Crater'S Edge Lago de Apoyo

... as it has become hyperactive and sounds like an elephant storming around the attic. This morning there was a guy playing his african-style drum at 6am. Why, I ask you. WHY?!?!?
So, all I can say is this: Thank you Maria, thank you very much for Jesus, now can you tell everyone to SHUT UP!

Hospital life is pretty standard, lots of babies, dengue, machete injuries, etc. HOWEVER, I was fortunate enough to stand in on some orthopedic surgeries, which I ...

... amp; enjoy the peace.

Sadly unable to do so in the Monkey Hut - got the noisiest room in history with staff banging around outside & above from 7am to 10pm+ - being downstairs where the wooden floor above is your ceiling is not clever, especially not so when ripped off for $20 for the privilege by the unfriendly staff ...

... say, the passion and pride felt by the people of these countries is eagerly displayed through the immense amounts of festivities on this day.

To give a little perspective, Jinotepe has a population of maybe 2000 people, with one school and one main road passing through it. The parade procession lasted over 2 hours (if you were standing in one place the whole ...

... Doesn't matter if it's pork, beef, chicken or fish; doesn't matter if it died 4 hours or 4 days ago, it most definately has never seen a fridge.
#4. When it rains, it floods. Had to literally swim home the other day when I was caught in the middle of a rain storm on my evening run. Thank god I didn't fall into one of the many deep potholes.. managed to save my dive-bomb head first into the side walk for a ...

Granada is an old colonial town just SE of the capital.  The first day we arrived we just walked around the old town enjoying the churches and old architecture.  After that we headed out to the coast of Lake Nicaragua to find a place to camp for the night.  Lake Nicaragua is soooo large that it looks like the ocean.  They even have a small population of bull sharks in the lake, very rare ...

... of support. I ended up collaborating with a private
clinic on this undertaking, but the contact we had there acted as if it
were only a project that concerned the PUBLIC clinic, even though
wouldn't it make sense to think of it as public health work that is in
the interest of everyone? In any case, we have to make the best of the
resources that we can access and not dwell on the things that we lack, which has been an invaluable lesson.

... Nicaragua had been formed by a massive volcano eruption 600 years ago. These are now inhabited by the rich Nicas or Europeans pushing up property prices which makes life even tougher for the locals. The thing that has shocked me about Granada is the amount of street children that there are. I especially noticed it at night as they come and ask for money or perform for it. I had ...

... corner. I do not think we have paid more than $1 for dinner since we have been here! Anyways, back to Leon. It was great to get back to staying in a proper hostel with a kitchen, a few showers, TV, pool table and bar again! Was a really pleasant city, with great outdoor street style restaurants. We spent 3nights there just relaxing, getting used to being in a ´place with traffic and people again, and making the most of the food! I also decided to ...

... decided on staying at to mix it up with other travelling types. Basically a poorman´s version of the lovely Lazybones we stayed in Leon. It was pretty quiet as half the rooms were booked out. Filling the afternoon with walk round the pleasant town and some rubbish food we unusually chose to spend our evening playing cards on our bed and get an early night. Well the cards kept flowing and quickly became quite late, when we started noticing ...

... project for a biological research station that´s been operating in Nicaragua for at least 20 years. They are pretty famous among fish people for discovering and describing three species of fish that are found only in the laguna. Also, their latest research suggests that a high incidence of blindness in native fish is linked to a parasite that has flourished since a nonnative tilapia was introduced 15 years ago.

I got to learn more about the blind fish when I ...