San Juan - Sun and Surf

Well right now Im in San Juan del Sur on the beautiful southern Pacific coast of Nicaragua. This place is quite beautiful, and a great place to continue the adventure of the trip. When I got here the one thing that San Juan reminded me of was Rio de Janerio, because its a bay city with a huge Jesus statue perched high on a hill over looking the city. At any stretch it is a beautiful place and a chilled out beach and surfer town.
At the end of the last post I had said how we were going to be going to Isla de Ometepe, which is an island formed by two volcanoes, one of which is active. Well earlier in the week we had heard from some people that there was going to be an evacuation of the island because it had shown an increase in seismic activity, and they though that it was going to blow, which would be rather devastating. However, we hadn't heard much more about it and then planned on continuing our trip there after a few days. Then the day that we decided to leave we saw a newspaper article saying that the island was being evacuated and the hostel had been trying to contact the ferries and they had not been responding so they figured that the a fore mentioned evacuation was happening, which was a bit of a downer, cause we figured we couldn't get to the island. It turns out that that wasn't true and we had been talking to some girls who were one the island and said that there was nothing going on there and that they had a great time. So we are going to go most likely after our time here in San Juan is up.
Anyways after this news about the island, we decided to reroute to San Juan, which really wasn't all that had a decision. So we along with another Canadian guy that we met, Quinn, left for the bus to Rivas and then to continue to San Juan. It was funny cause by the time that we arrived here in San Juan, many of the people that were at our hostel in Granada were here as well because of the same information. It was rather interesting on the bus because we had a guy try to convince us that we needed a taxi from Rivas to San Juan meanwhile we knew there was a bus. Totally unnecessary, but that's what come along with being a white traveler, you get people telling you you need things that you really don't and making things sound worse than they really are. So we got off the bus in Rivas, and went one us over, and wow, look at that...a bus to San Juan. So our journey continued.
One interesting point of this ride which sort of made me shake my head came when a some tourist got all mad at the guy who collects the money on the bus cause he charged him 5 extra Cordoba because he had his bags on the bus. He was getting really mad and angry over what is the equivalent of 25 cents. Some people.
But that aside San Juan has been great, we have had the chance to swim and even try surfing a few times, and it is defiantly infectious and addictive. Its pretty tough to get the hang of it and your body and ego take quite a beating, and you fall awkwardly off the board, but when you catch that one wave, even for a little bit it makes it all worth it. So now I'm basically a professional surfer with lost of sponsors and such, no big deal, so I will most likely move to Hawaii to continue to pursue this career.
Its crazy how fast the time is going here, in just over 3 weeks Ben and Kale are going to head home, and that will start a whole new trip for me, on my own. Ive really enjoyed it and and definitely looking forward to the next parts of this trip. And just as a clarification point, Ben had never left or was lost, i was going to write that in at the end of that one post, but I apparently forgot, slight over sight. He is fine and well, with his credit card, passport, and even his close and backpack too! I hope that put some minds at ease.
Anyways the next step of the trip will be to actually go to Ometepe, and spend some time there, unless we get some actual evidence of the evacuation, like maybe the island is up in flames or a large pillar of smoke and ash rising from the island or something like that.
Hope you have enjoyed

Bye for now

Mike (people here know me as Kelly Slater)