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.

Our Honduras experience

Everything would have worked out perfectly if things had gone the way we had planned but unfortunately that isn't how Central America works. I should have known that already but for some reason we put too much trust into the people and the public transportation and planned to get to the El Salvador-Honduras border, across the southern tip of Honduras and into Nicaragua in one day. It seemed very doable, there were no long distances involved and we had the whole day for the trip but something seemed to be working against us that day.
We had to walk the first 2km towards El Cuco because there were no transportation matters where we were staying and the sun was already burning down which got us sweating a lot before we even reached the first bus. That bus then took us to San Miguel, the major town in the east of the country from where we hopped on another one that brought us a little bit closer to the border and then another one that eventually dropped us of about 500 meters before the border. They didn't stop at the border because they wanted us to take one of the bike driven carts for the last few meters to maximise the profit they could get out of all the travellers who pass by the border every day. As usual we ignored the very annoying drivers who yell at you from one meter away and don't really accept "no" for an answer and walked to and over the border.
The border official asked us where we were going and as we told him that we were only crossing through to go to Nicaragua the same day he explained to us in  a very broken Spanish English mix that we didn't need a stamp for that. A guy from Italy who we had met on the last bus told us the same thing and so we took off to find a collectivo that would bring us across the country to the next border that we had to cross. It is very easy to find the next bus in Central America because there are always a few people who come running up to you and yell in your face where they want to take you so we quickly found our bus which was waiting for more passengers before it would leave. We still had enough time but after waiting in the heat of the midday we got a little bit nervous because still the driver didn't want to leave. We wasted about two hours of our, that day very valuable time before we decided to take a combination of public buses because we were afraid that the guy wouldn't leave at all. Of course everything took longer than we were told and by the time we arrived in the town we had to switch buses in again it was starting to get dark. Fortunately we had joined up with Robin, a fellow traveller from France who spoke some Spanish and the four of us found a collectivo that brought us to the border in time to catch the last bus going from there. They told us though that, if they left now only with us in the car, they would charge us ten dollars per person. We agreed, we just wanted to get across that border, but after we paid they filled up the car with people anyway who only paid 3 dollars... To stressed out and tired to fight for the lost money we hurried to get to emigration which again was a little bit away from the bus stop. We got picked up by some of those bike-cart drivers who told us they only wanted a small tip and my nerves were such a mess that I didn't resist when they took our stuff and loaded it onto their carts. At emigration the woman seemed to have all the time in the world when she checked our passports and, after a while, found that our stamps were missing. We had to come inside where a fat, sweating and stinking officer sat who played the really nice and helpful guy and told us that we had to go back to the first border between El Salvador and his country to get the entry stamp. We tried to explain to him that we were told that we didn't need a stamp but he said we would only get in trouble with the people on the Nicaraguan side of the border if he wold let us pass like this. He let his words sink in for a while before he told us that we could pay a "fee" of 20$ each to him and then he would give us the stamp. It seemed to be a well working game that the people at those borders play with/for each other because there are a lot of travellers who only cross through the southern tip of Honduras and the rules are very simple: At the first border you refuse to give someone his stamp and at the second border you either let them pay or have him go back where they came from. Sounds fun to me...
Robin had helped us to translate what the guy was saying but then took off to catch the last bus going to Leon. We were alone at the border now with two options, either to spend the night in a very sketchy border town and to go back to El Salvador in the morning or to bribe this guy with a bunch of money to get across this border where no bus was running anymore. The only thing we wanted was to leave this country that had given us nothing more than bad surprises and we managed to talk the guy down to 10$ per head (also thanks to Bekki's almost perfected "Imakeyoufeelguiltybycryingmyeyesout" tactic), paid the money and finally got our stamp. The bike drivers were still waiting for us outside and brought us across the border and to the Nicaraguan immigration where I lost my last dollars to the entry fee and after that dropped us of at the bus stop where a collectivo was waiting. It looked very much as if a little "birdy" had told the driver that there were some tourists arriving late who needed to get to Leon. As soon as we got our stuff off the bikes a flood of Spanish that was mixed with only a few English words broke out around us. My brain needed some time to comprehend what everyone wanted, it didn't seem to work very well that day, but eventually someone who spoke a decent amount of English got through to me and explained that the bike drivers wanted 10$ each for their overtime services and the collectivo would cost 400 Cordoba per person which was almost 20$ to go to Leon. We told them that we wouldn't and couldn't pay that much money and with a combined effort of Bekki starting to cry again and me talking as much English back to them as they were talking Spanish we managed to get out of that situation paying a lot less than they wanted us to. After all they had only asked for a tip and as Robin told me the next day they had pulled the same shit on him. The collectivo only brought us to the closest town though because we didn't pay him enough but luckily we got the last seats on another one that took us to Leon. From the bus stop in Leon a taxi brought us to the closest hostel and finally we could sink into our beds after about 14 hours of buses, borders and "barbarians" isn't really the right word but I wanted something starting with a "b".
This day was one of the worst days of the whole trip and I hope that I'll never have to deal with stuff like that again but looking back it was also a day that taught us a lot and made us stronger and after all, apart from it being very exhausting for mind and body alike, the only thing we lost was money. It could have been worse! 

Six public buses and one pickup to a remote break... but was it worth it?

It was just after nine when we hit the road that should take us to Las Flores, a tiny town in the south eastern corner of El Salvador with another good wave. The only available shuttle was a private one that charged 110$ for the three of us so we tackled the little more than 150 km by public bus, a quest that turned out to be harder than we had thought. We had to take six different buses, each with a waiting period and new strange people and one pick-up truck and my new board didn't make things easier either. It was a very exhausting day and we spent solid eight hours on the road but the sight when we arrived rewarded us for all the trouble. Las Flores was basically a few houses and huts on a beautiful beach which was bordered by two rocky headlands on either side. The beach was quite big because of the low tide but there didn't seem to be a wave breaking at all. The place we decided to stay in was very basic but it was right at the beach, so close actually that the water reaches the lowest wall when the tide comes in. We definitely had the best spot in town to watch the ocean and hopefully soon the waves.
I had planned to get up early because some other surfers had told me that a strong offshore wind starts blowing at around 9 am but our last day had been long and I didn't make it until 7:30 am. After the quick spot check it was less than 5 minutes until I was in the water. I only had to put my shorts and my rash west on, wax my board and run the few meters down to the surf. The waves were a little bit messy and around 3-4 feet but the wave was very fast and a lot of fun. The take off was steep and very close to the rocks but the wave pushed you away as soon as you were riding and one had to be quick to keep up with the first section to get around it. The whole thing took me a while to understand what I had to do but once I had it the wave was great. If you picked the right ones it was possible to get rides over 200 meters which took you all the way to the beach. The water was a lot colder than in El Tunco and a lot browner but I saw an awful lot of stingrays swimming underneath the surface in the lineup and vultures circling the sky.
Bekki and I went for a short walk along the road and found 4 or 5 massive Mango trees that had dropped a lot of their sweet babes, ready to eat. Most of them were over ripe or already eaten by animals but we still found plenty that were good for us. We brought back a bag full which was breakfast and lunch for one day and went a second time the next day. That time we took enough for this day and the next and maybe even a few more... All in all we had more than 50 Mangoes that we ate in 3 days and which were the main part of our diet in Las Flores. The days we stayed there were dominated by surfing and relaxing, a nice walk along the beach at low tide to the nearest town and... Mangoes.
The waves even built up in size a little bit but stayed very choppy due to the strong winds. I had a great time in the surf though and even shared the waves with a really good guy who, I think, was sponsored by "animal" and was boasting airs and taking off on waves that I thought were clear close-outs. Yeah, I just checked and he is "animal" team rider and multiple English champ. No wonder he was better than me... http://www.animal.co.uk/fe/htm/index/index.asp
It was a really relaxed time we had, living right at the beach, literally only a jump away from the waves but my arms only lasted for 4-5 hours of surfing a day and there wasn't anything else to do really so it got a bit boring, especially for the other two. And so we left again after two days of pure surfing with the next destination being Leon in Nicaragua. To get there we had to take several buses and cross two borders so it would be another long, long travel day.

Munching on a Mango while waiting on bus no.2

We hitched a ride on a pickup for the last kilometer 

I had to improvise with my boardbag... The point and our hostel in the background

Mangoes

The babe and the board... haha, hot

Here you go, some of my surfing... It is more about fun than looking good!

Mr. Alan Stokes

And myself...

El Tunco

In the morning I went to look for a place where I could exchange the rest of my Guatemalan Quetzales into US Dollar which conveniently is the currency of El Salvador. I had quite a lot left because I had planned to spend at least two more days but of course my plans didn't go the way they were planned (they're plans after all) and now I was being sent from one end of the city center to the other with directions to a money changer which were all different from each other. My bags were heavy and it was very hot and I had to stop for a while to catch my breath when I finally found the office. I got almost 100 $ back though which made up for all the walking. I walked to the parque Bolivar from where the buses to La Libertad left but I had a hard time finding the right bus stop until a nice bus driver took me to the right place, it was marked only by a small sign saying "bus stop" and not which bus or where it went, and I finally boarded the bus out of the city.
About an hour later I arrived in La Libertad, the port of San Salvador which is a sleepy little town that seemed very boring except for its wave, Punta Roca, a world class right point break that is El Salvador's best wave. I didn't stay there however due to the expensive accommodations but moved on to a tiny village a few kilometers along the coast called El Tunco. There were a few breaks there too including one point that broke slower but still looked like fun and I found a cheap place, after another long walk, that had a kitchen and was only one house away from the beach. It was already 4 o'clock and I had a relaxing evening on the deck of my hostel with 'wave-view', an ice cold beer and good food.
I slept well but woke early. I was exited to see my visitors who would arrive around midday and didn't get anything done in the morning, constantly checking my watch but had a coffee and donut with my Internet and a smoothy before I caught the bus to La Libertad. I did some shopping and waited on the corner of the bus stop for a while until I saw them hop out one of the crowded buses in a moment of complete disorientation and helplessness. I quite enjoy those moments (not all of them) and I let them have theirs before I walked over to greet them. It is a strange sensation to meet people who you haven't seen for longer and who you were looking forward to meet. They suddenly appear and are there again and it doesn't take very long to get used to them being around again. I was very happy to have them with me, especially Bekki who had been my travel mate for such a long time.
We went back to our hostel where they overwhelmed me with HARIBO and Nutella before I showed them around and we went out to buy me a board. I had been eyeing one board in another hostel since I had arrived and I had been checking on it a few times during the day and I bought it right before someone else's nose. He literally stood the with the money when I walked out of the gate. It was a 6'2" performance fish, a good board for the smallish waves of El Sunzal, the break right outside our door. The board was in a really good condition and I think I shot a great deal with it, even though I had to buy a new leash as well. Now nothing kept me from going for a long surf until the sun went down and it got too dark to see the waves. We had a great self made meal, the first one I made myself since I left the US (with the exception of the quiche for Helga), and it was delicious. This beautiful day ended with beers and an early but great night with Bekki and Ansgar who, I realized once again, I was very glad to have with me.
El Tunco was great! I surfed in the mornings, we chilled during the days and when the weather cooled down at around 4.30 pm I went for another surf. We cooked our own delicious food, only bought coffee and smoothies,  enjoyed the warm water and relaxed in the shade for most of the day. Those were truly lazy days but it was hard to do anything else because it was so hot. Me made friends with a Canadian guy and a Norwegian girl who had been in El Tunco for a month and were surfing every day and used the time to catch up about what we had done while apart from each other.
It was a sad goodbye when we left El Tunco after only four days but we wanted to move on to see more and surf different waves.
It was strange to be with people again for longer than a few days and to plan food and destinations together and in some situations in the following weeks I realized how much I had actually enjoyed the time I had on my own. However I love having Bekki and Ansgar as my company and I will be on my own soon enough, I just didn't realize how much I valued my time as a single traveller.

New and old company

Let's just say that is me on that wave back there...

Out for a morning surf

Our hostel is the house in blue and this picture was taken right from the beach

Sunrise in El Salvador

More busing

Again I got to spend the whole day on a bus. This time it took me all the way from Flores, in the north of Guatemala, to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. It also was my longest bus trip so far but with my Argentinian friend Brenda's help I had found a public service that only charged me about half what the tourist places did and it was still pretty direct.
It was the 8th of March and Bekki and Ansgar had arrived in Costa Rica from where they would take a long distance bus to meet me in El Salvador to meet me that very day and I had been waiting for news about the refund of my ticket which I had to pick up in Guatemala City. On my last night in Flores I got the mail saying that I could even pick up the check in San Salvador which was great for me because I could travel straight through to where I wanted to go without a nerve racking and time consuming stop in Guatemala City.
So I took the direct bus and surprisingly it wasn't as bad as I had thought. It did get crowded and it was hot and a very long trip but the seats were more spacious than others I had frequently been on before and also nice and soft. There is not much to tell about the trip which was very uneventful and boring except once when we had to stop for a while because a big truck had tipped over but it was even more interesting for me how keen the people on my bus seemed to be to see if something bad had happened and I had this strange feeling that they were hoping to see blood... We stopped only once for 20 minutes and I was lucky that I didn't need to go to the bathroom. I also noticed that this was my first overland border crossing outside Europe which was kinda cool... Apart from that seriously nothing happened.
When I arrived in San Salvador I went looking for a place to stay near the bus station, got some money (after a panic minute where I had to realize that all the banks were closed and I had less than ten dollars left) and went to the market where I bought some food for Bekki and Ansgar because I figured that they would be hungry after a 18 hour bus ride. Back at the hotel I checked  the Internet and found a message from Bekki saying that they would take another day. I was too tired to be annoyed or disappointed and fortunately I could change rooms and get some money back, I had already paid for three, before I ate alone and went to bed. Lonely for two more nights before I would meet the two in La Libertad at the beach.
I was in Guatemala for just over two weeks, which was not even nearly enough time to see a few things properly, and I loved it for most of the time. The few days I didn't enjoy where mainly because of the long distances, or rather the dreadful infrastructure, and some other issues that didn't have to do with the country directly which is full of great places, history and culture and definitely worth a visit if you haven't been there yet.

Wonderful Tikal

My days in Guatemala were counted and I really didn't have much time, enough time. There are just too many things to see in this wonderful country and I didn't like the way how I had to rush through to see at least some.
I moved around on shuttles most of the time, usually I hate shuttles, because they are more expensive and you miss a lot of the essential experience of the country you travel in, but I wanted to get from one place to the other as fast as possible so I had no choice. This next transport I took went from Semuc to Flores, a small town on an island in Peten, the most northern province of the country from where I was going to visit the legendary Maya ruins of Tikal. The trip took about eight hours but I shared the bus with a lot of people I knew from the hostel and former shared shuttles which made the trip more fun, even though it was still very exhausting. I also met new people with whom I shared a dorm in Flores and who wanted to join me for my Tikal trip the next day.
I had to say goodbye to Thalida and Elisa that night, who were on their way to Belize and didn't have time for the ruins. The time we shared together was a lot of fun and I am very happy that I met them, they made my long shuttle rides feel a lot shorter than they were and good company in Semuc.
My new travel mates for the next days were Brenda from Argentina and Garrett from the US, both wonderful people who brought me back to buying my own food and preparing lunches and so on, which was a lot cheaper and also more fun.
We got up at 4 o'clock in the morning to get the first shuttle to the ruins so that we could enjoy them without the crowds but that seemed to be a common thing and our shuttle there was already full with people. It wasn't all too bad though because the park is huge and we roamed it all by ourselves without seeing very many people. The bus to the park took about an hour and the entrance fee was 150 Q (about 20$) which is very expensive for Guatemalan standards but it was an official ticket and definitely worth the money in the end.
It was quite cold in the morning and foggy and it only cleared up when we left the park in the afternoon but it was good that way because when the sun did come out it was almost unbearably hot. Unfortunately it concealed the views from the top of the big temples but you can't have everything, can you?
The park was amazing! We decided against hiring a guide and walked the trail the opposite way than most people do to avoid the crowds and save the best part, the central plaza for the end. The whole area is so incredibly big, I think it was something about 16 sq km, and there are temples and ruins everywhere, some uncovered but some also still underneath a big pile of jungle. The Maya seemed to have built a new set of temples every 20 years to celebrate the end of a ka'tun and leave the old ones where they were which meant that there were a lot of simple temple complexes with two medium sized pyramids facing east to west and two altars in the north and the south, all over the place.
Temple IV seemed very unspectacular at first before we looked up over the tree tops and found the tip of the temple high above us in the clouds. It is the highest building (I think it was 64m) in Tikal and the lower half is still covered with vegetation  but you can climb it and the views from the top are amazing, even on a cloudy day.

The view from temple IV

It was incredible to walk through those grounds and see the huge temples and structures, some of which the Maya had built over 2000 years ago, and still be in the middle of the jungle, almost by yourself. We saw monkeys and bush turkeys, a capybara and hundreds of birds and for long periods of time we didn't see any other humans at all.
We saw the plaza of the seven temples, the lost world (the place with pyramids from a much earlier period, the pre-classic, around 700 BC), the big temple of the south and of course the main plaza with it the massive acropolis and the beautiful and world famous temple of the jaguar.
The main plaza is really beautiful and the views from the high temple are breathtaking. You can see other structures poke out of the surrounding canopy, the temple of the jaguar in its full glory and the plaza where in Tikal's prime more than 100 000 people gathered for celebrations.

Year of construction: 700 BC

Temple V

The temple of the jaguar and the north acropolis on the left

Temple of the jaguar

A picture of me 2000 years ago...

The north acropolis

Brenda, Garrett and I were reading our way through most of the information and I think a guide would have been helpful to understand more of the things we saw but we loved it to be on our own and roam the grounds how we wanted to. Our little group was in great harmony, sometimes slow, sometimes a bit faster we got around the whole park in about 8 hours and I am very happy, that I had those two with me that day. It was very special.
Tired but very happy we left the site at three with the shuttle. We stopped in Santa Elena, a town only separated from Flores by the lake, to get food and organize our next steps. Brenda was going west, Garrett east and I was heading south the following day. It was more than 12 hours after we had left, that we arrived back at our hostel, my legs aching and my head full of those beautiful images I was lucky enough to see.
I am very glad that I decided to come here after all and that I had this great day with those wonderful friends, even though that meant not getting much sleep and being on buses for more than 18 hours.

Semuc Champey

I decided to take a shuttle to my next destination because it was somewhere in the nowhere that is the center of Guatemala and even the shuttle took eight hours to get there not to speak of public buses with transfers and heaps of crazy people packed around me. Max helped me to find a 'cheap' company and it turned out to be a real advantage to speak Spanish, not only because you understand what everyone is talking about but also because it is a lot faster.
Of course the bus was late but that gave me enough time to wake up and prepare mentally for the tour. I was the first one to get on the bus and we picked up six other people, four of who were German, before we finally left Antigua. The ride was terribly long and the seats were very uncomfortable and didn't have any headrests which made it even worse but I enjoyed the company of my fellow travellers a lot and we tried to make the best out of it.
Everything in my body was hurting when we finally arrived in Lanquin, after over an hour on an offroad track without suspensions, at my hostel, the Zephyr Lodge. It was a beautiful place on top of a hill with a 360° view on the surrounding fields and mountains, an open air bar and common area and a very friendly vibe. I checked in together with Thalida and Elisa, two German girls from the bus with whom I got along well. The dorms were packed and there was hardly any space to put my bag but I didn't spend a lot of time in there anyways.
I was still not feeling very well and really exhausted from the long trip so I went to bed early and tried to sleep while the party outside was just getting started.
I had put my name down for the legendary "candle-cave" and Semuc Champey tour, however when I woke up the next day I was told that there were not enough people and that they wouldn't do it. I was very disappointed because that was why I had come here in the first place but Thalida and Elisa were doing a tour as well but with a travel agent from town and so I joined them because I didn't have enough time to wait one day. I didn't end up going with the two girls but I still had a great group and we had a lot of fun together.
We were picked up by a pick-up truck and driven down to Semuc Champey all cramped on the back. The drive was almost an hour long and I was happy to be there when we arrived at the entrance to the caves. Everyone changed into their swimmers and we followed our guide Carlos (he liked to call himself Santana) to a big swing over the river. I was the first to go because I was keen to do it, I had worked my way to the front with pushing and shoving, but I think that most people appreciated that someone was willing to test how safe the thing actually was.
It was safe. And great fun! The trick was to let go at the very last moment to get almost 5 meters into the air and then pray for a good landing. My second time I tried a back flip-sort-of-thing which went wrong and I only turned halfway and landed on my face but I wasn't the worst. People were hitting the surface in every thinkable way and some of them looked very painful.
After everyone was happy we went back to the "camp" where we got a small candle in our hand each and walked to the cave. We got a short introduction and were sent into the cave with lit candles and our guide at our tail. It was almost spooky at first but the deeper we entered the cave and the more we waded, climbed and swam, the better it got. Sometimes you had to put the candle between your teeth and climb up a narrow ladder underneath a small waterfall with the water pounding on your back or even the tallest of us lost the ground underneath their feet and had to swim, one armed, through the darkness. At the end we got to a place where we could jump off a narrow and slippery ledge into a whole that wasn't very wide at all before we turned around and went back the way we came from.
It was an incredible feeling to be in that cave without any other light than that of our candles and swim through pitch black water. I loved the tour and was very happy that I had decided to spend the money on it. And it wasn't quite over yet.
We tubed down the river for a while which was relaxing but not very exiting and got a little bit cold after a while before we crossed the river and had lunch. After the lunch break we entered the national park of Semuc Champey and hiked up to the view point "El Mirador" from where we could see the amazing limestone pools from high above. It was an incredible sensation to step out on to the platform and look down to see this natural wonder and I don't think that I can describe what I saw so I'll just leave that part to the pictures.

The pools from above

This is the river flowing in underneath the pools

I departed from the group a little and followed the path down to the pools where I saw, that the majority of the rivers water actually went through underneath the pools. It was a powerful rapid that would kill anyone who jumped or fell into it and stood in such a contrast to the tranquil pools that were lying there in quietness and a light peaceful turquoise. I walked further down to the top most pool where I undressed and dived into the beautiful clear water. The water cascaded down from pool to pool and you could jump and slide down little waterfalls into the next basin. We spent over an hour swimming, jumping and sliding and until the end I found it hard to believe this perfect beauty that was pure nature.
It wasn't warm at all though and we packed our stuff together and left when the first fingers and lips turned purple. On the way back I bought a piece of locally made chocolate which had a very interesting taste, not particularly good or bad, and huddled together with everyone else on the back of the pick-up truck that took us home.
I got off at another hostel where some people from my group were staying who had invited me to join them in their sauna. It was a tiny little room with a fire place outside that heated up quite well and it was right at the river which was nice to cool down in. I stayed there until I felt warm enough and walked back to my hostel to get some food where I met up with Elisa and Thalida again who had just come back from their trip as well. We had a lot of fun that night and met a lot of great people, I learned a new game, and had three lovely wood oven pizzas. To round of this almost perfect day one of the hostel staff, who had been a chef somewhere, came out of the kitchen with a tray of the best brownies I have ever tasted. It was like biting into pure soft and airy chocolate with big chunks of more chocolate in it. Amazing!
It had been a good day with a lot of fun with new and old friends, a lot of adventure and great food at the end of it. What could you possibly want more...