Leon

We took on the next day slowly with some amazing french toast and a small stroll around town. Leon is a very pretty city, one of the leftovers of the Spanish colonial era with big churches, narrow streets and colorful colonial-style buildings. It used to be Nicaragua's capital and was of great importance in the north of the country while having a strong rivalry with Granada in the south. We had heard of another hostel in town that was meant to be really nice and went to check it out with all our stuff. It was a short walk away but full unfortunately, so we headed out to yet another hostel that we had seen on our way and which had rooms from only 5$ a night. It turned out to be OK and it had a guest kitchen and a pool table which convinced us to stay there for the next nights.

That night there was a stage set up on the central plaza for a jazz festival that was touring through Central America and we headed out to watch it for a while. It was very nice, there were a lot of people watching the show and the vendors stayed open til late selling souvenirs and a lot of different food options ranging from hot dogs and pizza to traditional enpanadas and fried bananas stuffed with cheese.
A Dutch girl who we had met in the hostel told us about the beaches closest to Leon and said that she liked staying there a lot. We hadn't really planned to go there but found ourselves on the bus to Las Penitas, said beaches, the next day. The bus was really packed and I was as worried as never before for my board which was stuck between a row of seats, a fat Nicaraguan and two sacks of rice but it survived without being damaged too badly. It took some time for us to find a good hostel that we liked but after we found one we still had time to check out the area before it got dark. The beach wasn't as great and the surf was either small and mushy or breaking on to rocks but I still had a short session with the advantage that only one other guy was out there with me because of the crappy conditions. We shared a dorm with three French-Canadians who were the only thing that made our trip to the beaches worthwhile. Their names were Jonatan, Alex and Mia and they were great company, a lot of fun and of course, like all French-Canadians I had met on my travels so far, wacky and simply crazy (these ones in the best possible way!!!).

Packed in the back of the bus

Quiet time at the hostel

I didn't enjoy the beaches very much and convinced the others to go back to Leon the next day from where we could then go to other beaches that at least had good waves. Our friends were also leaving to Leon and said they would try to save us beds in the hostel they were staying at. The bus ride back was a lot better than the last. We had a lot of room and were even entertained by some grown men who started a fistfight in the back of the bus. Two guys kept going on against each other with a lot of yelling and punching and the most interesting thing was that one of them, the one who took most of the hits, actually was a cop who tried to put handcuffs on his opponent. I was just happy that no one drew a gun and started shooting.
Back in Leon the hostel the Canadians stayed in was full again so we went back to the place we stayed at before. We bought some stuff from the market and Bekki cooked up great food while we mixed ourselves a Piña Colada from scratch. It was really cool to make a drink like that out of a whole pineapple and a coconut and without just pouring things together out of different bottles. The drink turned out really well even though it didn't completely taste like a conventional Piña Colada but we had a lot of it. We had only used half of the ingredients which still gave us about 2 liters to drink and everything together had only cost about 4 Euro. If we had made all of it we would have had 4 liters and 1 Euro for 1 liter of great Piña Colada isn't too bad if you ask me...

After dinner we visited our friends at their hostel where we chatted and drank some more before we played a few rounds of pool until it was time for bed.