lets out into the Gulf of Mexico and got stamped out of Nicaragua for the boat ride down another little river to Costa Rica.