San Juan del Sur

We arrived in San Juan del Sur, a small coastal town, on Monday 12th October after a short journey from La Isla de Ometepe. We found ourselves a small hostel close to the beach and settled in for our last few days in Nicaragua. This former fishing village is now a 'surfer's paradise' with board rental shops and places to quench your thirst after a hard day in the waves dominating the town. Well, who are we to argue with that? We soon succumbed to the surf bum way of life and headed to the beach for beers and the incredible sunset.
The next day we finally decided that after a month and a half of struggling with our Spanish we should take the opportunity of being in one place for more than a few days to try and improve our language skills. So we signed up for 2 hours a day of one-to-one tuition; if this didn't help us nothing ever would! We opted to have our lessons in the morning so that we still had most of our days free to do the really important stuff, like hit the beach!
We headed up the coast on a couple of our days to a beach called Maderas which was idyllic; gorgeous white sand and crashing waves, perfect for surfing. Dave lived up to his new name:
and renewed his love of the board. I decided that I'd take the easy option and stick with a body board; lots of fun and half the effort!
During our stay we also took an evening trip to La Flor Wildlife Reserve which is where thousands of Olive Ridley turtles come ashore to lay their eggs every year. There were thousands of turtles on the beach, digging their nests and depositing their eggs; an absolutely amazing sight. Unfortunately we felt that the whole thing wasn't controlled enough by the guides and although the visiting tourists provide the cash for the turtles to be protected from egg poachers, it does mean that they are subjected to muppets who think that they don't have to follow the guidelines and stick flashing cameras in the turtles faces; a lesser of two evils I suppose.

The days passed quickly with the combination of Spanish classes and surfing and in no time at all it was time to say 'Adios' to Nicaragua and head across the border for our very short stay in Costa Rica.